In the world of monster media, few characters are as compelling as Count Dracula, and an upcoming Steam game looks to capitalize on that. The game, entitled Dracula: Crimson Apostle, aims to approach the Dracula mythos from a different angle, and by doing so, it has a chance to tell a truly original story against a time-tested backdrop.
Minor spoilers for Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Dracula’s Guest ahead.
Published in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a preeminent work of Gothic horror, responsible for establishing much of contemporary vampire lore. It follows the titular Count Dracula, a Transylvanian noble who was transformed into a vampire centuries before the story begins. Presented as a series of journal entries by the psychiatrist Dr. John Seward, Dracula’s gory details are communicated by Seward’s patient R.M. Renfield, which the former then commits to the page. Seward’s not an everyday outpatient therapist, though: he oversees an asylum for the insane, and Renfield is among his most deranged, delusional patients. It’s fascinating, then, that Renfield would actually be chosen as the protagonist of Dracula: Crimson Apostle. The nascent Steam game is set to provide one of very few looks at the “sane” version of the character.
How Does Dracula: Crimson Apostle Fit Into Stoker’s Lore?
Renfield, the Bug-Eating Madman
Though interpretations of Renfield vary depending on adaptation, the essence of this character is a fanatical obsession with the vampiric Count. Held in Seward’s asylum against his will, he believes in his ultimate salvation through Dracula, who will allow the former to transcend beyond his meager human form and achieve immortal life. A key part of Renfield’s pathology is a delusion regarding small life forms like bugs, rodents, and cats; he traps and eats them, sometimes ritualistically, in the belief that their life-force will be transferred to him.
Renfield actually inspired the name of a real psychiatric disorder, coined in 1992: Renfield syndrome describes a patient who is obsessed with drinking blood.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Easy (5)Medium (7)Hard (10)
Needless to say, Renfield makes for an unusual video game protagonist, so it will be interesting to see what approach Dracula: Crimson Apostle takes when depicting him. The game’s trailer seems to suggest that Renfield is only just encountering Dracula’s castle at the start of the game, which may mean that he has not fully begun his descent into madness. However, the Crimson Apostle Steam page also makes it clear that Renfield will be experiencing visions in-game, though whether this is due to Dracula’s influence or his own burgeoning psychological disorders remains to be seen.
Countess Dolingen von Gratz, Dracula’s Unwilling Guest
Countess Dolingen von Gratz was originally introduced through the short story Dracula’s Guest, which was published posthumously by Bram Stoker’s wife Florence. Florence Stoker claimed that the content of Dracula’s Guest was originally devised as part of Dracula proper, but wound up being cut for length. At any rate, Dracula’s Guest (and much later, Dracul, penned by Bram’s great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker) reveals that Dolingen was turned into a vampire by a cruel twist of fate and coincidence, and later, after being forced to abandon her mortal life, was captured by Dracula as a concubine. But she repeatedly rejected the Count’s advances, remaining spiteful and defiant of him until the end.
Considering that Countess Dolingen von Gratz is something of an enemy to Dracula, it will be interesting to see how her role in Dracula: Crimson Apostle shakes out. She appears to be guiding Renfield, who claims to have seen her in his dreams prior to meeting her in corporeality. This cunning and potentially duplicitous manifestation of her vampiric influence is sure to tee up compelling narrative beats, especially when pitted against Renfield’s assiduousness and slavish deference to Dracula.
Dracula: Crimson Apostle Has the Lore for a Great Experience, but What About Gameplay?
At its core, Dracula: Crimson Apostle is a puzzle game, but a puzzle game in the vein of The Talos Principle or Portal, in that its narrative is a major focus. These sorts of games can be tough to balance, as they require a greater suspension of disbelief: only in a surreal story can a series of increasingly complex puzzles and riddles be anything other than absurd.
On the other hand, it’s important to make the puzzles themselves engaging and meaningfully difficult, of course. Right now, Dracula: Crimson Apostle seems to be following the Silent Hill and Resident Evil school of puzzle design, with those showcased seemingly being built around spatial reasoning and pattern recognition within the game world. For instance, the player may have to arrange books a certain way on a bookshelf, or fit specific illustrations into the correct frames, in order to proceed.
By nature, puzzle games can offer great environmental storytelling, as each one can function as something of a nuanced, interpretive narrative setpiece. In the case of Dracula: Crimson Apostle, the puzzles may serve as an immersive way to understand the psyche of one of literature’s most famous madmen, while giving audiences a deeper look into Dracula lore in general.
