Cabernet

In an unnamed Eastern European town in the late 1800s, it all begins with Nadezhda burying her recently deceased daughter Elizaveta Morozova, during the funeral we basically get to choose how Elizaveta or Liza as she is called for simplicity's sake will be remembered in the eulogy. It soon turns out that this will be the basis for what characteristics Liza will start her new undead life as a vampire with. She then wakes up in a coffin in a dark basement and of course is confused as hell. To be honest, I wasn't entirely on board at first either, but when she sneaks around the dark basement and realises that she can no longer see her reflection, the proverbial penny dropped for me. I like to be surprised and there are definitely advantages to starting games without any knowledge of them sometimes.

After being let out of the basement by some unidentified entity that demanded a favour which it will collect sooner or later, she takes her first tentative steps and meets a bunch of other vampires who give her good advice. Liza, who is smart and well educated, is also given accommodation and an apprenticeship with Dr Volkov, who is a vampire himself and who also happened to be the one who turned her in the first place, and his motives seem to be good, at least on the face of it.

Another interesting aspect is that many of the choices you make during the game give either Humanity or Nihilism points. For example, if you find money lying around somewhere, you get Humanity points if you leave the money lying around and Nihilism points if you choose to steal it instead. In short, it is about good actions versus evil actions. This also occurs in dialogues and the question is whether Liza, who is basically extremely good-hearted, will manage to continue to be so or whether the darkness will take over. It is entirely up to you as a player to decide this, I myself find it difficult to be evil and usually choose the good path, but in this case I have tried to balance it a bit and see what the outcome will be in the end. But with that said, it would be fun to play through one more time and see how it ends if I choose to be only good or evil.

There is a lot of dialogue and thus a lot of role-playing, as it is very much about building relationships and that is important for several reasons. On the one hand, Liza needs to get close enough to her intended victims to be able to enchant them before she can take a sip of blood and live on, but a deeper relationship also has more advantages that can ultimately benefit her. The better the relationship, the more likely they are to open up and reveal secrets or Liza might get an item that could prove useful. All dialogue choices have an impact so it is important to think about what is chosen as this can make or break the relationship. The more Liza gets to know someone, the more we also learn about them as their biography is continuously updated in the menu.

The Cabernet from which the game takes its name is not a Cabernet Sauvignon as a wine connoisseur might think at first glance, but it is the vampires' own code word for the blood they sell in the bars. It's a good option if you choose to play nice, but it's expensive and it's usually more worthwhile to charm a human victim and drink their blood, even if it does have a negative impact on your humanity. There are also places that sell Cabernet of inferior quality, so beware if it is suddenly a little cheaper, it is probably wise not to let stinginess deceive wisdom in those cases. However, there is another option if you don't want to bite people or buy expensive Cabernet and that is to simply go out to the forest and look for, for example, a hare, but since they don't have nearly as much blood as a full-grown human, you need to nibble several of them to satisfy your hunger. It probably goes without saying that drinking someone else's blood damages your relationship with them, they won't remember the whole thing because they were enchanted at the time, but subconsciously they seem to sense that there's something fishy about you and it becomes a relationship you may need to repair.

Cabernet is incredibly atmospheric. It really feels like I'm in an Eastern European city in the 19th century. The fact that, as a vampire, you can only go out in the evening and at night adds to that feeling. It's cosy, but at the same time a bit creepy to wander around at night and explore. Then I realise that Liza is a vampire and there's not much that can actually threaten her, apart from the mysterious entity that let her out of the basement when she first woke up in some anaemic state. It's certainly not a big city we get to explore and live in here as a newly hatched vampire, but even so, there's a surprising amount to do. There are so many little side quests that I don't really have time for them all. For example, I can take music lessons, have coffee with the adorable neighbour Faina and look for her cat, sort Dr Volkov's papers or run some small errands to the local shop for the aforementioned doctor. No big deal really, but it still feels like it all matters in the end even if it might just be my imagination.

In true role-playing spirit, you will also upgrade your abilities over time, because every time you level up a notch, you get new skill points to spend on four different categories, which are Music & Arts, Literature & Writing, Science & Logic and History & Politics. You can also gain additional skillpoints by reading books related to any of the four topics. All of these will be useful in their own way and if you have enough of one, you can unlock additional parts of a conversation and thus improve a relationship, while if you have too little of something, the outcome will be the opposite.

There isn't exactly a fast pace in Cabernet, but there is full focus on telling Liza's story and what you do most of is strolling around and talking to people. As mentioned earlier, there is a lot of dialogue in this, there is not really any type of combat and it is hardly possible to count the biting itself as that either. Luckily, the dialogue is very well written and even if not all voice actors deliver fully, the script certainly does. Because in addition to the well-written dialogue, it is also a very gripping and interesting story we get here, it never ceases to be exciting to guide Liza through her first time as a vampire. The side characters are also well written and often very likeable, which makes it difficult for me as I have to get to know them well first before I can cast a spell on them and then drink their blood. It feels wrong to bite someone who has become a friend, but at the same time it is also about Liza's survival. If there's a crisis, one's moral compass simply has to stand aside a little.

I can't really explain why all the time, but some games really suck you in right at the start screen before I even had time to get started. I didn't know anything about Cabernet beforehand but I could tell from the first frame that this was going to be a good one, that famous gut feeling is often right and Cabernet was no exception. It set the tone almost immediately and it was very hard to put down the controller for the 13+ hours it took to play through. Cabernet is a completely unique vampire story and it's really unlike anything else I've ever played. Party For Introverts has somewhat out of nowhere delivered perhaps the most original title of the year and has also executed it all with brilliance.