If you haven’t guessed by now, Toziuha Night: Dracula’s Revenge is a Castlevania clone. Not a Symphony of the Night clone either…we’re talking old school methodical platforming. Costa Rican indie studio TuanisApps brings us this interesting little platformer and at only $5, it’s a pretty impressive piece of work! The plot is fairly minimal here but it does make more than a passing mention of Vlad Tepes himself as Dracula and the intro is pretty gruesome overall. This isn’t a story-based game though. Plan on killing everything in reach for the entire six levels of this short but challenging adventure.
As a Castlevania clone, there are certain standards that must be observed. The whip is a must, of course. You’ll also have to collect power for your special weapons, which are mostly similar to Castlevania as well, aside from a rather neat giant saw blade that just clanks to the ground and rolls, hitting enemies as long as they are in contact with it. You’ll also have sub-weapon special attacks which vary by weapon and do some excellent damage overall. There’s even a health potion weapon and instead of a special, it just heals you. It’s awesome and honestly rather necessary.
You see, Toziuha Night is rather unforgiving. The regular version of the game is clunky as all hell and designed explicitly to emulate the experience of the original Castlevania game, warts and all. It definitely does so, but it’s honestly so frustrating that working your way past more than a couple of levels is a matter of sheer determination and memorization that even those players who grew up with the original games may get frustrated by. The developers clearly recognized this and added a casual mode you can switch to at any time thankfully.
In casual mode, your life doesn’t go down as much, some enemies take less hits, you can double jump, and your whip can go in eight directions instead of one. It turns a gruelling challenge into a more playable experience. That being said, even the casual mode isn’t exactly easy and there are definitely some drawbacks as parts of the scenery aren’t entirely closed off and some clever jumping can land you literally stuck in a wall and forced to reset the game. Toziuha Night is definitely a game that is designed to play the more challenging mode even though it can be an exercise in frustration.
Moving on to the visuals, Toziuha Night: Dracula’s Revenge looks like a cross between the original Castlevania and the SNES version of Dracula X (not the awesome PC Engine version) with a bit more 16-bit than 8-bit worked into the design. It’s a beautiful game for sure and some of the visuals are outstanding, but the pixels feel chunky and the game sprites for enemies and your character look like they’ve been drawn with a marker rather than the finesse one might expect from a tribute game. That’s not to say that the visuals are bad, only that Toziuha Night has its own aesthetic that isn’t entirely Castlevania. That’s a good thing of course because a pure tribute would be problematic. The originality with enemies that border on infringing is actually quite good and the boss fights are something special with unique characters and unexpected attacks. Unfortunately, the character portraits and main art in the game certainly leave something to be desired and are clearly low budget, something that noticeably detracts from the overall experience. It’s a good thing that this is a game that’s focused almost entirely on gameplay!
The sound is also solid in Toziuha Night with some spooky tracks that add significant ambiance to a game that’s already dark. Music is suitably dark and mysterious with strong beats and death sounds that parallel those in the Castlevania games without copying them wholesale. This is a remarkably good soundtrack for a $5 game and it’s too bad there isn’t a jukebox to listen to the excellent chiptunes you’ll get to hear in each stage. It’s not quite a Castlevania soundtrack but it’s certainly damn close and that’s saying something.
As a challenging tribute to one of the most famous series of all time, Toziuha Night: Dracula’s Revenge manages to emulate the classics effectively and ends up being a fun but frustrating time. The controls aren’t quite as responsive as they could be but the design elements are good and the level structure is good as long as you don’t jump in the wrong spots. Bosses are interesting and have good patterns that aren’t too unforgiving and the entire experience is surprisingly fun for a bargain-priced game. There’s even a Boss Rush mode that’s been added if that’s your thing. As fun indie tributes go, Toziuha Night: Dracula’s Revenge ends up being a worthwhile experience even if it isn’t quite perfect. It’ll certainly be interesting to see what’s next from Danny Garay as his next project is a Metroidvania sequel to Toziuha Night!
This review is based on a digital copy of Toziuha Night: Dracula’s Revenge provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Toziuha Night: Dracula’s Revenge is also available for Android and Apple devices and PC on Steam and Itch.Io.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.