DRACULA DONE RIGHT
<intro> Stokerverse writer Chris Mcauley and developer Chris Beach are creating the first fully licensed Dracula game – Dracula: Dark Reign </intro>
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“I remember most of the titles 002 based around Bram Stoker’s book being very 003 disappointing,” says Chris Mcauley, before 004 explaining how he got involved in a new venture. 005 “Dacre Stoker originally asked me to write a comic 006 book based on one of Bram Stoker’s short stories. 007 It became incredibly popular. We started to look at 008 Dracula together and came up with the idea of a horror 009 universe based on Bram Stoker’s books and research, 010 The Stokerverse. Having a videogame was very 011 important to me.” Spacebot Interactive is developing 012 that first game with Incube8 as publisher.013 “For Dacre and I to provide the licence means that 014 we give the developers access to Bram Stoker’s notes 015 and research, as well as a place within the established 016 canon of the series,” continues Mcauley. “There 017 were 110 pages removed from the original Dracula 018 novel which showed various creatures and Dracula 019 getting up to all sorts of grizzly stuff. We use this and 020 Bram Stoker’s research as well as elements from the 021 Stokerverse RPG and comic books. I gave the basic 022 outline to Spacebot who ran with the ideas beautifully. I 023 was consulted about the type of game that we should 024 do, and we all agreed on a Metroidvania-style title. I 025 worked with Spacebot in examining which characters 026 should be included in the various stages. Dacre and I 027 then consulted about the mood and tone of the game.”
028 Mcauley hints at more games in the Stokerverse in 029 the future. “I would like to push further into the timeline 030 bringing the undead with me.”
031 Dracula: Dark Reign starts with Jonathan Harker 032 trapped inside Castle Dracula and resembles a certain 033 other franchise that featured vampires, as developer 034 Chris Beach explains. “I think it’s hard to avoid the game 035 being influenced by the Castlevania series when making 036 a Metroidvania-type game based on Dracula, seeing as 037 the Castlevania series is also based on Bram Stoker’s 038 characters. I think the thing that sets it apart is the fact
039 that it tells the story as intended. It certainly sets itself 040 apart from the Castlevania Game Boy games due to 041 the amount of attention to detail in the character sprites, 042 environments and mechanics.”
043 Beach is developing the new game in GB Studio. 044 “You have to be very creative when developing a 045 game like this for GBC even with the quality-of-life 046 features that GB Studio brings,” he explains. “Fitting 047 all character animation frames into VRAM has been 048 the biggest challenge so far, the game is still in 049 development however and I’m sure we’ll come up 050 against some more obstacles before completion. 051 Knowing that there will be a physical product that 052 people can cherish at the end of development 053 definitely helps the team push on and we’re very much 054 looking forward to the end product.”