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Review
A romance story with vampires and procedural investigation in it, October 13, 2024I recently heard a theater teacher give advice on how to play drunk people. She told students not to act drunk, but to act like a drunk person trying to act sober; otherwise, it will come off as over the top.
This game is written as a romance pretending to be a supernatural police procedural. Almost all interactions, plot points, choices, and scenes are designed to progress your romances with a variety of options.
The base story isn't bad; it's mostly unresolved by the end, as the game is part 1 of 7 intended games in a series, with 3 completed so far. Still, the 'substory' is fairly resolved.
The idea is that you are a recently-promoted detective who discovers a series of grisly murders by persons unknown. Simultaneously, a team of four vampires move into town (not a spoiler, as the game uses dramatic irony; while our protagonist doesn't know what's going on, we generally do). The four vampires happen to all be described as extremely attractive (and customizable as to gender), from the intense and brooding captain A (except names depend on gender selection) to the gregarious N or aggressive M.
I was pondering Choicescript games recently and realized how much better the system is at romance than almost anything else, the way parser games are better at object manipulation puzzles than most other things. Romance naturally lends itself to choices both on who to spend time with and on how to roleplay your interactions with them. This game has much less of an emphasis on powers and win/loss scenarios than most choice-based games (though some of both exists). Instead, the vast majority of options are role-play that affects your stats, and instead of those stats determining what you're capable of, they determine the way people react to you. If you are positive and happy about the supernatural, people comment about how relieved it was easy for you to accept; if tense and fearful, they are worried too.
The game is a romance power fantasy, where multiple beautiful people care about you, are impressed by you, and are excited about you, while you are simultaneously very important and powerful but also very fragile and needing protecting.
Outside of the romantic options, the game is not quite as exciting as, say, Night Road, another vampire game with investigations, but with them it's a solid game option. It makes sense that this would be one of the most popular Hosted Games of all time. I look forward to part II.
