The Dracula Game Coda

For today's countdown to Halloween, another trip down Memory Lane featuring one of horror's greatest villains. I am talking of course of Count Dracula. Twelve years ago, I wrote about the Dracula Game. It was a make-belief game my brothers and I invented with a brand new friend we'd made. We freely used  J.H. Brennan's gamebook Dracula's Castle as inspiration, as we had not read the original novel then. It was basically a hack and slash, shoot em'up dungeons crawl, where we played vampire hunters fighting various critters (zombies, ghouls, devils, lesser vampires) in Castle Dracula and it's surroundings, trying to destroy the Count himself. Anyway, you can learn more about the game in this post. I said in the original post that we only played once, but this is not quite true. A few weeks later, while our friend was away in his parents' cottage, we convince our neighours, twin brothers who werenot really into horror, and their friend, who was, to play Dracula as well. It was for me a continuation of our initial game, but for some reason it didn't work as well. Not at all in fact. Even though it was October, the air was way crisper and it felt far more autumnal. The atmosphere was borderline perfect, it felt like a good day for a horror game. Maybe because we did not have the visual aid of the gamebook, but I think mostly because our friend was not there. To fully appreciate certain games, you need to be in the company of a kindred spirit, who understands the appeal of spooky things and the macabre. Like I said, the twins were not really into horror and view gamebooks like this one with suspicion. Their friend was enthusiastic, but he saw the Count as a glorified Big Bad Wolf, or something like that. Not really an invader who wanted to conquer the world, starting with London. Our characters had true motivationsand purpose. Dracula too. So the Dracula Game never had a proper finale, it first ended abruptly in one afternoon, then it ended in a whimper in a second episode that truly wasn't one. Maybe I can convince Wolfie to play it with me one day. Who knows.