Teatime with a Vampire

Nosferatu’s Count Orlok is one of the all-time greats of vampire cinema. His background and agenda don’t really stand out, inasmuch as Murnau just filed off the absolute minimum quantity of serial numbers to avoid infringing on Dracula’s copyright. He’s also not much of a conversationalist, inasmuch as all his dialogue has to show up in intertitles and is translated from German. But oh, that look! Pointy-eared, bald-headed, snaggle-toothed, giant clawed hands at the end of too-long, too-straight arms, and those eyes – deep set, black-rimmed, perpetually bugged out. He’s operatically hideous, you can’t look away. Teatime with a Vampire’s Mr. Orlok, by way of contrast, is a charming flirt, always one bon mot ahead of the guests on his midnight talk show; he smells great, has a great head of hair, and golden, limpid eyes; Alex, our protagonist, spends the whole game lusting after him because he’s the sexiest thing on two legs. Me? I miss the Count.

This is an entry in the romance-focused Smoochie Jam (and, apparently, the awfully-specific Queer Vampire Jam?) but it takes a minute to warm up to its theme. The extended opening sequence focuses on Alex watching TV while in the throes of depression; with eir roommate out and up way too late, ey’s flipping channels and wallowing. Mr. Orlok’s a vital presence, so to speak, who arrests Alex’s progress clicking by, and given that the name of his show matches the name of the game – this is all happening in a universe where vampires are a mostly-accepted part of society, though they’re still exotic enough to make Alex’s clear thing for them slightly uncomfortable, like a white guy who only dates Asian women – it’s clear which way the plot lies. But you’re given a surprising amount of leeway to refuse the call in one way or another; deciding to keep on channel surfing, or just go to bed early, results in distinct early endings that elucidate a little more of Alex’s angst. Though the prose has a fair number of typos, there’s some quite solid writing in these short stubs that few players will likely see:

"Alex pushes the remote to the side and lets eir head fall back on the couch, eyes staring at the colours flickering on the ceiling. Because of the colourful set of the show and the contrasted individuals on TV, shades of yellows and reds, and sometimes greens, dance with the shadowy blues. Pushing and pulling, twirling, merging and separating. Ey lets out a deep sigh."

If you keep watching Teatime With a Vampire, though, the story takes a more compelling turn, which brings Alex into a close pas de deux with the eponymous Mr. Orlok. Against the backdrop of cheesy daytime talk-show staples given an additional bite – think a truth or dare game enlivened with some truly awful offal, or a photo montage featuring some preternatural snaps – your choices determine whether you go along with the sexy but threatening ride Orlok is offering, or instead reject it. There’s quite a lot of reactivity here, with the game saying there are 13 endings, of which only three or four appear to be of the bailing-before-things-get-good variety; while mostly played nice with Orlok, that definitely felt like one choice among many, rather than the “do you want more plot Y/N” of the early going.

It’s a clever setup telling a novel story, with writing and mechanics that serve the narrative. The exposition is also woven in with a deft hand, with interview questions giving Alex a chance to rattle off previous romantic partners or gesture towards what appears to be a trans narrative. All told the game offers an impressive package, but I have to confess that I enjoyed it less than it probably deserves because I felt a bit too much of Alex’s ennui rubbing off on me. Partially this is down the pacing, which feels like it slows the game way down in the back half – there’s an innuendo-filled cooking segment that feels like it just keeps going on and on, without much sense of escalation or anything that it’s building towards, which I found especially sapped my energy – but partially it’s that I found the characters dull as dishwater. This is maybe a slightly unfair accusation to level against Alex; no one is especially dynamic when they’ve been sitting on a couch for weeks, and Alex does have some people ey cares about. But eir conversational mode is basically either “get super flustered” or “pretend to be cool”, and the particulars of eir anomie are left pretty vague, save for it being something that some hot hot vampire loving might solve; it’s a setup that works to create a self-insertion-friendly romance protagonist, but I didn’t find it especially exciting.

Orlok is the bigger disappointment, I think. As a nigh-immortal creature of darkness, I wanted him to be dangerously compelling, but instead he came off like – well, like someone who belongs on daytime TV. His jokes aren’t especially sophisticated, his flirting is all a bit camp, and his looks, as described, are pretty but generic. Sure, he’s putting on a performance for the camera, but that’s just about the only way we see him: my favorite moment is where he responds to a question about the most interesting place he’s visited by telling a story about walking to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and image of a deathless but hungry immortal slowly dragging himself to such an alien sight, fathoms-deep below the waves, is immediately compelling, and makes me want to know more about the kind of person who’d do that – but then the moment passes and he’s fake-laughing again.

I wanted to find Orlok as magnetic as Alex, and the game, both do; I wanted someone I couldn’t stop thinking about. If the game had taken a risk and put in the “real” Count Orlock, buck teeth and all, that might have stood in the way of the romantic fantasy, but I think something like that would have been a bold but ultimately more successful choice – the game is really built around Orlok, who’s the vehicle and impetus for Alex’s self-discovery and transformation, and no ordinary vampire will do.

Vampire stories–and interpretations of vampire stories–have often been vehicles for addressing serious issues such as racism, xenophobia, and homophobia. If Teatime with a Vampire has an underlying theme it might be something like “pop culture under late capitalism”? And in this, it is witty, incisive, and totally entertaining. For example, “‘They’re just like us!’ touted magazines around the world for years, featuring the nightly walkers in every of their issues, tracing family lines and connecting individuals, reporting on the horrors and the wonders. And between the awe and hatred for those mystical beings, it turned out this catchline was not completely wrong…aside from the whole blood sucking thing and living only in the dark, that is.” Ultimately, the integration of vampires into human society has turned out to be mostly a source of entertainment, a business opportunity, and a welcome solution to a third-shift labor shortage.

My favorite part of the game is the vampire Mr. Orlok, who is the host of the titular TV talk show. Whereas the Orlok of the Murnau movie is stilted and awkward (like everyone in silent films, to be fair), Mr. Orlok is handsome (“honey blond short hair, parted and twisted into finger waves, unwavering thanks to a surely ungodly amount of hairspray”), magnetic and flirtatious, and has the audience–and the mopey PC Alex–eating out of his hand. There were some spelling errors and agreement errors which, if fixed, would give the game a more polished feel, but I didn’t really care because I felt swept up by the rhythm of the show, and dazzled by the lights. For a game that takes as its premise the guilty pleasure of a gossipy talk show (a format that the author really nails, btw, with segments like “Eat or Dish” where the guest has to answer a personal question or eat gross food), this game has a lot of depth and humor, and a pretty outstanding NPC in Mr. Orlok, who I will definitely be nominating for best NPC in the next round of IFDB awards.