Vampire Castle was written by Mike Bassman and published by Aardvark. We recently played Trek Adventure which was also published by Aardvark. The game was written for the Ohio Scientific Computer (OSI) and later ported to the Commodore 64, TRS-80, TRS-80 CoCo and unofficially ported to the Coleco Adam (special thanks to Gareth Pitchford for this information). The tape version sold for $14.95 back in 1981 and the disk version sold for $15.95 which is the equivalent of about $45.50 today.
I must admit that I am a sucker for a good vampire story. It’s a classic showdown between good and evil. Exploring an old castle, encountering the dreaded bloodsucker and then staking it through the heart has been a popular gaming theme thus far. We saw it first with Scott Adam’s The Count from 1979 and again in 1980’s Castlequest where your adversary was also a vampire. Even 1978’s mainframe game Mystery Mansion has a vampire as one of the antagonists. It is a popular theme and I know that going forward through time I will encounter many other vampire-themed games in my journey. Vampire Castle is the second game from 1980 that has slaying a vampire as the main goal (Castlequest being the other). Now that I’ve played the game I’m in the mood to watch Hammer Studio’s production of Horror of Dracula starring Christopher Lee. Many critics lauded Lee’s performance in this film as the best ever depicting Dracula.
I was able to play a DOS conversion of Vampire Castle which you can find HERE if you want to play yourself. If you are going to play you may want to give it a go first before reading a few SPOILERS below.
Vampire Castle is a short game and not too terribly difficult. I was able to play through the entire game with no help except for the fireplace puzzle. I deduced what I needed to do but I was playing guess the verb with the parser and I finally had to resort to a walkthrough only to get the proper wording. I didn’t use the walkthrough to aid me with the game.
I felt that Vampire Castle was another unique game for 1980 because it didn’t use common text adventure tropes from that period. There was no maze and it was not a treasure hunt. You move around and you explore the environment and there is an overarching goal to find the vampire in it’s domain and destroy it.
There were a couple of nice period pieces and interesting twists in the game. One such twist involves finding holy water in an old chapel in the basement. You can collect the holy water with an old bucket that you find on the upper level. Your first assumption is that you’re going to use the holy water in combat with the vampire. Soften him up before the final stake through the heart. But the holy water serves as a bit of a “bait and switch” in that you use it to douse the fire in the fireplace and not against the vampire. I found that to be a clever turn of events. A nice cliched set piece was moving the bookcase in the library to reveal stairs leading to a secret basement below. One other twist in the game involves finding a crate in the hidden basement. You also find a sledgehammer in another area of the castle. Thinking myself very clever, I smashed the crate with the hammer to provide myself with a nice collection of stakes. In a very clever twist, what I did there was “softlock” myself from being able to finish the game. You see before you smash the crate; you’re going to need it late in the game because you need to stand on it to reach something. THEN you can smash the crate. While I didn’t relish starting all over again (there is no save feature) I certainly appreciated the twist and this was something different that I hadn’t encountered yet in all of the text adventures that I have played.
Where I encountered a stumbling block in the game was with the fireplace in the study. I was sure that there was something about the fireplace that concealed a hidden passage. I was bolstered in this belief when I discovered I could put out the fire in the fireplace with the bucket of holy water. I then entered the fireplace itself but then couldn’t figure out what to do next. I tried pushing on the walls of the fireplace, smashing the walls, moving the walls. I probably spent a good twenty minutes guessing different verbs which may work. I finally resorted to a walkthrough and I am thankful that I did because the parser required me to type in BREAK FIREPLACE in order to find the hidden passage.
The hidden passage led me to an old boat and an underwater moat. I used an oar that I found in the castle to maneuver the boat to the other side.
I then found myself in a gallery and once I dealt with the puzzle of the tapestry I found myself in a room beyond with a locked coffin. The key to the coffin you can barter from a large rat you find in a torture chamber who has the key in it’s mouth. You can trade a piece of cheese for the key.
I was then able to kill the vampire with the stakes I’d created from the smashed crate.
Vampire Castle was a fun diversion and it had a couple of unique twists which I’d not encountered yet. The BREAK FIREPLACE parser-ala-palooza was a little frustrating but aside from that I’d recommend this game if you’re a fan of text adventures or the genre and you haven’t yet played it. This was Mike Bassman’s only adventure game and I thought he did a great job.
In a rather abrupt change of pace I’m off to the stars now as I tackle Galactic Hitchhiker; a science fiction text adventure.