A Vampyre Story game

If you have a soft spot for old point-and-click adventure games, then A Vampyre Story may well be the game you’ve been waiting for.

Unlike many of the overly serious adventure titles we’ve seen of late, A Vampyre Story goes some way to restoring the genre to its more enjoyable – if slightly cheesy – roots.

Set in 19th-Century Europe, you play Mona, a once talented soprano who was abducted and vampirised by the evil Baron Shrowdy von Kieffer. Mona is desperate to return to Paris, and when the Baron comes a cropper, she sees her chance to escape Castle Warg and head home.

Unfortunately, this is slightly more difficult than you might imagine and involves solving a number of cunning puzzles by searching areas, talking to other characters and generally applying a dose of lateral thinking. Actual gameplay is as simple as pointing, clicking and selecting a choice from the four-way option wheel that pops up.

Created by one of the original teams behind the hugely popular Lucasarts adventure Curse of Monkey Island, A Vampyre Story shares a similar cartoon style and tongue-in-cheek humour. The jokes may prove to be a bit pun-heavy for many people’s tastes and some of the voice acting can be a little irritating at times. Some of the animations occasionally look a little amateurish by modern standards too.

That said, the puzzles themselves are still fun to solve and there’s enough imagination and inventiveness on display to keep you playing despite the game’s obvious flaws.