BloodLust: Vampire ShadowHunter

You can view a playthrough on TwitchTV here.

If there’s one thing that can be said from Bloodlust: Vampire Shadowhunter, it’s that the developer is making it into a work of passion. Playthroughs are actively pursued and the feedback from it gets adopted as soon as possible. Consider it playtesting. We’ve run through this roleplaying game viewed from another perspective. It still needs quite a bit of work, but it at least has potential.

Starting off, a choice of character is given between half human and vampire, each with their own strengths and feats. For instance, vampires will need to quench their thirst for blood. It further separates traits through 3 traditional classes, before starting the game in a dark, eerie place. Dungeons will be the main draw in this game and players will need to overcome enemies and obstacles while sleuthing through the halls. Bloodlust isn’t the best looking game, with simple and squared textures, rigid movement and dated models, but it is an indie project and it’s based on long and captivating gameplay, rather than eye candy. It does attempt some lighting play, which adds to the macabre vibe, but that would be the height of the modern technology so far. A few steps behind that, the sound is poorly recorded or often unfitting, but again, the developer is actively in the process of updating flaws. Hopefully, it will do something about the hollow voice acting as well.

Since its gameplay needs to be on par to make up for an olden presentation, Bloodlust puts a lot more effort in exploring dungeons. Players control their character mostly in third person and roam through the halls to find people for quests, fight monsters in their way and solve a few puzzles. While some puzzles are common enough, such as activating levers, there’s more depth in other elements. For one, players can upgrade their character through leveling and use a vampire gaze. This feat shoots a flying ball that can weave itself through cracks and small spaces and explodes on impact. Using that, puzzles will quickly require maneuvering the ball adeptly to trigger the switch behind an obstructing wall. Another skill allows players to use a sixth sense to discover hidden panels and rooms. There will be a ton of these concealed elements to discover, which does command some attention, although it can sometimes feel esoteric. Players need to know exactly what’s going on and factor in rigid movement for some spaces, like jumping on ledges, to proceed in some parts. Progress is created in a distinct, old-school way with no love lost on leniency.

Combat so far is basic, with the standard use of certain skills added with weaponry. There’s not one element to make it really pop, but using the controllable ball to detonate on far away enemies can be entertaining. Fighting becomes more of a means to an end, regarding struggles within a dungeon. By using traps and the ability to bite people, the game hopes to add a bit more depth to the whole later on, but there wasn’t much of that available yet. It could use a more active approach, perhaps combining elements to create combos and so on, to enhance a simple click to kill mechanic.

Barring an elevated learning curve, there isn’t a lot wrong with the tried and true concept of dungeon crawling, but Bloodlust: Vampire Shadowhunter stays on the modest side. It adds a few new puzzle elements to the mix and another point of view and leaves the rest to standard roleplaying tropes. The few innovations might be good enough to warrant a try for fans of the genre and people who miss the Masquerade games.

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed. (@Daavpuke)