Styx Devs Unveil a 'Puzzlevania' Set in Dracula's Castle

2027 is the target for Dracula: The Disciple, a first-person puzzle game from Styx series developer Cyanide Studio that was revealed during the Nacon Connect 2026 showcase. It's coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S, and the pitch is immediately interesting: you play as a terminally ill archivist who breaks into Dracula's abandoned castle looking for a cure, only to gradually transform into a vampire yourself through alchemy, occult rituals, and experimentation.

The studio is calling the structure a "Puzzlevania," a term director Antoine Cazayus used in the announcement video to describe how the castle opens up as you gain supernatural abilities. It's a Castlevania-style exploration loop, but instead of combat, progression is gated behind logic puzzles, alchemical recipes, and hand-drawn ritual symbols. Producer Diane Quenet described the game's core as letting players "pick up objects, inspect them, mix alchemical substances, and even draw occult rituals themselves." That hands-on approach to puzzle interaction sounds closer to something like The Room or Amnesia's object manipulation than a traditional point-and-click.

I love this concept. A slow, deliberate puzzle game set inside a gothic castle where the reward for solving each layer is becoming less human is exactly the kind of creative risk I want to see more of. Horror and puzzle design don't overlap nearly enough, and the idea of earning vampiric powers through experimentation rather than combat gives this a flavour I haven't seen before. The Puzzlevania label is a little cute, but if the castle design actually delivers on that Metroidvania-style gating through abilities, it could be something special.

Nacon's Shadow

The elephant in the crypt is Nacon's financial situation. The publisher filed for insolvency in February, and Cyanide Studio is one of the subsidiaries that has also filed. Nacon has already confirmed the closure of Greedfall developer Spiders, and there's no guarantee Cyanide will survive long enough to ship this game. It's a grim backdrop for what is otherwise one of the more original announcements to come out of the showcase.

You play as Emile Valombres, set in 1866 Transylvania. According to the Steam page, the castle contains a laboratory with alchemical tools like alembics and athanors, a greenhouse for growing supernatural plants, and areas that change between day and night. Progression means piecing together Dracula's own research into immortality, from his early occult experiments to the discoveries that turned him into a vampire lord. The cure for Emile's disease, predictably, is the curse itself.

Cyanide's track record with Styx showed they could build atmospheric, systems-driven games on modest budgets. Dracula: The Disciple feels like a sharp pivot from stealth to puzzles, but the studio's knack for moody environments and offbeat premises carries over. Whether Nacon's insolvency lets them finish it is the question hanging over everything announced at the showcase, and Cyanide being among the subsidiaries that filed makes this one feel particularly precarious. The game is listed for a 2027 release on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.