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Ascend through the levels of the evil count (think I spelled that right) Kreepie's Transylvanian Tower, dodging bats and eventually destroying the count himself and then count his treasure hoho!

There weren't many decent games around in the first year of the Speccy. Personally I'm glad I didn't get mine till xmas '83. Imagine getting Gobble A Ghost and Embassy Assault for your xmas games. I was lucky enough to get Jetpac and Tranz Am for mine. Well played, parents!

So this was a very early game from 1982, and generally it has a bit of a bad rep. Richard Shepherd's games were basic in most senses, but featured striking artwork on the covers, which no doubt fished in quite a few unsuspecting victims. Actually Urban Upstart was alright, but then it was written by Pete Cooke, black belt in Tau Ceti.

Transylvanian Tower seemed to attract most people's ire for some reason. Sinclair Programs, with no sense of irony, listed it prominently in their top 5 worst games for weeks on end, neck and neck with Make-A-Chip. But other Shepherd offerings were no better. My good buddy Daverino still turns into a gibbering wreck at the mention of Devils of the Deep. So does TT deserve this treatment?

I remember playing this game with my mum for hours, partly because it was so bloomin' slow! It takes an age to randomly generate the levels at first, and then ages again to produce the level map which you can access, but only when you kill a bat. Just settle down and accept that you're in it for the long haul, is my advice. To be fair, some modern console games have been known to have excessively long load times, so it's not excusively a 1982 issue.

So it's basically a maze game, which some games happily stop at, but this game has more depth to it. Various helpful objects can be found, such as a magic ring (you can go through 2 walls before Gollum takes it back), a magic cloak for invisibility and best of all, a magic apple. You see, you have to kill a certain number of bats to be allowed to the next level, something to do with Romanian tax laws, and having a magic apple just lets you through "irregardless". Saving a looooooot of time.

Other objects are available, which you can stave bats off with, but the best one is your trusty gun. When a bat appears, you press a key at the right moment to try to shoot the (literally) damned thing, which adds a nice arcadey element to proceedings.

The count himself, played by Bela Lugosi, appears on level 5, and such is the...relaxed pace of the game, that when he does, it scares the bejesus out of you, despite him being blocky as funk.

In summary the graphics are bad, colour is very blue indeed and sound is average. But you know what, this game provided hours of lo-fi fun all those years ago, and is worth a stab (sorry) even now. At least it showed so much more ambition than most games of the time. Especially Schizoids.