Do you remember back around 2015 when Universal Pictures was building hype for its interconnected “Dark Universe” which would include all the big bads of the time from Dracula to Frankenstein to the Wolfman and everyone in between all connected via the Prodigium, a secret society dedicated to hunting supernatural threats which, as we found out in 2017’s The Mummy, was run by Doctor Henry Jekyll (played by Russell Crowe). This game is a part of that?
Inspired by older games such as Castlevania, Shinboi and Contra; Wallachia: Reign of Dracula attempts to pay homage to its predecessors in both substance and style while bringing classic coin-op gameplay to a unique setting and, for the most part, it accomplishes what it sets out to do, but it isn’t without its fair share of pitfalls.
As I played Mutant Year Zero a realization struck me about the subtitle of the game: Road to Eden.
On the surface it’s appropriate because it is an on-the-nose reference to your characters physical journey as they explore the “Zone” in search of a fabled location called Eden. However, on a completely different level (and probably only in my mind), the road to Eden is your personal journey as you try to understand the inner workings of the game: the rules the game is built upon and the interface in which you use to play it.
Twenty years after the original found footage film took the world by storm, Bloober Team – the studio behind Layers of Fear and Observer – resurrects this franchise in an interactive form to tell the story of the search for a missing boy in the Black Hills forest that leads to revelations both good and bad.
