You have decided to venture into Dracula’s castle in search of treasure. The halls are infested with vampires, werewolves and monsters, and your aim is to survive the beasties and accumulate as much gold as possible in this text based dungeon crawler.
The game begins in a shop in Room 1 of the castle, which sells various items. Food is important, as without this your health will drain quickly. Armour will protect your health against supernatural violence, but will slowly wear away with each attack. Then there are three types of weapon: silver bullets which can only be used to kill werewolves, wooden stakes for vampires and a sword for miscellaneous monsters. Like the armour, the sword will eventually wear out and needs to be periodically renewed.
Two special items are also available for sale. There is a cross, which will prevent vampires from attacking. There is also a magic ring, which when activated will teleport you to the nearest shop (and may actually create a new shop if an existing one is not handy).
Most of the game takes place in rooms of the castle. These are screens of text with a room number, a list of all of the compass bearings of the exits from the room, and a list of all of the monsters and gold present within the room. You can choose to attack the monsters, which automatically uses the correct weapons for dispatching the different types of foe. If you fail to kill the monsters, or if you try to leave the room without killing them, then they get a shot at you, and your life counter will decrease if they successfully attack. If you leave a room containing gold after killing all of the enemies in it, you will pick up some percentage of that gold (this percentage may be zero).
While visiting rooms, other effects may occur. Sometimes a demon will steal some or all of your money unless you kill it first. For this reason, it is a good idea to leave most of your money in the bank at the shop. Also, Igor will sometimes appear and steal your holy cross, making you more vulnerable to vampires. A map of all of the visited rooms is available, but it only shows the direction of your last exit from that room instead of showing all available exits.
