In theory, vampires and immersive sims go together as naturally as bats and caves. Immersive sims tend to involve a balance of stealth, acrobatics, raw strength and crafty manipulation, and vampires are celebrated for all of these things. Despite this, actual vampire-themed immersive sims are rare. My list starts with Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines… and sort of ends there. In a devastating betrayal, Arkane Austin’s Redfall wasn’t an immersive sim but an open world co-op shooter (a not very good one). The much-delayed Bloodlines 2 was recently downgraded from immersive sim to RPG by new developers The Chinese Room. Arkane Lyon’s Blade adaptation seems promising, but it’s a ways off.
Here to paper over the immersive vamping gap in the market is Byte Barrel’s Trust, “a new first-person shooter with immersive sim elements”. It takes place in a world where the vampires are hunted for their blood, which has become an everyday human energy source, used for everything from car batteries to streetlights. The irony! I feel like, in the circumstances, the ideal solution would be for humans to let vampires suck their blood in return for vampires letting humans use their blood for electricity, but that wouldn’t make for a very thrilling shooter. Anyway, here’s the trailer.