Dracula 4: The Shadow of the Dragon is a 2013 point-and-click adventure video game developed by Koalabs Studio for Microsoft Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android. It was published on all systems by Anuman under their Microïds brand. In 2013 the game was released on GOG.com, and in 2014 was bundled with its sequel, Dracula 5: The Blood Legacy. Later in 2014, the bundle was released on Steam.
The game follows 2000's Dracula: Resurrection and Dracula 2: The Last Sanctuary, and 2008's Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon. The plot is unrelated to Resurrection and Last Sanctuary, but is the first of a two-part loose sequel to Path of the Dragon, telling the story of Ellen Cross, an art restorer employed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When a precious set of fifteen paintings is lost at sea during a storm, Ellen is called to investigate when one of the supposedly lost paintings is auctioned in Budapest. Her investigation soon brings her into contact with Bram Stoker's great-grandson, a mysterious uncatalogued sixteenth painting, and the legacy of Vlad Tepes. The second part of the story, Dracula 5: The Blood Legacy, was released in November 2013.
Shadow of the Dragon received very little attention in the mainstream gaming press, with limited coverage from professional critics, and what reviews it did receive were negative. Critics were especially disparaging about the length of the game, the linearity of the gameplay, and the implementation of the health system.
Plot[]
The game begins with a tsunami engulfing a freighter carrying a priceless collection of fifteen paintings on their way from England to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The ship is lost, as is the entire collection, along with their owner, Professor Vambery. The game then cuts to a tunnel leading into a columned room full of water, where a dark figure calls to "Ellen", telling her "the shadow is approaching." Ellen Cross, an art restorer who works for the Met, is then awakened in her apartment in New York by a telephone ringing. She answers it, and is told of the loss of the Vambery collection. She is next seen at her doctor's; Ellen suffers from an extremely rare blood disorder, and has just been told the medication which keeps her alive has been discontinued. Her doctor gives her a last supply of medication, and Ellen vows to live life to the full until the end. Several months later, Phillips, the director of the museum tells her one of the lost paintings has possibly surfaced at a private auction in Budapest and dispatches her to investigate if it is authentic.
Upon arriving, she meets Inspector Bizlos Lazlo, and determines the painting is definitely from the Vambery collection. Lazlo tells Ellen it was being sold by a man named Adrian Friedlen, a well-known petty thief. He refused to speak to the police, but, as he talks in his sleep, Lazlo set up a recorder in his cell. Ellen listens to a recording in which Friedlen warns "the master is approaching," looking for his mirror, and also refers to the "Prince of Exile." She hopes to speak to him, but Lazlo finds him dead in his cell. Although it appears as if he died of either natural causes, or possibly committed suicide, his face is contorted in terror, and a moment before he died all the security cameras in the police station stopped working. Lazlo and Ellen also discover Friedlen wrote "He's coming to kill me" on the wall of his cell. In his belongings, Ellen finds an encoded message, which she takes, unbeknownst to Lazlo.
She calls Phillips to tell him the painting is authentic, and he tells her Vambery's assistant has discovered Vambery added an uncatalogued sixteenth painting to the collection, but no one knows what it is. As such, he sends her to Vambery's residence in Whitby to see if she can find out anything about it. Once there, she meets Vambery's assistant, Adam Stoker, Bram Stoker's great-grandson. As Ellen explores the manor, she discovers a secret surveillance room in which she listens to an audio recording where Vambery talks of a portrait by an artist known as Kaneyek. Vambery is greatly disturbed by the portrait, which was handed down to him by his father, but although he fears it, he is unable to destroy it, and so he decides to ship it with the collection for New York without telling anyone. He reasons that putting the painting in a museum on the other side of the world will give him peace, and speculates that "he won't think to look for it there."
In the Vambery family tomb next to the house, Ellen finds a hidden vault in which she discovers a bust of Vlad Tepes. In a chest she finds garlic, a stake, silver bullets and a crucifix. This leads her to speculate the missing painting could be a portrait of Dracula. She also finds a wax cylinder, recorded by Herman van Bergen in 1870 (Fr. Arno Moriani also listens to this cylinder in Path of the Dragon). Van Bergen was Vambery's grandfather and made the recording after returning from the village of Vladoviste in Transylvania, where he had gone with his friend Ioan Hartner. Dracula had fallen in love with Hartner's wife, Luciana, and had initiated her onto "the Path of the Dragon." Van Bergen and Hartner followed them to Vladoviste, where van Bergen killed her by driving a stake through her heart. Dracula, however, eluded them. After listening to the recording, Ellen asks Stoker if he knows what the Path of the Dragon is, and Stoker tells her it is thought by some to be an initiation rite one must follow if one wants to become a vampire, although he himself doesn't believe in vampires.
Using a scytale, Ellen decodes Friedlen's note and finds the name and address of a painter called Yanek in Istanbul. She contacts Phillips, who informs her the modern form of Kaneyek is Yanek. As such, she is sent to Istanbul to find Yanek. When she arrives, he denies knowing Friedlen or having any paintings by Kaneyek. After he leaves his home, Ellen breaks in and finds two paintings from the Vambery collection. In the attic, she finds a body and a sealed case containing a painting. She takes the case and returns to her apartment, where she opens it. It is a portrait of Adam. As she looks at the picture, it suddenly comes to life, as Adam grows fangs and lunges at Ellen.