Dracs After Dusk is a Western paranormal arcade shooter that takes a page from classic old-school quarter munchers to make you yearn for the good old days.
The model of the arcade video game dictated much of what these could be for many years before the advent of console gaming. Made for impressionable young kids, the goal ultimately veered towards spending all their parents’ quarters in one fell swoop. “Insert Credit” became a ubiquitous phrase. Pac-Man, the infamous FMV Dragon’s Lair, and a personal favorite, Captain Commando, had a high difficulty ceiling geared for replayability in exchange for one more coin. Dracs After Dusk, then, takes this arcade format to heart to offer a quick and unforgiving experience.
Dracs After Dusk is firmly rooted in the Western genre with tinges of the supernatural. Much like the arcade games it is inspired by, there is not much of a story to look at here. You are a sheriff. Your town is being overrun by vampires. The end. While, of course, some bosses have a few dialogues of characterization, the real reason anyone would spend sometime playing-and having fun- with this game is because of its fast-paced rootin’-tootin shooting. Every dialogue you find talks like that. Even the tutorials, if you can believe it.
Aim To Kill
After clicking on “Insert Coin” on the main menu, the game just about drops you in on what is an enclosed space. (To note, you do not need any coins or digital currency to actually make the Insert Coin button work; you just press it.) As a top-down shooter, the premise is plain as a pikestaff. Armed with your six-bullet revolver, your perfectly groomed mustache, and ten-gallon hat, you shoot folks in waves. If you work hard, you might even make it to the leaderboards. But if you are not careful, you can be easily overrun by the various bloodthirsty vampires.
At first, I thought that something must be wrong with the difficulty of Dracs After Dusk. After all, this is how things go: by the third run, they will completely annihilate you. The alternative is to open one of the three doors from a corridor that go straight to a boss fight each. Furthermore, every boss has several phases that make it harder to survive. While not at Contra levels of difficulty, the fact you only have three hit points is challenging as is. This game is as deadly as they come.
What I failed to grasp until I eventually got around to what the game wanted me to do was that there is a strategy to the madness even if it does not look it. However, you can get turrets to help mow foes down. If you hurt them the first time, this slows them down, which helps with crowd control. Moreover, eliminating certain types of enemies gives extra boosts, like an instant reload or instakill. There are numerous weapons that can make things easier, like a shotgun and a sniper. Finally, there are badges with improvements like the Texas Two Step that make the sheriff move faster.
Conclusion
It’s nice to go back and relive the past glory of the arcade days. Dracs After Dusk is clear in its influences, going as authentic as it can be from its retro pixel art, extreme difficulty, and leaderboards to earn bragging rights. You never know which kind of game will release each day on Steam, but in this particular case, I am glad I gave this one a chance. Overcoming its steep learning curve is an exciting prospect for those who yearn for the days of the classics.
Dracs After Dusk is out now on Steam.
