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A Vampyre Story (community playthrough) - 3.5 / 5

Superb gameplay, great artwork but some hit-and-miss humour in a simple and unfinished tale

A Vampyre Story is a really good-looking adventure game with some amazing artwork by Bill Tiller (of Curse of Monkey Island fame). The master’s hand in the artwork is clearly visible - his odd shapes and angles make for a very distinctive style - yet the game is given its own identity with the style, so it’s not a rehash of his earlier work. The game is a pleasure to watch.

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 Trans Draxylvania…



I gave the game 3.5 stars, but it’s VERY close to a 4 in my book. It only ends up with 3.5 because when in doubt I pick the lower rating…

Good review, I agree with it and even gave the same rating.

I also like the review. I, too, would have given it 3.5/5. But, for me, that rating would be more reflective of the two major unpatched bugs and other smaller techical glitches than any other shortcoming.

rtrooney - 14 July 2013 02:40 PM

I also like the review. I, too, would have given it 3.5/5. But, for me, that rating would be more reflective of the two major unpatched bugs and other smaller techical glitches than any other shortcoming.

If you’re talking about the perfume bottle and stadium bugs I pointed to the patch (plus how to directly edit the game file for the perfume bug) earlier in the thread. The only caveat being, with the patch, that you lose your save games.

Yes you did. However, the patch was installed before I even started the game. And the game data edit surely would have helped, but you didn’t post the message until after I had already replayed the game. I did not encounter the Stadium bug. There are al least two other “glitches”. One on Mona’s bedroom porch where, if you perform an action the game freezes, and you will lose your save. Another occurs when retrieveing the key from the well.

I didn’t encounter any bugs or glitches, and I don’t even know if I had installed the patch or not (the game was still installed from three years ago and I didn’t touch it).
That’s why I personally can’t fault the technical side of the game…

I encountered the perfume bug but the patch fixed this so I wont deduct points (at least not intentionally). There were also a couple of graphics glitches but for the most part they were just funny.

As you know I had to replay the game becasue of the perfume bug…with the patch installed. It is possible to avoid the bug simply by not refilling the bottle whether or not the patch is installed, so installing it doesn’t really affect matters.

Tossing the perfume into the Lake from Mona’s balcony causes the game to freeze requiring you to close the game from task manager and the loss of a saved game.

If you wrap the blanket around the bucket before you put the stew into it you will not be able to retrieve the key and you will need to restart the sequence from a saved game. (Putting the blanket on the bucket after it is filled with stew is OK. Don’t ask me why. It’s like the old “push rock/pull rock” conumdrum.)

I never ran into the stadium problem.

The patch really fixed those issues for me. I wasn’t able to refill the perfume bottle after patch and I definitely added the blanket to the bucket before stew (the second time around, first stew froze). I did need to start over after patching though, since my old saves kept crashing. So I think there was definitely something wrong with your game.

Learned the song, dealt with the funny kids, still stuck at getting horse & key from the well… Kudos to everyone who finished the last part so fast!

Not easy at all.

Well getting the key really isn’t that difficult, you just need something hot , and once you have the key the horse follows. It looks like you are pretty close to the last part, the graveyard.

No real need to put this in a spoiler. Some of this sequence has been discussed just a bit ago regarding some technical difficulties.

You know where the key is. Hot water melts ice. There’s a pot of hot stew cooking outside the gypsy wagon. Grab a bucketful! Oops! Stew got cold on the way to the well. Hmm. If I only had a way to insulate the bucket, that would keep the stew warm. A horese blanket should do the job. I “remember” seeing one of thse in the stable. Get another bucket of stew. Put the blanket around it. Head to the well and get the key. Give the key to the housekeeper and you have yourself a horse.

REALLY???? That playthrough is over, except for Diego. And I admire his gumption to try and get trough this.

Spoilers??? Who else is playing that would take advantage of a spoiler?

Did he specifically ask for a WT that would get him past this point. No. Did it soumd as if he was asking for help to get through to the end? Absolutely.

If you want to beat up on someone trying to help a straggler go to the new Obsidion playthrough. I’ve seen spoilers galore in the “how to get this going?” phase.

I’ll be happy to let Diego finish on his own. Although my bet is that he would simply like to finish regardless of what it takes.

I find your comments insulting.