Reader reviews for A Vampyre Story

Title summarizes most of my thoughts, but this is a great re-vitalization of old school adventure games to fit the modern “pretty looking” age.

Great puzzle mechanics, goofy and varied characters, okay storyline, great graphics, great sound.

I would give this game a higher score if it didn’t capitalize on so much dark humor: some of the humor is acceptable though, but some are very morbid.

It also features all the best gameplay elements for point-and-click adventures: there’s the use of the verb coin (which is my preferred choice of interaction), there’s all kinds of fast-travel possibilities (including shortcuts to others parts of the map) and dialogue-skipping options, and we get a hotspot revealer to help us with the pixel hunting. All of these make sure that we get the max out of the point-and-click style of the game. The only minor quibbles I might have are the lack of subtitles during cutscenes, and that the verb coin is a bit oversized, but those are nothing jarring at all.

The story in this game is a fairly simple one (escape the castle, find transport to Paris), and while there’s a decent amount of padding in it (main character Mona gets a well-fleshed out backstory and her ‘coming to terms with being a vampire’ is played for laughs), ultimately the game ends on an a cliffhanger with no real sense of resolution. Even if you knew that in advance, it still hurts the game since you’ve basically only played the first part of a much longer story.

The game itself is spiked with lots of humour, most often in the form of comments coming from your sidekick, the bat Froderick. His comments are rather hit-and-miss, not all of them are actually funny, but there are some great lines in there and there are enough pop culture references to keep you entertained throughout the game.

Once your character escapes the castle (which is the first half of this game), the game world opens up quite a bit with more locations to visit and more people to talk to. The town you visit somehow made me think of Rubacava from Grim Fandango (maybe it’s the presence of a stadium that did it?). Since Year Two of Grim Fandango is the epitome of adventure gaming for me, this is a VERY good thing. Thus the second half of A Vampyre Story is my favourite part of the game. It’s also the part that’s the heaviest on puzzles, which is great as well.

Most of the puzzles in this game are well thought out and logical. There are only a few that needed cartoon logic, but those still fit the comedic aspect of the game. They even tried to give it a more realistic angle by avoiding the infinitely large inventory storage. Large items are merely “remembered”, not taken with you. You only go and fetch them when you actually need them. This may not have been the perfect game for this “new” take on an inventory, but it was a nice addition nonetheless.

Lastly, the game features some more-than-decent voice acting that complements the characters as well as the humour. Mona’s voice is rather high-pitched so some people may find her grating, but it’s really not bad at all. Plus it gives her a certain cuteness to offset the vampirism…

Overall this is a very decent game, with great artwork and great gameplay. It’s a really enjoyable adventure game. Not all the humour works as well as it should, and (like for instance Toonstruck before it) you’re left hanging with only half a game, which keeps A Vampyre Story from becoming an adventure classic. Now we can only hope that Bill Tiller finds the funding he needs to complete the tale, because I’d happily revisit Draxylvania…

A Vampyre Story looks beautiful and sounds good. Mona’s high pitched voice might be a bit of an acquired taste but it’s very suitable, kudos for not going for the basic bland protagonist neither with the voice nor with the other characteristics.

The game has loads and loads of things to interact with, one can easily spend many extra hours just trying all the combinations (look/talk/use/fly). Puzzles work pretty well varying a bit with difficulty - there’s at least one rather tough one. The silly sidekick bat adds some variety to the puzzles too.

The humour is stupid. It’s so stupid that at times it’s almost painful, but somehow after a while I really got used to it and found myself smirking and laughing more and more as the game progressed.

Overall this game is very well worth playing for any adventure gamer, though unfortunately it ends rather abruptly and the story doesn’t get a decent ending at all.

Everyone should note that AVS has a couple of game breaking bugs which can luckily be fixed by patching the game. I strongly recommend this. Also, saves from unpatched game will be unlikely to work properly in the patched version.