Quick Look: Transylvania for iPhone
This is really more of a preview to an upcoming article of mine rather than a full blown Quick Look. In the next issue of iPhone Life Magazine (Home Page) I have an article discussing adventure games that have been ported to the iPhone from other platforms. One of the games I talked about was Transylvania, and while it was one of the older ones, it was still quite entertaining. I vaguely remember playing the game from my childhood, and it’s always fun reminiscing about what used to be “cool” in the realm of computer games. It’s hard to believe that 16 color graphics and text parsers used to be all the rage.
Who's Afraid Of The Werewolf?
Anyway, as for the game itself, the basic premise is that you have to save a princess named Sabrina from an evil vampire. Throughout your journey you’ll run into all sorts of creatures, like a viscous werewolf and a frog that hops around like it’s on speed. There are plenty of puzzles, and I’ll be the first to admit that the challenge in solving them comes as much from trying to discern the proper words to use as actually logically figuring out the answer, but they’re fun none the less. There are multiple levels to the interface, including a quick tap for the common action to perform on an item, a tap-n-press to bring up a menu of a few possible actions, or a full text line to key in whatever action you’d like to perform (as long as the text engine understands the command, of course).
The graphics are pretty much what you’d expect from a 20 year old game, but I still find them nifty to look at. The werewolf in particular actually manages to look somewhat ominous, even in it’s lack of detail. There’s no music, but the sound effects do a good job of creating a creepy atmosphere.
Because of the game’s retro input scheme and old world graphics, Transylvania probably won’t appeal to everyone, even if you are into adventure games. However, if you’re a computer game history buff, or you just like a good challenge and can look beyond the lo-res surface of a game, you might very well enjoy this treasure from the 80s. I certainly do.
Final Verdict: Recommended
App Store Link
App Shopper Link
And don’t forget to look for the next issue of iPhone Life due out in a few weeks so you can check out my article!
Tags: Adventure Game, Eric Pankoke, iPhone, Quick Look, RetroVenture, review, technobrains, Transylvania
