Having always had a taste for things darker and more sinister, I’ve been a fan of vampires and other paranormal creatures since I was a kid. Whether reading about their lore, or enjoying a variety of movies over the years, they’ve always been reliable for a pretty good time. In games though, at least in my mind, their use has unfortunately been on the spotty side. What I like about Cabernet is that while it may be a vampire game, its approach is pretty different from the norm, with you playing the part of a reluctant new vamp trying to find her way.

Playing out somewhere between a time management sim and an RPG, the game starts with your funeral, where you’ll dictate your parents’ memories of you, which will then provide you with your base stats to start with. Waking up in a dark room, you’ll then spend some time simply trying to get your bearings and understanding what your new life will be like while navigating a mixed social gathering. Sizing up the people you’ll be dealing with, both human and fellow vampire, will be important to your later success. In addition, seeing how some dialogue choices and actions are constrained by your current stats will quickly get you up to speed on some strategic ideas for moving forward.

From there it’s all about following your instincts, working to build relationships, completing tasks to try to advance your interests, and carefully managing your thirst and general welfare. In general, these goals do tend to intersect, with the key to feeding on certain people being tied to the strength of your relationship with them, but there will be some tough decisions to be made at times as well. These will determine where your morality meter will ultimately stand, either on the side of humanity, nihilism, or something in between. Of course, some of the ways the story will end will be tied to those choices, so you’ll have to sometimes be very deliberate in what you choose to keep from deviating from your intended course.

While the experience is generally low-key, and the game’s art style is admittedly on the simpler side, there’s something appealing about the stories it ends up telling through its characters and the situations you’ll find yourself in. Unfortunately, I did also run into a glitch here and there, though for the most part they were more annoying than crippling, but that may be a matter of which paths were chosen so they may be inconsistent. If you consider yourself a vamp fan, and don’t mind that this is a game with a more subdued pace and sense of style, it may well be what you’ve been thirsting for.