A Vampyre Story

The Good
What is presented in the game really shines out. Backgrounds have the right colours and tones, foregrounds make good use of shadows and lighting as well as weather effects and the character animations are very fluid, making them seem more like living (or should I say unliving?) beings. And the music does have some Whipstaff Manor and Casper feels to it.

Gameplay is easy to get the hang of. You have only four actions selected from a medallion: Handling, Talking, Looking and Flying. That's all you're going to need. The inventory system is quite unique, in that you don't carry many items with you, but remember them. That's realistic I guess.

Characters are humorous and exactly what you would expect in a game that has some comedy like the 1979 movie "The Halloween That Almost Wasn't" and the graphic style not unlike a Tim Burton stop-motion movie. Imagine if Kath Soucie voiced Mona de Laffite. Every other voice talent fits perfectly.

The Bad
Colourful and brilliant as the graphics are, the game doesn't really give you the opportunity to explore the scenes thoroughly. While it's cool to turn into a bat and fly, this ability cannot be used to full extent like trying to interact, look and talk in bat-form to make things more interesting. Other content lacking is that there's not enough vampire or monster lore, even with some parody elements.

Puzzles are pretty straightforward and not very clever, shortening the game to some extent. There's no randomisation in any puzzles from game to game, like a lot of older adventure titles. Most of the time you just talk to characters to progress. In most adventure games, dialogue is supposed to clue you in on puzzles. And speaking of dialogue, there are no English subtitles for those who have trouble following what characters are saying.

The Bottom Line
This game manages to be its own adventure but also look something like a Broken Sword and Monkey Island game in one fun package. We've all seen tame spooky stuff like Dreamworks' Hotel Transylvania, but it's not every day you get to play the role of a "vampyre", let alone a pretty charming lady one. But with puzzles being not-so-puzzling, you may as well be watching a DVD movie of the game interacting with the remote control. Overall the developers seemed so busy trying to wow us with the graphics, they didn't invest enough to give this the old classic adventuring treatment like so many LucasArts games. This is not an award-winning title like Toonstruck, but you might enjoy this once in your own sweet time. It's a shame the sequel never saw the light of day (which probably killed the Vampyre series).