The gothic castle-cum-escape room you explore in Vampire Hunter: Nightrise is so delightfully kitsch that it is hard to call it truly scary. With chittering bat swarms, lycanthropes baying at the full moon, Spirit Halloween-style skeletons and revolving fireplaces, “spooky” feels like a more fitting description.
It just doesn’t feel like the backdrop to a serious horror game. Were it not for the fact that you deal with the fortress’s ghoulish inhabitants by either immolating them or driving wooden spikes through their hearts (instead of merely unmasking them to reveal greedy groundskeepers and implausibly theatrical jewel thieves), it’d almost feel better suited to a Mystery Inc. case. Right down to the shifting-eye portraits and those secret passageways that are concealed behind bookcases with discoloured opening mechanisms.
Yet as its title suggests, you will be roleplaying as neither meddling kids nor their dumb dog here. Instead, you’ll be stepping into the shoes of a grizzled monster slayer on a quest to vanquish some malevolent bloodsucker that has managed to get an entire region under its thrall.
When the story opens, you’re in the middle of being ferried to this undead fiend’s heretical lair. Your assignment from the Christian church (to which you are zealously devoted) appears simple on paper: infiltrate the castle; find the hidden chamber in which the evil is slumbering, hammer a stake into its chest, and liberate the innocents who have been corrupted by its foul influence.
Of course, this all turns out to be much easier said than done. For a start, the vampire’s resting place is located within an architecturally impossible room that’s not pinpointed anywhere on the map, and that isn’t accessible via conventional means. Not to mention, the rest of the stronghold is defended by a host of wailing ghosts, haunted suits of armour, and howling werewolves all dead set on keeping intruders like you from ever uncovering the whereabouts of their nefarious master.
So far, so Scooby-Doo! Where things get a little darker, however, is with the revelation that you’re not the first crusader to be sent on this particular suicide mission. On the contrary, the castle halls are littered with the mutilated corpses of your predecessors, many of whom came to doubt their calling by the end (questioning the hypocritical dogma of the clergy and wondering why their infallible God would allow them to meet such grisly fates), while others were seduced by darkness. Ruh-roh!
Whether you will undergo the same crisis of faith depends entirely upon your own spiritual fortitude and the choices you make to survive the gruelling night ahead. To divulge much more, or to reveal even your basic starting objectives, would spoil the fun of working out the game’s many mysteries for yourself.
Let’s just say it’s a tight, no-frills adventure that’s full of clever brainteasers, pleasing exploration and adrenaline-pumping action. Alas, its considerable charms are also sadly undermined by a question of authorship, intent and integrity that we’ll get around to in due course. Until then, here’s what we initially dug about Vampire Hunter: Nightrise.
The Game’s Afoot
At the outset, the title presents itself as a meat-and-potatoes first-person shooter but, as it grows increasingly puzzle-heavy and starts pushing you to make intelligent deductions about what to do and where to go next, you realise it’s just as much of a detective game.
Sure, most rooms you enter will be teeming with creatures for you to riddle full of holes in a way that evokes the frenetic gauntlets of Wolfenstein 3D. If you’ve been conditioned by that foundational boomer shooter or any of its contemporaries (which the three-person development team at Over the Moon clearly revere), then your first impulse will likely be to barrel right on ahead from one slaughtering ground to another without ever pausing for breath.
Yet that would be a critical error in this instance, as Nightrise actually demands a little more patience, asking you to calm your itchy trigger finger and linger a while longer in the aftermath of bloodbaths, so that you can meaningfully engage with the other half of the experience.
You see, all of the levels here serve dual purposes. Yes, they are deadly combat arenas in which you massacre beasties to your heart’s content, but they’re also jigsaw pieces in a much larger escape room scenario. Each and every one of them contains hidden secrets for the observant hunter to unearth and mini head-scratchers that can be solved to progress in the overarching mystery.
As mentioned up top, your goal here (beyond just “kill the head vampire”) is vaguely defined. You’ll therefore have to work out the necessary steps for reaching the final boss on your own, without the help of patronising objective markers or hand-holding NPCs that blatantly spoon-feed you all the answers. If you can find him, the transient spectre of the castle’s architect will jot down helpful notes on your map, but you’ll need to locate his various hiding spots first!
Over the Moon has likened this level design to Tunic, although we reckon Blue Prince is a far better point of comparison (on account of the first-person perspective, the general user interface and the mind-bending floor plan). As in that indie darling, you’ll soon come to appreciate just how dense and interlocking the setting is here, and how there’s way more to it than first meets the eye.
Indeed, Nightrise is absolutely chock-full of juicy discoveries and eureka moments, none of which we’ll give away in this review. Suffice it to say, you’ll be richly rewarded for paying attention to your surroundings and retaining key information. Clues can take the form of anything from written documents to neat visual signifiers or telegraphed interactions that might just inspire you to return to earlier areas (now forearmed with greater knowledge of the structure’s inner workings). Said findings will, in turn, yield ingeniously connected shortcuts and brand-new optional content that less vigilant players could conceivably miss.
There’s immense satisfaction to be derived from mastering the complex puzzle-box that is the castle itself, and we’d encourage you to savour that joyous investigative experience (not much of an ask, given the game’s lean 3-hour runtime). If you’re anything like us, you’ll get a real endorphin rush from finally grasping the full utility of all the different coloured flames in the archives, as well as from intuiting what the bells in the rafters are used for and figuring out how to successfully navigate the labyrinthine dungeons.
A Castle Built for Curiosity
Speaking of which, there’s a solid variety to the locations in Vampire Hunter: Nightrise. The castle is divided into four principal wings, each of which has its own unique sub-areas, puzzle types, mechanical gimmicks, and enemy breeds.
The latter consideration is especially appreciated, as it gives the world a coherent internal logic. Different creatures will congregate in different parts of the building (for story or lore reasons), and the developers never break immersion by recycling them elsewhere. Case in point, the cathedral is lorded over by blasphemous priests, who hurl destructive magicks your way, while the incorporeal wraiths of dark sorcerers pore over eldritch tomes in the library, and the subterranean prison cells are used as a holding pen for the reanimated corpses of your fallen comrades.
The ideal combat tactics will, of course, vary from foe to foe. Yet no matter what you’re fighting, your primary method of defence will always be the hunter’s standard-issue crossbow. Fittingly launching wooden stakes, it’s a cool weapon that the developers get a ton of mileage out of.
If you strategically line up a shot, for example, you can send a spike on a trajectory through an open flame so that it then catches on fire before hitting its intended target and setting them ablaze. Meanwhile, a well-placed bolt can catapult monsters into each other, and the crossbow can be modified to fling splintering projectiles that fan out in all directions. We also loved the inspired way that the game has you replenishing ammunition by smashing decorative furniture into kindling, rather than just searching for pre-made stakes randomly lying around the place.
Faith as Gameplay
Like any good student of Van Helsing, you also carry a crucifix with you at all times. Held akimbo with the crossbow, this can be used as both a close-quarters defensive weapon and as a catalyst for conjuring miracles. That brings us nicely to the title’s other conceit: its novel approach to faith.
Not too dissimilar from magic in an RPG, this attribute determines what kind of spells you can cast in Nightrise. Depending on how steadfast your belief is, you can use it to do fun things like summon lightning that stuns enemies, give yourself a big old damage buff, or trigger devastating explosions.
To get the most out of these powers, however, you’ll need to make sure that your religious convictions don’t waver. This can be monitored by checking the gauge just below your HP bar. In essence, the fuller it is, the more you’ll be able to leverage your favour with the big man upstairs.
Where things get interesting, though, is that the faith bar will not only drain when you cast miracles but also shrink if your character starts to harbour sacrilegious doubts. This tends to happen whenever he glimpses something that shakes his faith to the core, be it a dead body or a profane artefact that contains forbidden knowledge. In that sense, the faith bar can be thought of almost as a magic and sanity meter rolled into one. You need faith to cast spells, but your faith goes down whenever you see fucked-up shit. And you’re bound to see fucked-up shit sooner or later.
To restore this vital resource, you’ll either need to pray in the heat of battle (which is time-consuming) or demonstrate your fealty to the Church by rejecting certain temptations. To elaborate, there are a few junctures in the story where you will be offered great power by some unknown force. If you accept these boons, then an extra ability will be added to your spell list, and your faith will diminish a little.
Conversely, if you resist the allure, then you’ll miss out on the new miracle, but your relationship with God will improve. It’s an interesting trade-off that gives you a bit of flexibility in how you customise your build and could incentivise repeated playthroughs (especially since there are narrative implications to your choices here).
All in all, the way Vampire Hunter: Nightrise uses faith puts a fresh spin on the classic magic system. There’s a surprising amount of depth to it that helps combat feel a bit more nuanced, and the temptation angle smartly weaves the game’s narrative themes into actual gameplay.
A Different Kind of Vampire
Between these well-balanced faith mechanics, the intricate map layout, and the thoughtful puzzles, Nightrise appears to be a release that was very intentionally designed. You get the impression that the three-person team at Over the Moon agonised over every creative decision and had a very specific vision that they wanted to bring to life.
Regrettably, the integrity of all that is called into question by the needless use of a particular technology. And you don’t need to have the mystery-solving prowess of Scooby and the gang to know which one!
Let’s not beat around the bush anymore. Vampire Hunter: Nightrise‘s disappointing use of artificial intelligence is a blemish that, appropriately enough for a game that explores crises of faith, riddled us with doubt. Knowing that generative A.I. tools were used to some extent in the development process left us wondering how much of what we previously enjoyed was artistically deliberate or even original.
According to Over the Moon, the technology only did heavy lifting when it came to the musical score (through prompts on Suno) and localisation efforts. Elsewhere, the story, the general structure, and design choices were purportedly authored by real, flesh-and-blood creatives.
On the Steam store page, they go on to claim that A.I. is “not a replacement for the conscious attention of a skilled artist”, which is an encouraging sign. Yet this philosophy is compromised when they also admit to having exploited generative tools in order to establish starting points for various pieces of in-game artwork and character meshes. These assets supposedly went through extensive manual modelling, texturing, rigging and animation after the fact. But it still feels like they’re tainted. As a result, we can’t confidently discern what’s been done by hand here and what’s the output of the plagiarism machines.
I desperately want to believe that most of the things in this title I enjoyed were born completely of human ingenuity. And I want to take the developers at their word when they say that everything received proper care and intentional direction. Nevertheless, a pall has been cast over the whole package as far as I’m concerned. I originally loved how the brightness calibration image was a creepy portrait of a Boris Karloff lookalike. But now I’m uncertain if that was a conscious tribute to the great horror icon or if it’s just ripped from some other source that the A.I. was trained on. Because it’s a parasite that feeds on everything around it. You know, kind of like a vampire!
I really detest that this is something I have to think about when reviewing releases now. I’m sympathetic to the argument that smaller devs don’t have the same time or resource allowances as major AAA studios, and that corners sometimes need to be cut. I also recognise that concepts like procedural generation and pre-bought assets have existed in the industry for decades, and so pure, unmuddied authorship was never really guaranteed. Furthermore, I expect some A.I. defenders will come out of the woodwork and argue that, if you can’t tell what’s been produced by the technology and what hasn’t, then does it truly matter?
Yet I’d maintain that, if you’ve got any passion for this medium or have ever poured your own heart and soul into a creative enterprise, it should matter. I think it matters to consumers too. That’s why Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney got so agitated recently about Steam’s mandatory A.I. disclosure policy. Because even he knows that people are put off by this crap and crave experiences that were designed by their fellow humans.
With all of that said, Vampire Hunter: Nightrise may have only used generative A.I. sparingly in its development, but letting it off the hook for that feels like a very slippery slope. Had Over the Moon avoided its use altogether, I’d probably be able to recommend this one without reservations, because the bits I hope were done by humans are genuinely great. It is tightly designed! It has got a charmingly old-school atmosphere! There are some inventive ideas!
Ironically, though, I have now become just like its doomed protagonist: questioning if my faith was entirely misplaced. It’s such a shame to have this overshadow what was otherwise a pretty fun game.
Review code provided by publisher. Vampire Hunter: Nightrise released on PC via Steam on July 14.
