Ever since I first saw the Lego Elves set Skyra’s Mysterious Castle, I wanted it. But I didn’t know why. Really, a tan and purple castle has very little place in my collection, even though I generally like the Elves series. But the castle itself is very well designed and has a bunch of great play features. The idea is that a number of relics are recovered to open the portal at the top of the castle. Now, doesn’t that sound familiar?

From there, it was obvious to turn Skyra’s Mysterious Castle into Dracula’s Devil Castle, Akumajo Dracula or Castlevania as it’s known outside Japan. I built the entire set in Lego Digital Designer and then switched out all colours. While the actual Castlevania has a bunch of colour schemes across the games and between stages, I stuck with the red/white/black scheme for consistency. From there, I made some changes to the design and then, as usual, ordered all the pieces (except a few I knew I had) off Bricklink.

There is a gate at the front and there are six distinct sections of the castle to place bosses in. Instead of friendly paintings, the hallway received the classic Castlevania curtains and I built a huge bat and added some detailing, making it a cross between the outside area and the very first stage. The shower room obviously and easily turned into a watery cave, where the retractable water curtain reveals the medusa and instead of a lilypad, there’s a bowl holding the heart of Dracula (which, thanks to Pirates of the Caribbean, actually exists as a printed Lego piece!). Medusa herself was released as a collectible minifigure but I made a fleshie version using the classic slave Leia torso. The bakery of Azari turned into a treasure chamber, to keep with the golden theme. This was inspired by the stage in Super Castlevania IV, although I used ”The Monster” as the boss rather than a gem bat. The Monster was easily combined from recent collectible minifigures, and I finally found a use for at least one of those crappy rockers!

Going upstairs, I made the biggest changes to the right tower. I really wanted to make a classic clock tower level and there was no real room for that, so I extended the tower section. On the back there’s a lever which, through a number of gears, turns the clock. There’s even a pendulum which hangs freely but, unfortunately, doesn’t accurately tick. The werewolf is mostly the great recent minifigure with a new torso. The throne room on the left was another section which screamed Castlevania already, so there are no real changes there. Death has a Ninjago torso, the brand new Ninjago/CMF Spectre ghost legs, a Taskmaster skeletal face, a Nazgul hood and cape and of course a huge scythe.

Then there’s the central portal room. The original set has a neat Technic contraption hidden behind the cutesy Elves facade, which opens the dimension portal. In my version, I added holders for four relics (and left the pedestal for the fifth one). Turning the pedestal opens the shutter panels for the portal in a really clever way. The Dracula inside is simply the Vampire from the second collectible minifigure series, who I’ve wanted a reason to buy until now. There are plenty of other official vampires (from Monster Fighters and Scooby Doo), but they tend to look a bit goofy.

There has been a bunch of Castlevania heroes, but since the castle was mostly based off the first game and the idea of the relics of Dracula from the second, I wanted to have Simon Belmont as the hero. He has seen a number of designs, but while I prefer the old games, I like the redesign which gave him red hair. But while browsing Bricklink for parts, I came across a torso which is quite literally perfect for Alucard, my all-time favourite. So I had to build him as well. Storm’s white hair completed his look along with a cloak which is actually cut out from a bigfigure cloak, using a regular one as a guide. There IS an actual red/black cloak which comes with Aragorn, but meh, I didn’t want to take him apart.

This build let me create a tribute to my favourite games and offered a perfect place for many of these great monster figures, and also let me try out the build of Skyra’s castle without buying the set itself. There’s only one problem. I still don’t have a Skyra figure. Doh!