Nighthawks review: A vampire RPG with a novel's worth of writing

Nighthawks is a text-based RPG from The Curiosity Engine, published by Wadjet Eye, that strips away the secrecy at the heart of vampire fiction. In this world, everyone knows vampires are real, which means the real work of being undead involves bribing the police to blame someone else for the bodies piling up in back alleys.

The game plays out like Fallen London or Citizen Sleeper. You pick locations from a map, navigate choose-your-own-adventure scenarios, and develop abilities tied to traits that increase through use. To join a biker gang, the game had you walk to their bar naked, which bumped up an exhibitionist trait. Max that out and it increases seduction but also infamy. Using the sewers to get there raised a different trait, inching you closer to fast-travel through the sewer system. The design rewards experimentation and ties mechanical progression to roleplay choices.

Combat is straightforward: watch health drain while hoping you win before it runs out completely. More involved fights offer skill checks and tactical choices like fighting dirty or pulling back to recover. It's not the focus. Despite a mandatory Fight Club questline, Nighthawks prioritizes people over punching.

Character creation locks in your background, vampire sire, and one supernatural power. Vampires are known to exist but their abilities remain mysterious to most humans. You might need an invitation to enter a home. Nobody really knows how it works anymore. This balance keeps vampire society fresh even as its existence has become public knowledge.

The first act plays as a detective story hunting a traitor through Cradlebridge, the world's first integrated city where vampires have ID cards, political representation, and a clinic distributing watered-down blood. Later acts let you help shape the integration project itself, becoming one of the city's influential figures.

Between main story beats sit numerous sidequests that feel like breaks from Anne Rice to read Clive Barker short stories. Some are effective horror. Others lean comedic or dramatic. One involved settling a dispute between rats occupying an abandoned theme park. Another required hosting an elder vampire's funeral after learning his life story. The writing lands its emotional beats. Twists arrive without telegraphing. This consistency in quality across narrative moments is uncommon in games.

Every action and location travel depletes time until sunrise, though the system feels generous. A couple of chapters gave you until the end of the month to wrap up storylines, which proved more time than needed. The pressure eases as you realize sidequests finish early. Fast-forwarding through days without events requires manual sleeping and blood management, which becomes tedious. The time limit exists but doesn't enforce urgency as tightly as intended.

Managing blood hunger is straightforward, especially in later acts when you gain status and access to willing or bottled sources. A predator meter demands satisfaction too, requiring more than substitute blood. Ignoring it risks waking in a fugue state with fangs in a corpse's neck. The game portrays vampires as monstrous despite opportunities to coexist peacefully. One companion ranks among gaming's most detestable characters. The thrall mechanic, which turns humans into ghoulish servants, explores its horrifying implications directly.

After years without vampire games, several arrived recently. Nighthawks stands apart by interrogating why vampire fantasy appeals to us. It delivers the fantasy of being an angsty creature of the night while questioning why that fantasy feels cool at all. The game lets you enjoy being a parasitic monster, then makes you feel grimy about it, then acknowledges that some players enjoy feeling grimy. It's self-aware without becoming preachy.