Dracula the Resurrection

Dracula: Resurrection is a 1999 graphic adventure game developed by Index+. Set in 1904 Transylvania, the game serves as a follow-up to Bram Stoker‘s novel Dracula. Seven years after the death of Count Dracula, Jonathan Harker‘s wife Mina finds herself mysteriously drawn back to Transylvania. Jonathan subsequently travels to Borgo Pass in an effort to rescue her. The player assumes the role of Jonathan and uses a point-and-click interface to solve puzzles and navigate the game’s world, often with the help of an object called the Dragon Ring.

Production of Dracula was led by Jacques Simian of Index+. It was the company’s first traditional video game: the team had previously created software with an educational and cultural tourism emphasis, a style that informed Dracula‘s design. Building from myths, legends, Bram Stoker’s novel and films about vampires, Dracula‘s creators sought to create a follow-up to Stoker’s story that was imbued with the same atmosphere of dread as its predecessor. The game underwent a rapid development cycle of 8 months, and was first launched in Europe in October 1999. In North America, it was published by DreamCatcher Interactive the following year.

Dracula received “mixed or average” reviews from critics, according to Metacritic. Reviewers praised the game’s graphics and some of the puzzles, but criticized the voice acting, plot and the game’s brevity. Selling 200,000 units worldwide by September 2000, the game was a commercial success. In North America, it became a top title for DreamCatcher and sold 170,000 units by 2003. Dracula and its direct sequel, Dracula 2: The Last Sanctuary (2000), reached combined global sales above 1 million units by April 2007. After Dracula 2‘s release, the Dracula series went on hiatus until the 2007 announcement of Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon by Kheops Studio and MC2 France. Fourth and fifth entries in the series, developed by Koalabs and published by Anuman, appeared in 2013.