Brocula is a farm and life simulation game featuring the vampire Brocula as he works day jobs to purchase back his castle. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Brocula Review Overview
What is Brocula?
Brocula has been peacefully sleeping for the past 500 years, when a reckless driver broke through the side of his castle, disturbing and opening his coffin. His wealth, now outdated by several centuries, is not valid to pay off the tax from his unregistered castle. He must now work several odd jobs and gather resources to live in the modern era and buy back his castle!
Brocula features:
⚫︎ farm and life simulation features
⚫︎ resource gathering
⚫︎ crafting
⚫︎ inventory management
⚫︎ stamina and health system
⚫︎ several jobs/minigames to earn money
⚫︎ upgradable castle
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Brocula's gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 Xbox |
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| Price | $19.99 | ||||
Brocula Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Unique and Funny Premise |
Boring and Uninspiring Gameplay Inconsistent Art and Horrible UI/UX Design A Myriad of Buggy Problems |
Brocula Overall - 40/100
Brocula is an unpolished and poorly-designed mess with bland and uninspiring gameplay, graphics, and soundtrack that offer not much enjoyment. It’s also being loaded with several bugs and horrible UI/UX decisions strewn all throughout that confuse rather than instruct and be intuitive. Though the game shows glimpses of something fun, in its current state it’s overwhelmingly overshadowed by all of its negatives and shortcomings. Brocula was developed by a single person, and it unfortunately and painfully shows.
Brocula Story - 6/10
Brocula’s story is the only thing it’s got going for it, where the premise of Dracula having to work part-time in various establishments is comical – but it stands at a passable ‘nose-exhale’ level at best. There isn’t much worldbuilding nor unique characters save for a handful, and they don’t do much to further the premise, only serving to be NPCs to act as point persons for quests and minigames.
Brocula Gameplay - 4/10
Brocula’s genre has been done to death at this point by countless previous games before it, and it’s unsuccessful in holding up a worthy candle to farming and life simulator genres. The main gameplay loop of gathering resources, working jobs, and spending money is barely passable, but then it’s marred by so many annoying bugs and perplexing design choices that muddy the experience. Picking up objects, player collisions getting randomly stuck, interaction controls being outlandish and feeling sticky, and a multitude of other problems rampant even in the early game.
Brocula Visuals - 3/10
Brocula had the chance to be cozy and cute, but most of its charm was spent on the great introduction animation seen in its trailer and at the start of a new game. The pixel art design and direction throughout the game is widely inconsistent, where some sprites have a high level of detail, while some others are boring and dull. It goes both ways, whether talking about characters, or the environments. Some other NPCs would even have better animations than the titular Brocula, who we spend the entire game looking at. What drags the visual score down even further would be the horrid user interface(UI) and horrendous user experience(UX) that seem to be duct-taped together, being held up by hopes and prayers that players will understand what’s happening as they try to use a crafting table or purchase an item from the store. It’s ugly, unintuitive, and oftentimes buggy and unresponsive.
Brocula Audio - 3/10
Broculas soundtrack seems to just be filled with royalty-free sounding ‘peaceful cozy’ music that just serves to just be present and negate a silent void. It’s bland and does little to add to the atmosphere of the game. What further ruins the atmosphere are the random sound design choices littering the game that just detracts and annoys the experience. One would be the implementation of the ‘voice sound bytes’ for NPCs where devs use one short clip to denote a character’s voice. Brocula seemingly has more than one sound byte for each character and randomly plays between them while a character is talking, and it’s highly distracting and unrefined to the point of annoyance.
Brocula Value for Money - 4/10
Brocula costs $19.99 as of writing, and in its current state, it is barely worth half of the price with how much of the entire experience will be fighting against the game to let you play it properly. Players will be puzzled while trying to understand the messy screen and menus, as well as struggle with how unpolished the rest of the game is.
Brocula Review: Just Drive a Stake Through My Heart
I genuinely wanted to enjoy playing Brocula just from the trailers and premise alone. I was cautious from the gameplay footage I saw, but still believed it could have some semblance of fun from the genre. Though it does have some potential here and there, with working mechanics, tons of resources and upgrades, and overarching goals to accomplish, the journey to the destination is chock full of nuisances that build up into a terrible experience. I go more in depth with all the trials and tribulations, but I cannot overstate how unpolished the little details in Brocula are, from the object interactions, to the menus, to the inventory, and even to the player collisions. Ignoring the game design itself, as one could say they’re subjective, the game contains so many bugs that kept me from enjoying it to the fullest, and so as a review, I find the need to point them out down to the detail of how I found them.
This entire review might seem harsh, but it’s in my best interest to be honest to the developer Prateek Jadhwani as he ventures through his game dev journey. Brocula has clear potential with its narrative, but some of the gameplay, majority of the visuals, the lacking auditory experience, and the various bugs prove to be gigantic mantles that prevent said potential to be unearthed.
A few months of continuous and rigorous bug fixing and polishing for Brocula will no doubt place it a worthy contender among the countless life and farm sims in the market, what with its funny premise. However, as it stands, it poses no charm, specialty, nor fun outside of it and has a long way to go before more hasher players would deem it ‘playable.’
Pros of Brocula
| Things Brocula Got Right |
|---|
|
Unique and Funny Premise |
Unique and Funny Premise
The primary charm and selling point of Brocula is all in its premise. The setup of a vampire being woken up in modern society, having his house claimed by the local government, rendering them broke is hilarious. Add to the fact that he just accepts how things are now and goes forth to work the part-time jobs he’s being ushered into is comical. And when he resumes his evil vampiric duties, it’s hilariously contrasted by the everyday chores he still has to do. The story is honestly a home run, and it alone acts as Atlas, holding up the game all by itself.
Cons of Brocula
| Things Brocula Can Improve |
|---|
|
Boring and Uninspiring Gameplay Inconsistent Art and Horrible UI/UX Design A Myriad of Buggy Problems |
Boring and Uninspiring Gameplay
Brocula, as a farm and life simulator game among the thousands that came before it, is a worthwhile effort, having set up various resources to gather, inventory to manage, and minigames to perform to raise your status. However, its execution fails to be smooth, enjoyable, nor fun, as the majority of tasks would just be to run from point A to point B multiple times. Holding down one button for every single task is just plain boring and unengaging. The somewhat silver lining with the gameplay are the part-time jobs (except the garage), where the " Go to point A to point B" has more depth with which things you interact with. For example, in the cafe job, you need to know your stations and grab the correct cup, prepare the correct amount of coffee beans, and serve the correct drink to the correct customer. However, the handling of these interactions is spoiled by the numerous bugs within them, of which we’ll get to later in the review.
Next, the inclusion of sprinting and the stamina meter is the cornerstone of everything, where all acts require a bit of stamina. This is in no way a bad choice, as even the most famous farm sim game, Stardew Valley, makes use of its stamina system extensively, making the early game a huge drag. However, with Brocula, including a sprint option and making the walk speed dreadfully slow is just deliberately lazy game design, taunting players with ‘stamina management’ by purposely making the character walk speed needlessly slow. Coupled with all the tasks that require stamina(including the minigames), that meter will always be drained every in-game day.
Inconsistent Art and Horrible UI/UX Design
Brocula has adequate, simple, ‘outdated,’ and very bland art. Its art direction is everything mixed together into a messy art direction of a game. Some sprites would have a high level of detail(LOD), while others would just be blank colors. Some would have intricate designs, while others are just plain shapes slapped onto them. Some characters have long-winded animations to show their character and personality, while our main character has the dullest axe-swing animation I’ve ever seen. It’s visually all over the place and serves has no clear direction as to what it wants to be and how it wants to be seen.
The art isn’t the worst part, as the general user interface is completely unintuitive, seemingly in shambles every time I open a menu. The inventory is buggy, where sometimes the item icons show the incorrect icon; we have a weight limit from unique items in the inventory, but they don’t show how much any of the items weigh; and transferring items to and from a chest is horrendous, where the only option you have is to transfer one item at a time, or the entire stack. Want to transfer half of 40? Tough luck, either dump it all in or spend your time holding down that button transferring them one by one.
Stored items in the chest also aren’t labeled, where only their icons are shown. With how inconsistent the art is in the game, it’s terribly difficult to keep track of which is which, and this is a very poor oversight to have, as item labels in the chest is one of the most basic things you should have in a sim game where inventory management is one of its key features. Worst of all? Your tools apparently have durability where they break when depleted. The durability meter or number is nowhere to be found.
And that’s just the inventory system, there are also problems with how it presents purchasing items, interacting with crafting stations, and the ‘action wheel’ when interacting with things that you need to perfectly align with to pop up and engage. This problem was mentioned in the previous section, and so we’ll finally get to talk about it, along with other problems Brocula has.
A Myriad of Buggy Problems
Brocula has many things to polish and fix, and the most egregious one would be how its general interactions work. To interact with anything, like cutting down trees, gathering berries, picking up wood, or items in general, you need to align the character in front of said object for interaction prompts to pop up. In theory, this should be easy, but the detection and collision system in place make this a chore in itself, where getting them wrong forces you to step back and walk into the object again. Multiple times I basically had to bang my head onto a tree to harvest a mushroom beside it, because it wouldn’t stop selecting the tree instead of the mushroom. "Cut the tree first then!" Why would I need to expend precious stamina to cut down a whole tree JUST to get to a mushroom that restores 2 stamina points?
Another scenario where this interaction system interferes with the gameplay would be the garage job minigame, where one has to take orders from arriving customers, grab their desired parts, and deliver it to them in the shop. You have to run to the shelf, select the item for them to be placed onto the world, and have to precisely walk up to them to pick them up. Bump into them too fast and they’ll go sliding away, wasting time and energy in the job. After grabbing the item, you must, again, PRECISELY stand in front of the customer asking for the item, because if you miss them by a tiny margin and the prompt doesn’t pop up, you’ll end up THROWING the item past them, and you’ll have to scramble and retrieve them as the clock ticks down and customer satisfaction drains. Once you’ve retrieved the item and finally delivered it to the customer, you have to do it for the next, and the next, and the next. A simple minigame of delivering items from the back of the shop turned into a nightmare where I kept on bumping items away from me, or flinging them away, clipping through walls and such.
Next up would be how the controls themselves somewhat feel sticky? As if you’d need to wait half a second for an input to be registered? It’s somewhat subtle for moving the character, but it becomes VERY apparent in menus such as the inventory, crafting screens, or purchase screens.
Another minor problem would be how the character would frequently get stuck while walking in town, where if I’m sticking close to the invisible wall on the road, I’d just randomly stop for no reason at all. This typically happens between the sprites of the road blocks as I’ve observed, so maybe it’s got something to do with how their collisions are implemented.
Lastly, my game froze twice out of nowhere, both times when exiting menus. One time within the castle, and one time while placing new crafting workstations right outside the castle. They’re not technically ‘freezes’ per se, but rather the game seems to stop taking any sort of inputs, rendering me immobile and frozen, forcing me to Alt-F4.
Is Brocula Worth It?
As of Now, Stay Away Bro
Brocula currently costs $19.99, and as of writing in the messy and unrefined state it’s in, the game is not recommendable at all unless you believe it could get better. I respect the undeniable efforts Prateek Jadhwani, the sole developer of the game has gone to in order to develop and release the game, and I fully believe they have the heart, motivation, and spirit to perhaps continue work on Brocula and refine it. However, right now, it is not in any way shape or form worthy of the price it lists, as you could have infinitely better farm sim experiences with less money spent on other, better, more established games in the genre.
However, for those who wish to support the creator and their hard-fought venture into the Indian game development scene, I wholeheartedly recommend sticking with the game. As I’ve mentioned, in its current state is subpar at best, but given some significant tweaking and further refinement, it has the makings to be a hidden gem in the genre. It’ll take much work and effort, but the potential is undoubtedly there.
Brocula FAQ
What is Brocula’s Best Job to Work At?
The garage minigame should be avoided at all costs, as the interaction system is heavily bugged. The cafe and restaurant are miles better, where you’ll be forced to actually think about your actions in correctly serving customers. The cafe and restaurant also offers you tips based on your performance, contrary to the garage where it offers none.
Best Way to Recover Stamina in Brocula?
Eggs. Buys lots and lots of eggs from the grocery, cook them up at home, and become Eggcula.
What are Brocula‘s System Requirements
| System Specs | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| Operating System | Windows 11 | Windows 11 |
| Processor | Intel Core i3 | Intel Core i5 |
| Memory | 2 GB RAM | 4 GB RAM |
| Graphics | 4GB | 4GB |
| Storage | 80MB Available Space | 80MB Available Space |
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Brocula Product Information
 | |
| Title | BROCULA |
|---|---|
| Release Date | May 7, 2024 (Xbox) / May 9, 2024 (PC) |
| Developer | Prateek Jadhwani, Destroyer Doggo |
| Publisher | Destroyer Doggo |
| Supported Platforms | PC(Steam), Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One |
| Genre | RPG, Farming, Simulation |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| Rating | ESRB E |
| Official Website | Brocula Official Website |
