Elvira: Castle of Blood

Now that's what the CRPG Addict needs to truly become an indestructible man.

I got stuck for a long time at the beginning of Elvira, trying to figure out how best to map it. I rather like games that either offer an easy mapping solution (most grid-based games) or don't require any mapping solution (games with auto-maps). Mapping adventure games is always a bit more difficult than RPGs because they're more likely to play tricks with directions. I liked that Hero's Quest didn't screw around with any of that, and I could map the game in big blocks in Excel.

But few adventure games are as map-friendly as Hero's Quest, instead offering landscapes in which an east exit from Area 1 might turn into a southern entrance into Area 2. To map this, you need boxes with lines that bend in between them--quite easy to draw, a little more difficult to do on the computer. It gets worse with too many up and down passages and you can't figure out whether to create multiple maps based on the "level". Elvira is even more complicated, since it offers no directionality at all and the various areas aren't of equal geographic size. After fiddling a bit with boxes and lines in Word, I eventually gave up on computer-based solutions and just went back to hand-drawing. I was surprised at how liberating it is--until you hit the edge of a page or start to crowd the boxes and finally have to re-draw the whole thing.

In the "experimental" phase of playing an adventure game, or quasi-adventure-game, I mostly just worry about creating the initial map and annotating the areas that clearly require some kind of puzzle solution to pass. If the solution is obvious, I solve it right away, but otherwise I don't worry about it until I have a more holistic sense of the territory and its items. I also don't worry much about death at this stage, since I don't intend to complete the game with a single character.

At the top of the horror castle.

I like the geography of Elvira. The castle has the types of things you'd expect a castle to have, without seeming unrealistically large. There's a small inner courtyard with turrets in the corner. Stairs in the turrets climb to a rampart on the first level and to a view of the countryside at the top. Outside the walls are a garden, an archery target, a hedge maze, and a groundskeeper's shack. The inner keep has several levels with sensible rooms: bedrooms, a bathroom, an armory, a chapel, a kitchen. There are catacombs beneath the castle.

Moving throughout these areas subjects you to random encounters with guards, undead, and ghoulish creatures that I guess, from the manual, are "monks." I still can't seem to figure out the best way to anticipate attacks and block them. Since there's a 50% chance that an attack will come from either direction, I've just been sticking with one or the other until it works and I get my own chance to attack.

Don't look in the basement--this is what you get.

The good news is that my own attacking abilities have improved. My skill has steadily increased with successful attacks, and I can often get into a rhythm where I land several attacks in a row. I'm hoping to take on the gate captain soon, though it might be that he's a puzzle to be solved rather than an enemy to be defeated in combat.

As for puzzles, I've been taking note when I encounter an obstacle:

• A guard that the game warns me is "invincible" (and, indeed, I can't seem to even land a blow in combat)
• A locked gate at the bottom of a well.
• A passage at the bottom of the same well that I can't fully explore because I keep drowning.
• A cannon in one turret pointed at another.
• A man in a stable who turns into a werewolf and rips my throat out.
• A vampiress sleeping in a bed who wakes up and kills me when I enter.

Could this be Count Dracula's great love?

• Various locked doors.
• A garden full of plants that I can't identify.

I hope all this pollen doesn't attract the wasp woman.

• A guy with a hawk. He tosses the hawk into the air, and it plucks my eyes out.
• A sign at the top of a set of stairs that I can't read because it's in some runic language.

 

Part of the Necronomicon?

I figured out the solution to the werewolf first. He gave it to me as he was turning, which the game depicts through a fun animation:
 

Looks like the moon of the wolf is out tonight.

I thought he was suggesting a silver-tipped bullet, given the presence of a gun in the armory. One of the first things I encountered in the game, right next to the starting area, was a forge with a crucible, so it got me thinking about something I could melt to create a silver bullet. I found it in a silver cross in the dead groundskeeper's shack. Incidentally, one of the highlights of the game so far has been the recovery of maggots from the groundskeeper's body (they're one of the listed spell ingredients).

More than any other, this game truly captures the horror of death.

I melted the cross in the crucible but just got a bunch of molten silver, which I had no use for. Later, after I found some crossbow bolts in the drawers in the bedchambers (someone has some kinky stuff going on), I returned and dipped one in the crucible.

Creating a silver bolt in a crucible of horror.

I had found a crossbow in the armory, but I first had to learn how to use it by practicing a bit on a target.

Now, with a wooden crossbow bolt, I can become one of the fearless vampire killers.

With the crossbow and the silver-tipped bolt, I returned to the stables and shot the wolf. He turned into a skeleton and then disappeared, and beyond him, concealed behind an iron ring, I found a gold key. I thought it might just be a key to one of the random locked doors, but when I examined it, I found it was labeled "secundus," so I'm thinking maybe it's one of the six keys to the chest. One-sixth finished?

Die, monster dog!

I have a sneaking suspicion that it will turn out I needed that cross--for the vampire, perhaps?--and there's some other silver object that I needed to melt to create the silver-tipped bolt.

I have an idea how to solve both the rune and garden puzzles, and they revolve around the game's spell system. Elvira hangs out in the kitchen and will take ingredients you find and turn them into spells. Two of the spells are listed as "Alphabet Soup" (allows reading of runes) and "Herbal Honey" (provides knowledge of plants). My two problems are that I haven't found all the ingredients for either spell, and the kitchen has been taken over by some crazy woman who, the moment I enter, hacks off my head and puts it into a soup.

My fate at the hands of the mad butcher.

Elvira refuses to re-enter the kitchen until I deal with her, so I guess that's the next major puzzle.

The she-freak proves useless.

The image above is one of the many postmortem images available, depending on what killed you. They all involve slightly different artwork (puncture neck wounds, plucked-out eyeballs) on the same image.

You'd think there's be one B-movie title with the word "drowned" in it, but damned if I can find one.

Please, no hints or help on any of the above. I haven't gotten far enough into the game to be stumped.