Vampire Therapist is simultaneously earnest and winningly ridiculous

Looter-shooters, match-three games, dragons and spaceships… Sometimes you despair of video games doing the same thing again and again — and then a lone developer gets a severe bump on the head and produces something completely batty. 

Vampire Therapist is a comedic adventure-story therapy-simulation starring a vampire, except he’s also a cowboy, and he’s training to be a cognitive behavioral therapist in the backroom of a German nightclub under the tutelage of a 3,000-year-old bisexual vampire who was romantic with Marcus Aurelius back in the day. 

Our hero was a bad vamp in the Wild West for many years, you see, but he fell in with the Transcendentalists and learned to “walk a better path.” Now he hopes to persuade others to do the same. Vampires carry trauma, yeah? And they have cognitive distortions just like the rest of us, yeah? They might be vampire scientists addicted to synthetic plasma, or Renaissance patrons of the arts driven to despair by science-fiction blockbusters, but they can still grow and heal.  

As you talk to your bloodsucking clients, you can help them feel better about themselves by noticing when they engage in “Should Statements,” “Labelling,” “Control Fallacy,” “Disqualifying the Positive” or, ahem, “Nosferatu Thinking.” It’s based on real therapy principles, apparently, but the talky cartoon-graphic game is also full of jokes. “I’ll do some reflecting, inasmuch as our kind can reflect…”

It even comes with a trigger warning: “References to historical violence and oppression may be upsetting to some.” It’s simultaneously earnest and winningly ridiculous – but it’s a labor of love, and an original one at that.

Grade: B+

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.