Currently seeking funding via Kickstarter, Nighthawks – The Vampire RPG is a highly atmospheric text-based computer RPG for PC and Mac from Wadjet Eye Games (The Blackwell Legacy, Unavowed, Technobabylon) and writer/designer Richard Cobbett (Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies, The Long Journey Home). This urban fantasy game invites you to join the mean streets of a city grudgingly trying to show that humans and vampires can live together, despite the cynicism and conspiracies raging on both sides. It’s a place of bleak horror and dark humour, filled with monsters who don’t all have fangs and a thirst for blood, and featuring new stories down every dark alley. What part will you play, and how will you turn a newly awakened world to your advantage?
Three months ago, you died. And in that moment you were reborn as something new. A monster. A predator. Not a creature of the night, but one of its masters.
Unfortunately, things aren’t simple as they used to be. Vampires have finally been exposed, and though your existence is tolerated, your new nature is not. You came to the City hoping for a new start, but found only suspicion and starvation. Now you stare at the ceiling of your cheap hotel room as a penniless outcast, suckling on rats and destined to wither away.
But every new era brings new opportunities, and in the political chaos of a world gone mad, even an outcast may rise. An outcast can change everything.
This is the story of how you rose.
Nighthawks is a mix of story-driven RPG, interactive fiction and undead life-simulation, where every decision you make is another move in your chess game against the world. Invest your time into learning new skills or honing your fighting style as you uncover the city’s mysteries and venture deep into its darkest secrets. Manage your eternal thirst, legitimately, or by balancing the risks of being caught stalking unwary victims and working the black markets.
Befriend and recruit a wide circle of fellow outcasts, such as: vampire stage magician Madame Lux; con-artist turned cult-leader Maze; vampire enforcer Saiorse; ruthless pirate Inez; disgraced scientist Morgan Shah; or maybe even Samuel, a cursed doctor. Companions don’t just fight for you. Take part in their lives as they work on their own problems, have them look into rumours with their own contacts and social circles and dive into their deepest secrets with interactive flashbacks set in locations like 17th century Nassau, Las Vegas, and the corrupt European courts of the Eternal Dynasties. Help them handle their demons, and they’ll help you deal with yours. But good deeds rarely go unpunished, and everyone has their own agenda that consumes their endless nights.
Nighthawks is a deep, replayable RPG where its text-driven gameplay is focussed on details and mechanics, delivering a living city with little seen features like NPC scheduling, varied stories, incredibly reactive characters, and most importantly, player freedom.
The Kickstarter campaign for Nighthawks – The Vampire RPG ends on October 6th.