Real Vampires review - "Staking to the heart of the matter"

• Learn about REAL vampires from REAL stories
• Play as the villagers in the day or as the vampires at night
• Go through each story by winning at every vital plot point

Vampires are probably not real, but who am I to say? I'm just words on a screen representing the thoughts of a walking, talking, bag of flesh on the concept of bloodsucking undead creatures. While this doesn't qualify me as an expert on the supernatural, there are plenty of stories to read that could change that fact.

Vampire stories exist all over the world, even in Eastern Europe (shock and awe). To make sure everyone is aware of such mythology, Those Eyes Games has brought Real Vampires to the table. While this isn't literal, this quirky, animatic, and 2D anthology about historical vampire stories may have you questioning what's real - no, really.

What is Real Vampires?

We have numerous examples of vampires across all media, some of which stray very far from the source material. However, Real Vampires is a faithful storyteller that not only adheres to the source material, it IS the source material.

The experience focuses on recorded accounts from people in various Eastern European countries, including Poland and Ukraine. With the help of a curious and charismatic guide, you'll explore a collection of these stories to hear about real people's encounters with creatures identified as "vampires". You'll see the story from both sides as you fight for the daylight or cover the world in darkness.

Real Vampires on the level

Humorous vampire titles aren't anything new (look at Bloodlines), so it's definitely possible to blend supernatural with comedy. Real Vampires is another example, with several tools at its disposal. The apparent first tool is the visual style, which combines graphics and puppet animation.

It is reminiscent of a Monty Python transition animation, courtesy of Terry Gilliam, featuring characters and creatures of various proportions, and you never know what will happen next. It also has that early-Internet flair, where it was the Wild West of online animation, where anything goes, and this is heading in a good direction.

One of the strongest tools it wields is the narrative base, which is made of stories. These stories are recorded, containing local accounts of people's encounters with what would eventually be labelled vampires.

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Each one is sourced with a clear indicator of its origin and then summarised through the gameplay. In some ways, this title masquerades as a mythology and folklore educational tool, where you learn about how locals from distant countries responded to something they couldn't explain logically. Vampires defy reason in more than one way, so it's fun and engaging to see similarities between stories as well as the distinct differences that make them stand out.

Now we've come to the actual gameplay, which could best be described as WarioWare had it been forced to watch nothing but old-school New Grounds.

Every story takes you through several points that can be experienced in either the day or the night. Each point is a mini-game, and depending on the time of day, you'll either be playing as the townspeople or the real vampires. By using a combination of sliding and tapping, it's a race against the hard-to-ignore timer at the top as you use the story text to beat the game of the moment.

It's fast, it's silly, it's simple, and the number of stories keeps things diverse.

Doubting Real Vampires

There are plenty of things that you can do to mess up a vampire title (look at Bloodlines 2), and sometimes it's easy to overlook them. Real Vampires doesn't make the usual mistakes, but there are a few things that could be helped.

A big one is the level of challenge, which comes in three varieties: Easy, Medium, and Hard. However, no matter which one you pick, you won't find yourself struggling too much. The context and actual gameplay provide ample room for error, and although the timer is prominent, it's not as fast as it appears. As long as you have decent hand-eye coordination, you'll be starved for replays over any one mini-game.

That being said, technical issues sometimes hinder the gameplay. As is the case with touchscreen titles, they tend to put too much faith in the hardware or the precision of our goofy fingers.

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Thankfully, gameplay is mainly restricted to tapping and dragging, but when an element of accuracy is dropped in, it's like an invitation for the screen to misinterpret your movements. Your sliding can be read as going too far or stopping short, and some taps can be ignored, which only adds pressure on top of that provided by the timer. It's not a massive issue, but it can make the experience less enjoyable.

Getting real with Real Vampires

Real Vampires is a 2D puppet-rigging graphic anthology featuring a collection of personal accounts from people's encounters with real vampires. Each story is told through a series of texts that serve as the instructions for some quick and humorous mini-games that make you feel like your mythological knowledge has improved.

Problems arise (much like vampires) whenever the touchscreen controls can't keep up with the game or your movements, but that's something that can be handled over time. Let's be real: Vampires don't suck.