iPhone review: iDracula
February 21st, 2009
At first glance, iDracula is visually reminiscent of the Diablo series (no, not the new rainbow/unicorn-riddled Diablo 3). Imagine my surprise when I fired up the game to find it has both feet firmly planted in a genre resurrected by Geometry Wars: the twin-stick shooter. For anyone unfamiliar with this type of game, it utilizes two different directional inputs—the first for traversing the arena and the second for controlling the direction of fire. In this implementation of the genre, you are a vampire hunter fighting wave after wave of monsters, picking up weapons and skills along the way to help you deal with the ever-encroaching onslaught.
Of course, the iPhone does not have the “twin sticks” from which the genre derives it’s name. Instead, like others that have come before, the developer had to devise another control mechanism. iDracula uses two on-screen directional controls giving it razor-accurate response. Per convention, the left side controls your character’s movement while the right side controls firing. The controls are rarely obtrusive and are positioned to still allow for a large play area while still being large enough to facilitate intuitive controls. It’s easy to find where your thumb needs to be to move and/or fire in any given direction.
The game comes with two modes: “Rush” and “Survival.” Rush mode throws you right into the fray. At all times, you’ll be surrounded by tons of monsters, and, armed with your machine gun and unlimited ammo, you’re tasked with mowing down as many as possible. This is the game mode for a quick play session. If you just have a minute or two to play, fire up “Rush” mode to dispense with all the foreplay. Throughout my play in this mode, there isn’t really any progression. That’s where “Survival” mode comes in.
“Survival” mode is the meat of the game. This mode couples the frantic arena shooting with RPG-like progression to give players a surprisingly robust experience. The mechanics are identical, but there is real progression here and incentive to play for more than a few minutes. You start with a handgun, and you’re looking at two or three shots to kill the weakest enemies. Luckily, the enemies will trickle in slowly at first to ease you into the action. Before long, the pace will pick up, new and stronger enemies will be introduced, and you’ll most likely have found a better weapon just about the time you were thinking you weren’t going to hold up much longer with just the pistol. The game seems to be intelligent about when new weapons are dropped so that you never feel like you are either underpowered or overpowered. You also have to manage ammo, but, honestly, once you start getting new weapons, ammo is not tough to find either although you may not necessarily find ammo for the particular weapon you want to use.
The progression comes in other forms as well. Perks are iDracula’s analog to leveling and learning new spells in an RPG. After a number of kills, you will see the perks icon light up in the top-right of the screen. Tap it to access a menu with four randomly selected upgrades like the ability to do more damage when your life gets low or a greater maximum health. These upgrades are persistent throughout your play session. In addition, you will periodically encounter Dracula. He is much tougher than the other enemies. If you defeat him, you are awarded with a shard. Collect shards to advance in rank. Unfortunately, rank is purely superficial; it’s nothing more than a word displayed at the end of the statistics screen displayed when you die leaving little incentive to strive for higher rank.
Now this is sounding like more of a timesink, right? Luckily, the developer considered the habits of mobile gamers and included an autosave that will allow you to resume your game after you have closed the game (or received a call). There is an in-game pause button as well, which is also convenient from time-to-time.
My complaints are few and minor. The character’s lower body moves completely independent of the upper body which creates some wacky-looking scenarios such as running full-speed forward away from monsters while your torso is facing and aiming in the exact opposite direction. The character’s feet should always be within a 90° radius of the direction of his face, but that is not necessarily the case here. I would love to see some sort of narrative and a progression through that narrative although that is a bit much to ask of a game at this price-point. (Maybe in the sequel?) 
An audio cue for perks would be nice. I often don’t know until I glance at the top-right of the screen that I have perks available. Finally, it is somewhat difficult to switch weapons in the game. The task itself is simple, but it requires diverting one of your thumbs from a directional control to execute. This is often dangerous by the time you might want to switch weapons because of the frantic pace of the game. To halt either firing or moving at these times is virtually suicide.
I’m really excited to see more from this developer. This is a near-perfect mobile gaming experience for players craving a bit more in the realm of hardcore gaming experiences on the iPhone. It is a genre-bending title that expertly melds a game well-suited to short, quick play sessions with some elements that make it worth coming back to. The game is currently $.99 at the time this review is published and will be for a little while longer. The developer is also promising some meaty additions (like a new game mode) in an upcoming update. The regular price is $2.99. It’s an incredible value at either price, and I’m sure iDracula will remain on my home screen for some time to come.
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