NeoCoreGames have today announced their brand new project, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, based loosely upon Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel, which is due for release sometime in Q4 of this year on PC and Xbox Live Arcade. The legendary vampire hunter will be starring in a game which NeoCoreGames describes as a “Action RPG filled with fierce and demonic battles, memorable characters, and a refreshingly unique story that brings the legendary vampire slayer to modern audiences.” So in other words, you’re going to be killing some vampires, yeah?

Set in a gothic-noir universe that resembes 19th century Europe and filled with monsters, magic and strange technology, the game promises an engrossing storyline filled with wry humour and snappy dialogue as Van Helsing makes his way to Borgovia where he is to join forces with where former supernatural foes have enlisted his help to defeat a new evil.

“Being located in Eastern Europe and having experience developing RPGs, Van Helsing is a natural fit for us; it’s a project where we can demonstrate our expertise in both domains and create something novel that RPG fans can appreciate,” said Viktor Juhász, lead writer at NeocoreGames. “We’ve always enjoyed crafting games from legendary tales, but with our own twist, and Van Helsing provides us the perfect game world to experiment with.”

While Van Helsing may not be at the top of most people’s lists for characters to base a game upon, there’s no denying that he does have some great potential for an action-RPG, as the many adapations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel have often portrayed him as more of a professional vampire hunter than the doctor that he actually was in the original story. It seems likely that the game may also draw heavily upon the Van Helsing film released back in 2004, in which Van Helsing was portrayed as a pretty serious badass.
Whether the game will also feature Dracula, who Abraham Van Helsing (to give him his full nam) was the archenemy of in the novel, also remains to be seen.