Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗As A Vampire
Vahtishmac · Published by Vahtishmac
Content notice: The game includes explicit gore, specifically detailed dismemberment. Characters, including the one controlled by the player, can chop each other to pieces. The game can also be played entirely without activating this content.
Last updated 28 Sept 2026
A vampire life simulator constructed as an "action-optional" open-world sandbox RPG. Experience both the freedom and the challenges of being a vampire. Enable societal and technological advances by defeating the forces preventing them, or just relax and live a peaceful life. The art is placeholder.
Early AccessDJCTQ 16
£4.29
Lowest price we've ever recorded
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£4.29
Price history
4 Sept 2026Lowest: £4.29 · Highest: £4.296 Oct 2026
Action, Adventure, Indie, RPG, Early Access · 2024 · More under £5 games
Explore an open-world sandbox where you can either fight for progress or seek a peaceful life as a vampire. With societal and technological advances at your fingertips, choose your path in this indie RPG from Vahtishmac.
About this game
Experience life as a vampire in this simulation-heavy sandbox RPG -- with an emphasis on the "role-playing" part of "role-playing game". Engage with the various activities offered by the setting or live a quiet life. Hunt well-protected targets such as nobles for an assassination-style challenge. Turn invisible and follow NPCs to observe their daily lives. Explore the surrounding wilderness, perhaps in one of your animal forms. Meddle in human affairs for the fun of it, or to change society for the better.
You control an individual vampire. You have the option of playing from either a third-person view or a first-person view. You can play using a controller (recommended), or with a mouse and keyboard.
The main activity on offer are the VIP hunts. VIP hunts offer assassination-style challenges, but with a twist: as a vampire, you can do things humans can't -- and face obstacles humans don't. Physical barriers are no obstacle, but if your target sleeps under a religious symbol for protection at night, you'll need to either get someone to remove it, lure the target out of the room, or find a different opportunity.
As A Vampire...
- You can do many things humans can't: move unseen, slip through cracks, transform into animals or even substances such as mist, and more. Every vampire has some of these abilities, and the rest can be unlocked.
- You are powered by vital energy. A gauge on the screen shows how much you have available. This energy is spent at different rates by different abilities, and also depletes by a fixed amount each day to power your basic activity. You can replenish it the same way ordinary humans do -- by slowly extracting it from food -- but the most efficient way for a vampire is also the one for which they are most famous: drinking blood. The vital energy in blood is accessible immediately, causing the energy gauge to replenish as soon as it is consumed, and comes with upgrade points that can be used to upgrade your abilities and unlock new ones.
- You require sleep. Newly-arisen vampires tend to sleep through the day, but you can acquire the ability to be awake during daylight hours. Being awake during the same time as most humans and their businesses offers opportunities that are difficult to exploit otherwise.
- You can experience entire generations of human lifetimes -- as a game mechanic. Each time you timeskip, the world is refreshed: trees regrow, populations replenish, and any holes left in society by your interventions get filled. But also, any metaphorical seeds of change you planted -- societal changes, technological advances, or even literal seeds of literal trees -- will sprout.
As a player...
You control an individual vampire. You have the option of playing from either a third-person view or a first-person view. You can play using a controller (recommended), or with a mouse and keyboard.
The main activity on offer are the VIP hunts. VIP hunts offer assassination-style challenges, but with a twist: as a vampire, you can do things humans can't -- and face obstacles humans don't. Physical barriers are no obstacle, but if your target sleeps under a religious symbol for protection at night, you'll need to either get someone to remove it, lure the target out of the room, or find a different opportunity.
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
Minimum:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Intel Core i7-8700
- Memory: 32 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 8 GB available space
Recommended
Recommended:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
Supported Languages
English
Latest news
AnnouncementsOfficial
Unreal Stabilizes (Until 2027)
As described in the previous post, Unreal Engine's constant and rapid evolution has kept me busy. As of now, though, UE5 in particular has reached its final major revision: 5.8. Until Epic releases UE6 a year from now, I've got a window of time in which my own efforts will not be superseded by engine upgrade concerns. Don't get me wrong: It was a good problem to have. I'm looking at the bright side of both situations.Read full article on Community Announcements (vahtishmac)AnnouncementsOfficial
Unseen Updates
Learning is not easy even under ideal circumstances. UE updates regularly, and each update brings new features that make development easier overall but require significant reworking on my end. This image became possible only recently, because Unreal did not support my face animation capture equipment until recently -- but the same update that added that support also broke something that took significant time to replace.Game dev takes longer than I ever planned for, but that's why I released to early access. I suppose I should update the store page to reflect this new outlook, but I still think that the game will reach 1.0 status in about a year, even though that's exactly what I thought over a year ago. My tools evolve so quickly that I often think I could have spent less time and effort overall on certain features by just waiting for Epic to give them to me.For anyone interested in the details of what I've been doing:I bought a Steam Deck and have gotten the game running on it. Unless a new device raises the floor of what the market considers to be reasonable hardware requirements, I'm targeting the Steam Deck as the bare minimum. I'd likely continue to do so even if that does happen, so long as the Deck proves able to deliver.I've been refactoring my code base with an eye toward forward compatibility with Unreal Engine's evolution, because I've had my progress stalled too many times by the need to drastically rework something to make the game compatible with the latest version. I could always just pick a version and stick with it, but so far it's been less effort to just let Epic keep solving my problems for me, and that's with the effort of reworking included.Lots of design, prototyping, and experimentation that doesn't translate well to announcements on Steam. One benefit of being a lone developer is that I don't need to create slide shows and storyboards to communicate my vision to the programming team, because I am the programming team.All I have left to do to...Read full article on Community Announcements (vahtishmac)Patch NotesOfficial
Next Update: Appearance
Next update (not the smaller patch released today) replaces the default character model with one generated via UE5's MetaHuman.Read full article on Community Announcements (vahtishmac)Patch NotesOfficial
Added "Enhancement" abilities
Patch notes: "Enhancement" abilities added to Abilities menu in the "Other" section. "Enhancements OFF" is the default. "Enhancements ON" increases running speed, jump height ceiling (when using jump height scaling), and throw distance. "Enhancements OVERDRIVE" enables high-speed dodging and attacking, which costs energy, which is why it's a separate setting. NPCs do not currently react to any of these enhancements.Read full article on Community Announcements (vahtishmac)Patch NotesOfficial
Small update experimenting with combat controls
Patch notes: Added new instructions that appear when in combat mode ("Attack" ability) if guide is on. Use movement and camera inputs while holding attack button to perform moves.Read full article on Community Announcements (vahtishmac)
