The player is on a quest to rescue Princess Sabrina from a countryside roamed by a werewolf, a vampire, a prankster goblin, a witch, and an alienspaceship. The game has a time limit (dictated to the player by a note encountered early on that reads, "Sabrina dies at dawn"), as the Princess is trapped in a coffin in the castle tower.
Reception
Gregg Williams reviewed the game for Computer Gaming World, and stated that "I refer to the Atari 520 ST version of Polarware's Transylvania. The story line is fine, but the game makes almost no use of the ST's extra colors, resolution, or speed."[1]
The first game in the Transylvania series was well received, appearing in the Billboard[2] and Softalk best-sellers charts and in The Wall Street Journal[3] in a list of best-selling software. It received a Certificate of Merit in the category of "1984 Best Computer Game Audio-Visual Effects" at the 5th annual Arkie Awards.[4] It is considered one of the best examples of the adventure game genre.[5]ANALOG Computing disliked the Atari ST versions of the first and second games, stating that "There just wasn't much of a story line" and that the ideal player age was a young teenager, not an adult. Despite this, however, because of their low price and "excellent" production values, graphics, and parser, the magazine recommended the games for those seeking graphic adventures for the ST.[6]
