Blood and Sunlight

When I was in fourth grade–I can recall reading it in my assigned seat–I remember loving a book about a boy my age who befriends a vampire girl. He was an awkward, lonely boy, and the girl was a mysterious outsider. There were anxieties. Will her parents eat him when he comes over for dinner? Perhaps they were older–sixth grade, perhaps. I think young people were younger in the eighties. There was no internet, as only one obvious and simple indication. There was a sweetness to their attractions (fascinations). It was mostly expressed as shyness.

I loved the story. As an unhappy child, I believed that only something supernatural or miraculous could change my life, which was in those days hopelessly real. I wanted something–someone–to draw me into a secret, undiscovered world where magic existed. That never happened, and perhaps I was right! I never became a happy young person.

I don’t think I was alone in my feelings. Thanks to democratized distribution of content and fan-made works, we can see that the idea of personal relationships with the supernatural has wide appeal. We see it in traditional media, too. Surely we have not forgotten–even if some of us remain confused by it–the success of the Twilight franchise.

This interest intersects with figurative presentations of monsters, perhaps especially vampires. Maybe vampires most of all. What does it mean to be devoured? What might it mean to be excluded from society? To never see “the light of day?” To have socially forbidden hungers?

These questions all pulse through the veins of vampire fiction, even when the dangers are subsumed within a nonthreatening package. So it was with my grade school book, and so it is too with Blood and Sunlight. On its surface, Blood and Sunlight seems concerned a logistical problem: will the protagonist, Zach, get home before daybreak? The answers in this multi-route games mostly answer “no.” The question might be robbed of its teeth: Zach isn’t in any danger of turning to ash. Still, he will and does suffer if he chooses to stay.

His drunk significant other, Lyle, suggests that he stay, but they're too intoxicated to add much to the conversation. This is really a discussion that Zach has with himself: “why can’t I be like everybody else,” he seems to wonder. He can’t, obviously, but how far is he willing to go to try? The player can choose to make him sick. Is this romance? I was reminded of Ellie and Riley’s doomed fantasy of madness unto death in The Last of Us: Left Behind, but those characters chose to fall apart together. Here, it’s just Zach.

I found in this story an inversion of my own grade-school fascination with the adolescent vampire girl. My young self wanted to be pulled out of the world, but Zach pushes himself hard to be in it. I think Blood and Sunlight appears–misleadingly–light, but deeper themes are there, for those who look. A thought-provoking and rewarding bite!

Another game with which one of my works shares a jam (this time, Amare Fest 2025), which is really amazing. The main jam it was submitted to was the Queer Vampire Jam, though, and that made it even more awesome because… well. Queer vampires, good gods, do I have to tell you why it’s cool?

I’m already familiar with some of the author’s work (specifically, No More and How Dare You) and I know that eir stuff tends to hit pretty well when it comes to the emotional layer of things. Blood and Sunlight is a part of the series that I’m yet to get into but it can absolutely be played as a standalone game, which is how I experienced it. It’s New Year’s Eve. You’re Zach, a vampire. You just spent the night having fun with your partner, Lyle, their sister Daphne, and their two cousins. Things are all nice, except… well, you can’t be in the sunlight, and if you stay the night, that’s what you’ll encounter. So, will you stay with your beloved and risk getting violently sick in the morning or will you leave and feel the crushing weight of what-ifs?

There’s a lot of discussions about vampires in popculture and the whole thing with vampire romance, and this discourse’s been going on probably as long as (I’m sorry for the comparison but I need to) Twilight has been around, if not earlier. I talked to many people who are drawn to vampires and everyone had their own little bits and pieces of canon they thought were the best, and they all had different ideas of what vampires represent or are meant to represent. There’s many “flavors” of vampires around and I’m always happy to see another reinterpretation, no matter what it might be… but also, I’m a little biased towards vampires being “the other” – alienated from human society in one way or another, mentally and/or physically. I feel like Blood and Sunlight's flavor of vampire focuses on this aspect in particular. Zach experiences (if you choose so) some angsty feelings over the fact that his nature doesn’t allow him to fully enjoy the night. Suffering waits for him no matter what his choice is. It’s either suffering on the physical level or suffering on mental level. Wouldn’t it all be better if he was “normal” – if Lyle had a “normal” partner?

Usually, the angst of human-vampire relationship comes from violent vampiric urges, from nature that can’t be changed, from eternal hunger. We all read that scene before: “go away, I’m going to hurt you!” and “nooo, you won’t hurt me, you love me”, and “I can’t control myself”, and blah blah blah. In this universe, however, it seems like being a vampire is more like having a chronic illness that’s being kept under control under extremely specific circumstances. Now, I haven’t read through other Blood and... games… yet (I will) but if a game can be read as a standalone, I feel like I can work with what I’ve read. I’ve had days during which seeing sunlight made me nauseous and only sitting in the dark room could restore me to normal, I’ve had days during which the very thought of food made me want to throw up. And there is a certain dose of guilt that comes with enduring pain, that creeping thought that perhaps your loved ones would do better without you “ruining their fun”, or that they would be better if they didn’t have to accommodate your requests that you make only to stay vaguely functional. There’s something to be said about the option to walk right into the sunlight, even if you know it’ll hurt you. It’s the longing for the “regular” life that truly hit me on the emotional level, quite authentic if you’ve ever dealt with a condition that renders you unable to do certain things.

There’s a lot of angst but also a lot of softness in Blood and Sunlight, Lyle is an understanding partner, one that certainly cares about Zach’s well-being – sure, they were the one who requested Zach to stay, but they did so in the alcoholic haze, probably motivated by deep feelings, and I can understand it. In the morning, they’re apologetic about it and offer to help as much as they can, including offering their own blood. There’s a lot to say about the theme of blood drinking, with blood being the common shorthand for life, so I always eat up consensual blood drinking as a theme – sharing a part of your life with someone else, trusting them deeply enough to not kill you outright. There’s so much trust that this act requires and it feels like there’s so much trust between Zach and Lyle, so much love that maybe can’t stop the sunlight from hurting but can make staying in it more bearable.

In case you can’t tell from this whole review, I really enjoyed this one. Good gods, I was definitely in need of something softer today. I will definitely check out the remaining two games in the series soon. Go and check it out for yourself.