Fury of Dracula Digital Edition Review
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Get ready to hunt vampires in Fury of Dracula Digital Edition! This game has been digitized by our friends over at Nomad games. So what is Fury of Dracula and how does it play digitally? All this and more in just the moment.
About Fury of Dracula
Fury of Dracula Digital edition is based off the 4th edition of the game of the same name. The game has a rich history going back to 1987 when the first edition of the board game was released designed by Stephen Hand and produced by Games Workshop. Over the years this game has seen several updates and editions to it with 4th Edition currently being printed by Wizkids the current version of the game and the version being adapted by Nomad Games.
Nomad Games is a small, passionate games studio with over 250 years combined experience, dedicated to creating fun, faithful and exciting digital adaptations of physical board, card and dice games. Working with major licenses to take physical games from the table to PCs, consoles and mobile.
Fury of Dracula Digital Edition Tutorial
For anyone that has never played the game before, taking the tutorial before starting is a must. The game allows for players to jump right into it with not many tooltips as to what each action of movement means.
Taking the tutorial grants you this information and a good idea of the goal and how to play. So once again, for everyone new to the game, this is a must. It’s well thought out and teaches players the game faster than your best friend on game night when learning a brand new game.
Fury of Dracula Gameplay
The game is designed for 1-5 player. The game plays just as the board game does, where one player controls Dracula, and the other players play as the investigators/vampire hunters. There are 4 of these investigators/vampire hunters and regardless of the amount of players.
Each of these characters is played on the board. So if there are 3 people playing, one would be Dracula, and the 4 investigators would be divided up by the remaining players.
The interface made this a little confusing to understand at first before starting the game, but if players understand the game already or have taken the tutorial, the menu will make more sense. It might help to give further information on the menu as to why all characters are played.
The game itself is really done. It will carry from player to player as the turns progress with each character receiving a token for the board.
The goal of the players is to hunt down and defeat Dracula. This is done by moving your characters around on the board, obtaining items, and searching for where Dracula is. Once he is discovered characters can begin to fight him.
The goal of Dracula is to spread influence across the board. 13 Influence and Dracula wins. This is done by several different events throughout the game from placing other vampires to other effects and even killing players characters.
Movement in Fury of Dracula
Tokens get options to move by carriage, they can also obtain train tickets and take the rails across Europe, or go by sea. The digital version of the game highlights the available options to do as players choose where to go.
Movement for Dracula himself is something that is kept secret until his whereabouts become discovered or someone lands on the tile that Dracula is currently on. The goal of the Dracula player is to increase the influence meter while avoiding getting caught by them.
Combat in Fury of Dracula
The combat like in Talisman Digital Edition is nice and streamlined for this game, a battle interface comes up with each player getting to choose the card they want to use for that round of battle. The battle will continue on until someone either dies, or escapes.
There are icons on the cards that when matching up cancel each other out. While cards that are played do not match the effect happens with the card such as a punch.
Each character will take the effect of the card in they are not blocked and receive damage or other effects.
Because this is digital edition, health for Dracula and the characters are tracked with this as well as the cards that are in the players hand to be used in combat making this a pretty easy to understand encounter.
Fury of Dracula Art and Animation
Nomad games for anyone who is familiar with some of their other work has done games such as Talisman Digital Edition and Mystic Vale. For those already exposed to their games, there is a great melding of their interface style to these other games. You can tell it’s a game from Nomad. This does not detract from the art of the game. Most of which is coming directly from the current edition of the board game itself.
Animations for the game are decent, for me with a digital version of a board game, this is nice to have as long as it’s not too distracting, and since Fury of Dracula’s board isn’t the most fascinating thing to gaze upon for hours, the animations give a nice break.
Combat is well done, however, I highly recommend that players go through the tutorial as to not mess up these crucial stages of the game.
Fury of Dracula Audio and Music
The music in this game is perfect. It melds with the tone the game attempts to set so well that it should be used when playing the actual physical board game itself. The music is a slightly creepy piano which alters to a more menacing sound during the combat phases.
The goal of the music to me for a digital edition of the game is to not make everything silent the entire way through but have some ambiences. The music here accomplishes this and gets to a point where I forget about it completely which is by no means a bad thing. It means that the repetitiveness that some online board games present does not have any effect here.
Overall Thoughts on Fury of Dracula
This game is really well put together, with some only minor issues with confusing interfaces, the game moves smoothly and is quick to pick up and understand. Fury of Dracula is a really fun game to play with your friends, especially around Halloween.
The game is thick with theme and does not move away from the fantastic art that 4th edition offers. I would highly recommend picking this game up and giving it a go with your friends this season if you are into gothic horror themed games that also pack a bunch of mystery solving and teamwork into it.
The game releases October 29th 2020 and can be picked up on Steam here. Thanks again to Nomad Games for providing us with a copy to review. Be sure to check back here for more content and reviews just like this!
