Game #38: The Count

Cover Art for Adventure #5: The Count

I initially had a difficult time with this offering. I had mentioned in a previous post that Scott Adams would continue to experiment with the medium and that is exactly what he did with The Count. He introduced a mechanic that was so unconventional at the time that it made me think I was doing something wrong or missing something. I actually exited out of the game and started over three or four times before I allowed myself to give into the story.

Many text adventures up to this point have experimented with the concept of time or having only a limited number of moves. The most common way we’ve experienced this is having our torch or light source go out leaving us in darkness and having to begin again. In every single case the concept of time is monitored by the player and the player’s actions have a direct affect on how time passes in the game.

In The Count, what Scott Adams does is remind the player that time marches on and waits for no one. There are a couple of plot devices which occur in the game that are dependent on the game progressing through time and specifically entire days.

You begin the game by waking up in a large brass bed. The character that you portray KNOWS why he or she wakes up in a strange place but it is up to YOU as the player to deduce why you are there. It will not be long, once you begin to wander around and explore, before you begin to realize you are in Count Dracula’s castle and you are there to destroy the vampire. There is a strange pocket watch that you can find in the castle that will let you know how many moves you have left before sunset. Once darkness descends you are bitten by a vampire bat and you awaken the next morning with marks on your neck and your day begins anew. Each time this happened, I felt that this was such a dire circumstance that I must have done something wrong. I thought there is no way that it is ok to be bitten by this vampire bat and I would then quit and restart the game. I later realized that I hadn’t needed to restart the game; that I could have and even should have continued playing. The other plot device which helped me to realize that I need to allow game time to move along were the daily mail deliveries which occur. It is important to investigate the mail deliveries and to obtain the package contents or you’re not going to be able to win the game.

Mission Impossible played with the concept of time. You had a limited number of moves you could make before the bomb went off. The game title The Count is a bit of an irony because the game completely revolves around the concept of time as a plot device. There is a countdown each day until sunset and you MUST be very economical in your moves. Every move counts! Your inventory management and the way in which you move about the castle counts! You have three days to prepare, search for and then destroy the vampire. If you do not finish in three days, when you awaken on the fourth morning, you will be transformed into a vampire.

There are not many locations in the game but every move counts. There are very specific things that you must do each day in order to survive, destroy the vampire and emerge victorious.

You begin the game with a stake in your inventory. If you do not find a way to hide the stake before you go to bed that first evening the vampire will take it from you. When you awaken the next morning it will be gone. You will not be able to complete the game without the stake. So you must find a way to hide the stake so that the vampire doesn’t find it. Good luck.

This paragraph contains a specific SPOILER so if you do not want to receive any SPOILERS I suggest you skip this paragraph and move on to the next one. If you’re a regular reader you know that I avoid giving you a complete walkthrough because if the game sounds interesting I would like you to experience it for yourself. However I am breaking from my normal pattern because I found this particular puzzle to be so odd that I felt it was borderline unfair. I am not going to tell you why you need it, but one of the things you will need to win the day is a nail-file. You will want to find this nail-file on Day 1. When you’re exploring the kitchen you’ll find an oven in the kitchen. Each time you open the oven it is described as having sunlight streaming out of it. I thought to myself; “how odd – perhaps the vampire chases me into the kitchen and I have to throw him into the oven?” No. Not even close. The reason why sunlight is streaming out of the oven? Why it’s a solar oven of course. You want to wait until the sun goes down (you’re going to have to discover on your own how to stay awake) and then you can climb into the oven. Once you are in the solar oven you’ll find your nail file. Now I’ve never heard of a solar oven. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the concept of a solar oven. I knew I NEEDED something like the nail-file; but I didn’t know what it was and I couldn’t find anything anywhere. I spent probably two hours minimally stuck at this point in the game. I actually got lucky and found that Scott Adams had published a hint book that NUDGES you in the right direction by substituting words for numbers. So I had to cheat a little bit with this one. In hindsight; I NEVER would have gotten to the possibility of a solar oven and waiting until dark to crawl inside. So I am glad that I ended up taking a hint and becoming a big cheater face. I REALLY hated doing that because I was really enjoying the game.

On Day 2 you’re going to want to find Dracula’s crypt and you’ve got some work to do there to set you up for Day 3. Day 3 is when you have your final showdown with the Count.

Let me warn you; the game is all about getting a proper sequence of events completed in the correct order and doing so with a limited number of moves. There are a couple of things you can find and use to prevent you from being turned into a vampire or at least slow down the process. Manipulation of your environment also takes centerstage in this game. Do not study the screen capture below as it contains SPOILERS!

I found myself saving and restarting several times until I got the order of things correct on each day and had all of the right items. I found the ending to be extremely gratifying because the The Count, in my humble opinion, is the hardest game in the Adventure Series to this point. It is also quite possibly my favorite or at least in my top 3 (I’ll share these with you in a future blog post). I think it would have been a clear favorite if not for the solar oven encounter. It was ALMOST a deal breaker for me but didn’t stop me from enjoying and appreciating this adventure scenario. The mechanics and concepts introduced in this text adventure are novel and really set it apart from the other adventures in this series. The game is much harder than I make it sound and you’re going to find it challenging to manipulate the surrounding environment to your advantage but the payoff is satisfying. In the end I had a lot of fun seeing to it that this particular vampire went down for The Count. (insert groan here)