Dracula: Origin

Dracula: Origin is a point-and-click adventure game for PC, released by Frogwares in 2008. It draws on Bram Stoker's novel and is part of the same lineup as the developer's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series. Players control Professor Abraham Van Helsing, who investigates a fresh interpretation of how Dracula came to be. The story moves through locations including London, Egypt, Austria, and Transylvania, with puzzles and logic challenges, and the player interacts with more than forty characters.

The plot follows Stoker's novel with some changes to characters and details. Dracula was once a devout Christian leader, but he abandoned his faith after the woman he loved killed herself rather than submit to him. Bitter and resentful, he turned to demonic practices. Unsatisfied with mortality, he drank the blood of a vampire in a ritual, cursing himself to become a vampire. In exchange for immortality, he became a servant of evil, bent on destroying humanity and feeding on blood, partly blaming himself for failing to save his lover. When he learns of an ancient manuscript that claims to bring souls back from the dead, he tries to revive his lost love. Jonathan Harker, a student of Van Helsing, sends a letter warning that Dracula plans to put his lover's soul into Harker's fiancée, Mina Murray, because she resembles the dead woman. Harker does not return, suggesting he fell to Dracula. Van Helsing sets out to stop Dracula before he finds the manuscript and takes Mina's body. He begins in a London cemetery, then travels to Cairo, Vienna's aristocratic salons, a Rococo library, a secret monastery, and finally Dracula's castle in Transylvania.

The game uses a third-person perspective and point-and-click controls. Players collect objects and solve puzzles to advance the story, interacting with characters along the way. A progressive help system offers increasingly detailed hints for players stuck on puzzles.

Count Dracula is the main antagonist, a young, attractive, religious vampire made immortal by a demonic ritual. Abandoned by his suicidal lover, he has become godless and seeks revenge on humanity. Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a Dutch teacher at the University of Medicine in London, known for his supernatural expertise, who bravely takes on Dracula. Mina Murray is Harker's fiancée and a student of Van Helsing; pure and good, she resembles