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Horror has never been treated properly in adventure games. Instead of attempting to build up atmosphere, or shock, most authors abuse the genre by making camp jokes or mixing up various legends (for examine having vampires and werewolves in the same game); either that, or the game is really cliched.

How refreshing and welcome Dracula is. By taking the story seriously, and sticking closely to the original Bram Stoker novel, instead of the silly Hollywood version, this game comes closer than any I have played to being quite spine-chilling. It isn't frightening - I don't see how a series of characters on-screen could be - but the horror elements can be appreciated.

There are three separate games, which can be played independently though the narrative flows through them. In 'The First Night', you are Jonathan Harker, a young solicitor visiting a client in Transylvania who has purchased a house in England, and wishes to bring with him some local soil. The game concerns your troubled night at The Golden Krone Hotel, the last stop over of your journey. 'Arrival' finds you realising that you are a prisoner at Castle Dracula, and in danger! Your task is escape In 'The Hunt' you play a different character, Doctor Seward, a psychiatrist who receives a peculiar letter about the 'undead' from his friend John Harker. But he has problems of his own: an inmate from his asylum is behaving murderously. Little does Seward know that the normally subdued Renfield is under the influence of... Dracula!

The game has reams of description, some of the longest I have seen. Evocatively written, it creates a suitable atmosphere. You anticipate in fear until, suddenly, the shock moments of terror (well, supposedly) occur. On the first night you have an apparition. "...He has no face!! Just raw, burned flesh!! ... the apparition drips fetid blood onto my face - evil exudes from every pore of its vile being."

Then we have the graphics. Although the game is Quilled, CRL have wisely avoided having split screen location graphics, clumsily and slowly drawn with The Illustrator; their crudeness would make a mockery of the game's atmosphere. Instead, when a frightening event occurs, a keypress causes the screen to go black and, in the middle, a small graphic appears to illustrate the event. But what graphics! Very high resolution and quality (they look digitised), they are suitably gruesome in subject matter and genuinely effective.

The game has flaws. First is the character set which, though perhaps suitable in style, is difficult to read and entirely upper case; some of the mounting dread is lost because you are straining to read the text. The choice of colours - yellow on blue - is not very suitable. There's no ram save/load in a game where death occurs more frequently than others, and the vocabulary is occasionally too limited. Worst of all, in a game with this much text, are the instances of poor punctuation, spelling and proof-reading. "Transilvania" for goodness sake! And surely someone at CRL must know the difference between "it's" and "its".

Despite these niggles, I enjoyed Dracula a great deal. It really does feel like participating in a novel; furthermore, it must be the closest conversion from another medium the Spectrum has ever seen. Considering the subject matter, this should be a Monster Hit, but isn't quite stunning enough. Great value and strongly recommended nonetheless.