Lady Dracula by Goth Donut Games is a love letter to the classic whip swinging action Konami brought to gaming with the original Castlevania. Over the years, the stiff gameplay has been replaced with better controls, better graphics, better everything. Lady Dracula feels there is more life in the style of the original Castlevania though and it aims to prove it, one unfair hit at a time. We are talking original Castlevania gameplay here, not Symphony of the Night or even Castlevania III. The ORIGINAL Castlevania.
Welcome to the Late 80s Land of Cheap Hits
I want to put this out front early here. I have played the demo, available on Steam. I am speaking from experience, but it is not meant to be taken in a bad way. I grew up with gaming, being born in 1976, I was the prime age for each console generation it seemed. I am also a huge fan of Castlevania II over the rest, until we hit Symphony of the Night and the GBA/NDS releases.
I do not hate what I experienced with Lady Dracula, I just want you, the prospective retro gamer out there, to understand what you are getting into here.
Lady Dracula does not hold your hand, at least not in the demo. You are thrust in and must figure things out. I was confused at first as you can see in the video embedded below, I did not realize that it was a vine to climb up and there was nothing saying it was. That is what I mean by no hand holding here.
I enjoyed the challenge of Lady Dracula but the stiff gameplay is another beast altogether.
Controls Are Old School As Much As the Graphics
Lady Dracula is taking its call back to what many would call the glory days of retro gaming seriously. You are likely to toss your controller, or at least have that urge, a few times playing the demo.
In Lady Dracula, if you jump standing still, you only jump up. No control in the air. Jumps left or right are all or nothing affairs. I am not sure if it was a problem on my end or not, but you can see in the video that I paused a lot before jumping, I was not intentionally doing that. At least I don’t think I was.
If you are playing on a keyboard your results may be worse than mine.
Honestly, based on the demo, I can only recommend the truly hardcore of the hardcore to take the plunge when Lady Dracula releases. The development team may have taken “retro” a little too seriously here.
Grab the demo of Lady Dracula on Steam. There are other platforms listed but I could not find the demo on Itch or GoG.com at the time of this writing.