In 2020 I joined forces with Cubus Games, pioneers of mobile gamebooks, and with writer José Lomo to create this project for iOS and Android. A free and contemporary sequel to the immortal Bram Stoker's Dracula. I developed characters, inventory items, and in-game avatars among other assets for the game and also helped with the app's visual design.

Global approach

A gamebook is still a literary product, in which there is an added game layer that offers the reader multiple ways to go through the story. We wanted to be faithful to Dracula but also adapt our proposal to its context and audience, as close to literature as to video games.

Illustrations

We tried to avoid blacks and shadows and the cliches of the genre as much as possible and embraced white, saturated colours and a more luminous language, closer to comic books.

I really became very concerned if all this generated an excessively pop aspect that could conflict with the narrative style itself. Finally, we thought it was adequately complementary.

(Above) All the illustrations were entirely created on Procreate using a 10 inches iPad (2017) and later exported as PSDs and slightly colour-corrected.

I am especially happy with some of the minor characters in the story, perhaps because there was less (self)pressure to represent them in an interesting way.

I really enjoyed creating (about 20) inventory items and other minor game assets.

(Below) The blood drop used differently in each of the different versions of the logotype: English, Catalan and Spanish.

The app

And I helped with some visual design for the app, which is great because seeing all the elements working together gives you a new vision of the whole.

There was a lot of love in this project. A team of true Dracula/Vampires fans. Seeing now the result of the illustrations, I miss more courage and less shyness. An extra point of blood and horror would not have gone amiss. Maybe in a sequel? Time will tell :-)

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By the way, making gamebooks is extremely hard (but fun to play!). If you want to know more about making gamebooks, you can take a look at this class: