Narrative RPG 'Nighthawks' Feels Carved from Vampire: Bloodlines' Strongest Bones

Much as I love it, I must admit that Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was a classic game in spite of itself. It's a regular replay for a whole generation of goth gamers, but few are there for the wonky combat or fiddly stealth in Troika's inspirational RPG. No, they're there for the delightfully reactive, vivid and memorable characters. Enter Nighthawks, launching today, which asks the question: "What if we made an entire Vampire game out of just the good bits of Bloodlines?" The answer, it may surprise you, is "A bloody good time", if my first few hours with it, and the reviews rolling in today, are any indication.

Just to manage some expectations, no, this is not a first-person action RPG. Or a third-person one. And it definitely doesn't have any of the Arkham-lite combat of the misguided Bloodlines 2. Instead, Nighthawks is a purely menu and prose-driven RPG, still art accompanied by some excellent voice performances, but this is obviously a lower-budget production. A game with grand aspirations and willing to shed excess weight in order to achieve those goals.

That isn't to say there's a lot of game here to chew on. This is a full-blooded RPG. You are a vampire on a mission, hunting down a traitor but with very little intel to go on. While your interface is light on hard numbers, you've got ever-present gauges on screen for blood, life, suspicion and hunger, pips to indicate how many charges of your supernatural powers you've got available, plus an assortment of status indicators, indicators for money and status, and a virtual phone full of messages, logged quests and experience bars for each of your eight skills and any equipment being worn or carried.

And as a fledgling vampire (relatively recently turned), your character begins only as strong as they were in life, give or take. I decided to make my first character a full-on bookworm, full of academic and esoteric knowledge. Turns out that doesn't help much when a local anti-vampire gang decides they want to take their frustrations out on your immortal but still-scrawny self. And so, while my character has gained a few useful insights along the way, I've also spend a worrying amount of time covered in my own (well, borrowed) blood and passed out in the street.

And yeah, anti-vampire gangs. Nighthawks also asks a second, even more interesting question: What would the World Of Darkness (give or take every identifying serial number or trademarked term) look like without the Masquerade? The world knows about vampires now, and nobody is really happy about it. The game is set in Cradlebridge, one of the few cities where the undead are officially welcome, but that just means new problems, like local mob bosses being centuries old, and local vampire grifters starting up their own very public cults so that they can get blood on tap rather than have to hunt in back alleys.

And one such grifter - the fabulously dressed Master Maze, looking like a young Tim Curry - is one of the first friends you have a chance to make in the game, and a wonderful statement of intent. He's flamboyant, verbose, a published author with a highly questionable autobiography, and currently working on a self-help book for vampires to help them get the most out of their afterlife. He's friendly, he's mostly forthcoming, and so very obviously running half a dozen little schemes and cons on the side, probably involving you.

But you don't have to deal with him. You're free to head out and wander the town and meet a huge range of folks, undead or otherwise. Few stereotypes pop up here, and when they do, they're skewered by the characters themselves, who have heard all the jokes. The ability to just hop around the city map screen and investigate freely is also where another of Nighthawks' big inspirations becomes clear - the ever-expanding, browser-based microfiction adventure Fallen London. While you won't be waiting around in real life for your actions to recharge here, everything in Nighthawks takes time, and you've only got so many hours a night before the sun sends you scurrying back to your darkened apartment.

More complex actions like hunting for food take multiple actions, accompanied by an assortment of smaller skill checks and choices, each success increasing your success bar, making for a surprisingly engaging bit of roleplaying. Each individual skill check tells you the rough odds of success, and what skills you'll be using from your character sheet to pass it, but it never gives you exact figures. This is not a game about getting +1 to Holy Damage Resistance, but rather the broad strokes of storytelling, and from what I've played, I think it would be a lesser experience if it just told me the numbers. Pulling something off when I'm told that it's risky is just satisfying, and faceplanting on a trivially easy task is plenty funny, especially when the text accompanying either result is sharply written.

Much as I would love to say more, I've still barely scratched the surface of Nighthawks, and it feels that much like its primary inspiration, Bloodlines; this one's going to be highly replayable. I'm already sure I've burnt some bridges and missed out on some avenues of investigation, and I'm excited to see whether I really could have gone another route when I roll up my second character, ideally one who's worth half a damn in a fight.

In the meantime, I suggest you try the game for yourself - this one has me feeling rather sanguine. Nighthawks is out now for a very reasonable £15.49/$20, with a 15% launch discount running until September 29th.