So, Dracula’s pretty great, isn’t he? Spends most of his days lounging around the house, minding his own business. Then his family comes to visit, and wouldn’t you know it, they just ruin everything. Another thing that ruins everything is …
So, Dracula’s pretty great, isn’t he? Spends most of his days lounging around the house, minding his own business. Then his family comes to visit, and wouldn’t you know it, they just ruin everything. Another thing that ruins everything is He-Who-Was-Locked-in-the-Basement, an unnamed horror that’s running around the neighborhood doing untold things to untold objects. Dracula can’t stand for that, so in the name of public safety (as well as getting his relatives out of the house), he heads out on a quest of epic proportions.
Incredible Dracula 3: Family Secret is a casual resource management game that ditches the usual conventions of fixing up broken villages or saving kingdoms because some princess needs a few pieces of gold. In this adventure you’re out for purely selfish reasons, so any repairing that happens to get done is purely coincidental. As with most time management titles, Incredible Dracula 3 has you managing resources by sending out minions to collect piles from the path. You can also repair structures to generate resources every few seconds, an absolute necessity if you hope to get anything done.
Where Family Secret deviates from the norm is its sheer variety of resources and how you go about obtaining them. For starters, merchants make frequent appearances to offer you a trade: a couple of common resources for a less common one. You’ll need that less common one to complete a level specific quest, so keep that in mind while farming your food, wood, stone, and so on. In addition to merchants, you’ll also make deals with mythological creatures, zen mechanics, and a whole host of odd characters, not to mention crafting your own resources through a menu system.
Spicing up the already spicy gameplay, Incredible Dracula 3 sprinkles lots of extras in each level to reward you for doing things other than clicking on resource piles. Hidden figurines and stickers add a light item hunting flavor to the game, while achievements pop up at surprising moments to pat you on the back for doing odd things. An achievement for not clicking the mouse? Ok, sounds good to me!
Incredible Dracula 3: Family Secret has all the parts that make up a good resource management game. The skeletal structure is basic and easy to understand, but there’s more built on top to make it a unique experience. The sheer number of resources you’ll hunt down is impressive, not to mention the lengths you’ll go to obtain them. The story elements are also fascinating, making this one of the few time management games where you’ll bother to read the cutscene text, if for nothing more than it’ll give you a good laugh.
