Vampire Therapist is a visual novel about a vampire's quest to provide his troubled brethren a better outlook in life. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Vampire Therapist Review Overview
What is Vampire Therapist?
Vampire Therapist is an indie game where you play as a vampire who helps others find inner peace. You play as Sam, a former gunslinger from the Wild West, who realized that there’s more to undead life than blood. A 3000-year-old vampire from Europe takes you under his bat wing to show you the ins and outs of therapy. Practice what you’ve learned with clients who are also of the undead nature. After all, even vampires have problems.
Learn real cognitive behavioral therapy concepts and use them to better understand where your clients are coming from and how you could help them out. Gameplay involves hearing out your clients and clicking on a prompt to respond or correctly analyze the information you’re given. Meet a variety of fully-voiced, emotionally damaged vampires from different places in different eras like ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, Tudor England, and even the Bronze Age.
Vampire Therapist features:
⚫︎ Scenarios developed with licensed therapists
⚫︎ Dynamic storytelling
⚫︎ Multiple cases for therapy sessions
⚫︎ An evolving world view for the main character
⚫︎ Abundant dark humor
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Vampire Therapist's gameplay and story.
 Steam |
$14.99 |
Vampire Therapist Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Peak Voice Acting Very Real Conversations |
Disjointed Sections Excessive Trope Usage |
Vampire Therapist Overall Score - 80/100
Vampire Therapist is an incredibly entertaining, yet thought-provoking and engaging game about the same kind of issues we mortals share with the eternal unliving. It offers advice in a form that is humorous but not at all dismissive of the troubles that plague each of us. However, do keep in mind that the game talks about potentially sensitive topics that some may feel uncomfortable reading about. If you can stomach it, though, the Vampire Therapist is definitely a great purchase you won’t regret.
Vampire Therapist Story - 9/10
What’s great about Vampire Therapist is that it’s not just a story about you offering counsel to your wayward brethren and let them live more fulfilling (un)lives; it’s also about your development as a self-sacrificing young (in vampire years) man into an idyllic role model. Shame, though, that the narrative design is immersion-breaking due to how it allows you to tackle a client’s troubles in any order. Fortunately, everything else is pretty solid.
Vampire Therapist Gameplay - 7/10
While the game’s visual novel gameplay looks different from its peers, it makes use of essentially the same choice-driven narrative progression that everyone else has. Even the bloodsucking minigame, few as they are, doesn’t do enough to make it stand out from the crowd. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good. The basic formula for visual novel gameplay is a tried and tested method that’s both immersive and reliable.
Vampire Therapist Visuals - 7/10
Vampire Therapist uses the kind of visuals anybody would expect out of a visual novel. Sure, the artworks are great and the interface looks clean, but they’re not at a level where they’ll live rent-free in your head for a long time.
Vampire Therapist Audio - 9/10
The voice acting in Vampire Therapist is, in a word, stupendous. In fact, the game can get an audiobook adaptation and it would still be incredible. Its voice actors really put in a lot of work in order to make such diverse and emotionally-charged exchanges between characters. Sure, the background tracks are nice, too, but it pales in comparison to the former.
Vampire Therapist Value for Money - 8/10
For the low, low price of $14.99, you can purchase an excellent visual novel that toyed with the incredibly unrelatable topic of immortality in such a way that it becomes almost intimate with mortal nature. It’s also very replayable, although you’ll have to concede with the admittedly funnier option of failing your dialogue sections.
Vampire Therapist Review: Comedically Therapeutic
Starting a new game in Vampire Therapist, you are immediately greeted with the text above. There are a few things you can take away from this, but the most obvious one would be the last line.
But before you check in the mirror if you still have a reflection, fully intending to treat this game as your own pocket therapy session, take a step back. Not from the mirror; I mean back to the game. Read it again. But, instead of focusing on any particular sentence, look at the entire picture.
Do you feel the warning’s tone? That’s exactly how the game carries itself throughout its existence on your Steam library. It’s a warning, true, but it’s also somewhat jovial. And that, I think, reflects the game’s nature very accurately.
You play as Sam Walls (the most vampire-sounding name, I know), a very enlightened vampire that lacks a good deal of self-appreciation. In his quest to help his brethren make the most of their unlives, he travels to Europe to seek the guidance of a 3,000-year-old vampire who desires the same. There, he meets with Andromachos, who would become his mentor, before suddenly landing himself a job as a vampire therapist. Hence, the game’s title.
Like many visual novels, Vampire Therapist’s gameplay is intimately connected to its story. The story itself, just like its warning screen, is a healthy mix of serious matters made easy to stomach through its humor. Accordingly, its "gameplay" combines the traditional visual novel experience of clicking through dialogue with the hilarious consequences of Andromachos making subtle jabs at your mistakes when you choose the wrong options.
Admirably enough, Vampire Therapist doesn’t approach the story from just the perspective of the main character. After all, one cannot expect to take care of others if he cannot take care of himself. Vampire Therapist isn’t just about Sam’s tale about helping others find better perspectives in life. It’s also about his learning experience as he deals with the different folks and their various troubles.
The gameplay is easy enough. You simply have to identify the cognitive distortions, defined as internal mental filters or biases that increase our misery, fuel our anxiety, and make us feel bad about ourselves by Harvard Health, your fellow vampires possess and provide them with an alternative perspective.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of handholding involved, so you won’t have to worry about being an expert in identifying these. All you have to do is be good at recognizing patterns… or save-scumming.
Make no mistake; you may be dealing with eternal beings, but their troubles have real world implications for us mortals. That makes every single case a learning experience not just for the in-game characters, but for us as well. This engaging experience is only made better by the game’s exceptional voice acting, which also serves as a great delivery method for its various flavors of humor.
Unfortunately, the narrative isn’t perfect by any means. While the pace and prose are great, there’s an obvious issue with conversations feeling like they jump around abruptly. This is due to the game’s decision to allow you to tackle your client’s problematic points of view in any order you desire most of the time. Hence, their reactions tend to not carry over well between sections.
Regardless of that minor issue, Vampire Therapist’s greatest achievement lies in how much humanity they’ve injected into the vampires’ stagnant blood. Their exchanges feel organic, and the personalities that each of them possess feels real and natural. This may also be the work of the game’s excellent voice acting, but the writing also plays a large part.
Overall, Vampire Therapist is a great visual novel to purchase. You can take a lot of lessons to heart, especially with regards to how you can change your perspective away from directions that only lead you down the wrong path.
But, man, I really don’t like the bloodsucking minigame. Thank Dracula it’s not something that will plague you often.
Pros of Vampire Therapist
| Things Vampire Therapist Got Right |
|---|
|
Peak Voice Acting Very Real Conversations |
Peak Voice Acting
It’s hard to understate just how much of an impact good voice acting can do for a story. It takes your attention away from reading the subtitles and frees your imagination from having to recreate the scenario in your head. Thus, your brain cells can be put to better use in processing the unironically relatable troubles plaguing immortals and the worldly words of wisdom offered against them.
Very Real Conversations
The problems immortal beings like vampires face may seem unrealistic for mortals like us. After all, while we deal with the transience of our being, they have all of eternity to work on themselves. However, the game does an incredible job of providing the vampires with just enough humanity that their troubles can be reflected as our own.
If only the game allowed you to access logs, then it would be even better.
Cons of Vampire Therapist
| Things That Vampire Therapist Can Improve |
|---|
|
Disjointed Sections Excessive Trope Usage |
Disjointed Sections
Perhaps because the dialogues were designed such that you can tackle each section of the client’s problems in any order, the transitions between them feels jarring and abrupt. It’s quite immersion-breaking at times when the guy or gal you’re talking to gets all emotional from having their issues laid out before suddenly becoming docile as they talk more about their experiences.
It’s almost like the game doesn’t trust your ability to deduce and get to the root of the conversation’s direction, especially when save-scumming is an option. This can easily be fixed by making each session linear, just like most of your interactions with Andromachos.
Excessive Trope Usage
While the conversations that occur between you and your clients transcend the pains of immortality that vampires deal with in unlife, the fact that your character and everyone else keeps mentioning every relevant cognitive disorder like it’s some sort of basic common knowledge eventually becomes annoying. Instead of providing help for wayward vampires, it sometimes feels like you’re simply engaging in an academic discussion with someone.
Even if the choices expand later on, perhaps a little bit of subtlety would do the writing some good.
Is Vampire Therapist Worth It?
Worth Your Mortal Money
While thought-provoking visual novels aren’t uncommon, the research that went into the creation of this piece makes for a phenomenal read. It also clearly doesn’t take itself too seriously, even with its theme. There’s a healthy amount of humor and mature tomfoolery added into the scenarios, making it just as entertaining as it is enlightening.
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
| Steam |
$14.99 |
Vampire Therapist FAQ
Is Vampire Therapist meant for mature audiences?
The game uses sex, murder, and all kinds of dark topics a lot, but they’re only ever utilized as conversation tools or filler. Otherwise, most people can easily understand and stomach its themes.
Do you deal with humans in Vampire Therapist?
You will meet and interact with several humans as you play through the game, and some of them will be interacting with you as more than just acquaintances.
Game8 Reviews
You may also like...
Vampire Therapist Product Information
 |
|
| Title | VAMPIRE THERAPIST |
|---|---|
| Release Date | July 18, 2024 |
| Developer | Little Bat Games |
| Publisher | Little Bat Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Indie, Dark Comedy |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | - |
| Official Website | Vampire Therapist Website |
