This is an Ink game based on Vampire: The Masquerade.
Overall, there a few different levels of criticism you examine a game at, with the lower levels of problems obscuring higher ones, typos and bugs being the most glaring. This game is, as far as I can see, free from typos and bugs, has non-trivial mechanics and engaging writing. So I’m going to focus mostly on finer details.
The concept here is that you’ve been asked by a local vampire leader to take care of a major issue, a breach in the Masquerade (the rule that vampires must stay hidden to the rest of the world).
You get to choose a professional background for yourself, as well as a vampire clan, and then the game segues into a murder mystery of sorts, although it’s not just the murder that’s the mystery.
Gameplay always has branches, but the overall play style alternates between linearish (mostly in conversations) to free exploration with locations and inventory.
I enjoyed selecting Malkavian and being able to know many things. That was nice.
Speaking of choices in general, I think after playing that my choices definitely influenced things, but I could use a little more feedback for my personal tastes. I was hesitant when choosing my clan because the game had icons for the choices but it wasn’t clear what I was choosing or what effects it would have. After my choice, I found I could back out, but I would have liked a bit more info ahead of time, either in a side bar or in a tooltip when hovering over the icons.
Similarly, I felt like a lot of my choices were meaningful emotionally but had little impact on the overall game world, as I was free most of the time (as far as I experienced) to explore every nook and cranny as long as I wanted, to gather every bit of evidence and then to examine it at leisure. That’s pretty normal in parser games, but they tend to have puzzles to make collecting everything more tricky. Here I felt like sometimes I just needed to click every link in a scene before moving on. Not always, but sometimes.
I think the last think I’d like (and not everyone may agree) is to not only see what I’m capable of with my choices, but to see what I’m not capable of. Without a hint of what I’m missing by not being a more animalistic vampire, for instance, I wonder if maybe they would have similar options with just slightly different flavor text. Having something that looks cool that I’m locked out of to contrast with the equally cool thing I get to do because I chose it might be nice.