Summary
As far as games go,Vampire Therapisthas one hell of an elevator pitch. ‘You play as a cowboy vampire who decides to become a therapist’ will prick up the ears of about seven discrete types of people. Personally, I’m a little warmer than lukewarm on cowboys, and vampires I find cool, but the idea that a visual novel could go in-depth into actual cognitive behavioural therapy practices and remain entertaining is a compelling one.
I approached Vampire Therapist from two angles. Firstly, as a casual enjoyer of visual novels; looking at the writing, the art, how it makes me laugh, cry, feel, all those good things. Secondly, as someone who studied psychology for ten years and knows his onions when it comes to the real-life application, efficacy, and methods of cognitive behavioural therapy.
Building A Rapport
The game has a compelling opening. You learn about the player character, Sam, a vampire from the Wild West who has found a more positive way to live life after living a heinous, murderous existence for far too long. This brings him to Germany, where he meets an ancient vampire by the name of Andromachos (who Sam calls Andy, because Sam is a loveable bumpkin who can’t pronounce stuff too good), who takes him on as a therapist in training.
Your patients, naturally, are vampires. Vampire Therapist is about a vampire therapist, yes, but also a therapistforvampires. This provides extraordinary license for the patients to be wacky, memorable, and over the top. From a scientist who refuses to drink actual blood to a Shakespearian actor who’s more ham than Hamlet, the cast is certainly a colourful one, and this works well for a VN with lots of people to remember. Helping this is the stellar range of voice acting on display - Kylie Clark as the Italian noblewoman Isabella and Francesca Meaux as the bartender Crimson are standouts, showing off some incredible range.
Unfortunately, there are some voice editing issues that prove very distracting - many lines don’t match up with the text displayed, and there are multiple lines that restart halfway through, seemingly two takes in one. Add to this some visual bugs and the game often feels a little undercooked.
As you’d expect from a game about therapy, the characters you meet - patients and non-patients alike - go through well-foreshadowed arcs that involve dealing with their cognitive distortions and becoming healthier people, if not always ‘better’. Vampires here have wacky moral codes. They treat human lives with varying levels of importance and preciousness, despite their personalities and problems being so intrinsically human as to be a source of cognitive dissonance in the writing itself. The result is a cast that stands out and remains inherently memorable and likeable, even for the wrong reasons.
The cast sometimes feel remarkably unrealistic, with young vampires still speaking like characters out of a period piece but a vampire who’s been around for two millenia being a streamer and OnlyFans (sorry, OnlyZealots) model, but then you remember it’s a game about vampire therapy and you shake it off. It’s silly, but it’s silly with purpose.
While there’s plenty of pathos and heart-wrenching, I can’t leave out the fact that this game is also very funny. It cites works like What We Do In The Shadows and Horrible Histories among its inspirations, and it shows. A great amount of humour is derived from the contrast between vampires of different ages, historical figures get plenty of ribbing, and the maturity level ranges from the most prim to the most gutter-minded. There’s absolutely an overreliance on sexual humour (one character attempts to make Sam feel uncomfortable by repeating the words ‘breasts’ and ‘vulva’ at him to an uncomfortable extent, for example), but this is easily ignored if not your cup of tea.
Constructing A Treatment Plan
Vampire Therapist prides itself on its application of legit CBT concepts, and this is something I was sceptical of - trying to write an ‘authentic’ patient-therapist relationship and incorporate elements from real-world methodology sounds like an effort in futility and tedium. The result, however, was pleasantly surprising. Rather than attempt to emulate actual CBT, Vampire Therapist borrows only the aspects that are required to make a story about talk therapy work, namely the ideas of maladaptive cognitions and instructional goal setting.
Cognitive distortions are turned into the central game mechanic, where you must identify which ‘type’ of thinking the patient is working under for certain excerpts of your conversation. Ideas such as personalisation, overgeneralisation, and black-and-white thinking are well-explained and demonstrated, and the writing shows a very good understanding of the various ways that humans can enter negative patterns of thought.
From a psychological standpoint, it’s a very impressive aspect of the game that sets it apart from other VNs where you purport to play an expert (Ace Attorney and its ludicrous version of the legal system, eat your heart out). It’s a competent crash course into CBT concepts that manages to be satisfying and engaging, something that, if not littered with childish sex jokes, could easily be adapted into some sort of legit training programme.
It feels incredibly nitpicky to say this, but it feels like a missed opportunity for the game to rely so much on only the cognitive aspect of CBT - incorporating some behavioural activation or homework setting as gameplay elements would go so far to elevate this as an authentic depiction of therapy while also keeping things engaging.
Something that may sour people’s opinion is the fact that you can’t really get things wrong. There aren’t ‘routes’ to follow or fail states - if you incorrectly identify a statement with the wrong cognitive distortion, Andromachos steps in and gives you another try. While this is a perfectly fine way to keep a story on its rails, it does detract from the idea that your choices matter at all. I didn’t find it too bad, though, especially as I would say some of the interpretations of certain cognitive distortions forced upon you by the game are loose at best and wrong at worst.
Patient Evaluations
The synthesis of a mature and oft-raunchy vampire visual novel with very real and well-informed concepts of cognitive behavioural therapy was a risky idea from the outset, but I’m convinced that this is a well-balanced experience. There’s something of an overreliance on the incorporation of CBT as a gameplay mechanic that leads to some odd dialogue with people talking in ‘therapy speak’ in very unnatural ways (I never want to hear the word ‘should’ used as a noun ever again), but that seems to be an unavoidable hallmark of the combination.
If I could have willed something to be left on the cutting room floor, however, it would be the minigames. There are two to engage with - biting people’s necks and having a meditation session. These require specific mouse aiming that isn’t explained well and is also presented with cheap-looking interruptions to the regular gameplay. These would be far better if replaced with CGs, which are noticeable omissions for a visual novel in this day and age.
In the end, though, Vampire Therapist is every bit as compelling as the name would lead you to expect. Sam is a wonderful protagonist, the writing is well-balanced between humour and pathos, and it does a great job telling disparate stories that have full arcs. The commitment to depicting CBT faithfully could go further, but it remains an impressive effort. Overall, this is bloody good stuff.
