Imagine the amount of generational trauma that could build up being a vampire. You live for hundreds or thousands of years, drinking blood to survive and causing potential harm to others. Like humans, vampires need therapy, which is a wildly unique but utterly brilliant set-up for Vampire Therapist.
Playing as Sam, a bad-cowboy-turned-good-vampire trying to atone for his ways. He was a mass murderer and lost his beloved horse, Princess, before turning into a vampire by being taken advantage of by a nefarious vampire gang. Flash forward hundreds of years later, he meets Andy, a several millennia-old vampire who runs a goth German nightclub. Downstairs, his blood partner Crimson works the bar for the goths desperate to be tonight’s neck and blood sample. Upstairs, Andy runs a vampire therapy clinic, giving monthly sessions to many troubled vamps. In Sam, Andy sees someone who has the potential to become a therapist and so the game follows the arc of Andy mentoring Sam to support a selection of vampires in their sessions.
Vampire Therapist is a visual novel – and an adult one at that. These vampires are quite horny so expect sexual references, discussions about yummy blood and recollections of different kinds of trauma. Nothing is depicted on screen, but these mature themes are discussed with brutal directness or playful and childlike avoidance. Sam, Andy, and Crimson are a tight unit, giving feedback and revealing their backstories between sessions with other regular guests at the nightclub, who pop up wanting Sam to have their way with them. The recurring cast of non-patients are all very likeable and have a dark humourous streak running close under their surface.
Whilst Vampire Therapist is a linear experience, it is one that requires player interaction and deduction. As you unpack your own past or talk with each patient, you’ll have to identify their cognitive distortions. These are cognitive behavioural therapy basics that point out some self-defeating or self-loathing language or thought processes. An example is a should statement, that then takes the fun out of something because it places pressure on doing something a certain way. Disqualifying the positives is when you can only see the bad in everything. As the game progresses, you learn about 12 different cognitive distortions and for each client you can select five to bring into each session. At key moments in conversation, the distortion buttons light up signalling that you need to call something out and it’s up to the player to choose the correct one. If you get it wrong, Andy will step in to provide a hint so you can’t go too far wrong. There isn’t a bad ending and Andy’s course corrections guide you to the the correct outcome by blocking you from proceeding until you get it right. For some, this might be a dampener but the Steam achievements are set up in a way to reward continuous correct answers. This means failure can’t happen, but attentive players will be rewarded. Occasionally I found myself torn between two distortions to choose from and I’d select the wrong one. This ruined my winning streak but I could usually understand from Andy’s comments why I’d picked the wrong option.
There is so much charm and personality in Vampire Therapist and it mostly comes from its script and voice acting cast. Each character is slightly over-the-top. The narcissistic actor vampire is wildly narcissistic and needs constant steering and grounding. The Lady of the Bog just wants to have sex and kill her streamer fans and needs to be reminded to respect boundaries she’s happy to cross with others. Each patient is fascinating and comes with superb voice acting and a quippy script. Conversations are stylised to ensure the distortion mechanic works but it doesn’t feel stilted – just more like a stage show performance. I think this is because most scenes in the game take place with just two characters sitting down to chat. It feels like it’s ripe for a stage adaptation and the script mirrors that. Graphically the game is no slouch either with some lovely artwork, and the background thumper-thumper of club music downstairs gives a unique atmosphere. There are a couple of minigames to bite necks and meditate which are optional and over very quickly.
I thoroughly enjoyed playing Vampire Therapist. The way how the distortions are described makes them applicable to the real world. There is probably a lot of psychology 101 being discussed here but it was packaged in an actionable and easy-to-consume way. Did I expect Vampire Therapist to be nearly as engrossing, funny or sincere as I found it to be? Absolutely not. This game surpassed my expectations and provided plenty of memorable moments in a well-packaged story. I’m looking forward to picking up the upcoming Couples Therapy DLC coming soon.
Review code provided by the developer. Vampire Therapist is out now on Steam.
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