Vampire Therapist

Steam Reviews

Read all reviews on Steam

• Recommended Posted July 4, 2025 on Steam This is not just a game, it is a therapy session in itself, if you can see it. Less than 30 minutes in, I realized I use labeling on myself and will now try to avoid doing it! Awesome!
• Recommended Posted December 18, 2025 on Steam Just completed the main route for the first time, and man, what a ride it's been. This was [b] great [/b]. The voice acting, the educational value, the growth in each character... Every aspect I can think of is polished and full of love, and above all, [spoiler] compassion <3 [/spoiler] I've brought this game up to my therapist and how much it has helped me, I think it's yet another amazing tool in my toolbox to work on myself and improve bit by bit (not a substitute for therapy though ofc!!) Amazing experience, can't wait to revisit it in the future <3
• Recommended Posted July 22, 2025 on Steam [h1]So Should you buy this game?[/h1] YES: -If you like visual novels. -If you like quirky characters, vampires and good voice acting. -If you are inquisitive and empathetic and can handle some drama. -If you wanted a grounded, more serious narrative. -If you feel unsure about the main character, consider giving the game 45-60 minutes and consider then. If that’s the case and the premise sounds good to you, get the game it’s absolutely worth it. NO If you plan to play it on the steam deck with a controller (TV Mode). You plan to play the game with a controller on the couch. You expect a flawless input experience but don’t use mouse&keyboard. You expect a weird-west story. Inputs are wonky, the game might bug out occasionally on them. Praiseworthy are the writing and storytelling. It’s a game which very well might linger in your mind after completion because it delivers on narrative experience. Go play it if you’re unsure. However don’t play with a controller, best play with mouse controls. Seriously play if the title sounded intriguing to you. The 90%+ positive reviews are there for a very good reason, if the title spoke to you you’re the audience for this game. At this point the review is over, I will fill the rest with some in-depth thoughts after playing. No great game is free of criticism. [hr][/hr] [h3]Main Character:[/h3] Samuel Walls is a cowboy. Not the type of person which is feeding into the vampire or therapist fantasy. After playing the entire game he makes sense. I tapped into this trap from the marketing material, thought it’s more an unserious “haha” type of story and without information I connected this with “Weird West”. I was unsure if this now would get into pure pulp/ satire take or just poke fun – definitely not what THIS game should feel like for the first exposure and after experiencing it I am sad that this was my first misguided impression. The game is very aware of what it does, but the initial reaction on my behalf I also could observe in many people I showed the game since. Sam simply doesn’t sell the game very well. Not the fact that he is a cowboy, but the way he looks and sounds and how the firs timpression misses. [h3]The elephant in the room: Technology:[/h3] The coding of the game is quite poor and there are many game-breaking bugs. Testing done didn’t really seem to Q&A beyond playing through the game. Once you plug in any gamepad you’re in for a rough run. A few of the issues I encountered: -Menu can be opened and operated when the initial black-screen comes on the screen, you already have full control. -Visual hints on gamepad input being to subtle (e.g. choosing buttons or save files). -Touch controls on deck more than once took another button / save game as the one I wanted. -No prevention of pressing two buttons at once, the game gets confused. Being unable to bring up the distortion menu or interact with it in a lot of occasions. Please do some professional in-depth Q&A the next time around. -There is even a truly game-breaking bug appearing about 2/3rds into the game when you unlock “Blaming” at this point you simply cannot progress with a gamepad. Honestly I was pretty close to turn that review for this bug initially negative, as it’s game-breaking in nature and the steam-deck rating says “playable”. Sorry if you can’t play through it full yon deck and you already encountered about 10 other bugs on the way there which either required loading or restarting the game, it’ snot what I expect. -On the controller you cannot open your journal book without interacting with the textboxes. Pretty big problem, which takes away a thing you might need, especially early on. -Wrong shaders applied in the book UI, at some point in the early story as I opened it in the first actor arc, the default pink material showed in it for information not uncovered yet. -In the first of the 3 additional post added free content drops, the layering in the office room is garbled and Andy will appear behind the window light effect. -In the menu running the credits will display them behind the additional content and therefore they are unreadable. [h2]Spoiler territory:[/h2] [b]DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED THE GAME[/b] [spoiler] The Only point which bugs me about the narrative: “Disclosure”. So actually after every session Sam goes to the bar, and talks with the barkeeper about his clients. The BARKEEPER. At the bar! Man… what should I say. Sam doesn’t name his clients, but gives enough hints who it is and it’s a pretty big sticky point for me in the story which I really and truly don’t like about this game and me really uncomfortable. The point that disclosure later is brought up in the talks with Andy about some secret just puts the cherry. It’s hypocrisy. As nice as Sam is otherwise, how this could slip in a game which approaches the topic so seriously is totally beyond me. I get it from a design standpoint, but there had to be a better solution. 5 selected flaws/holes/opportunities/observations in the story I want to bring up: -Meddy is a vampire from the Bronze Age which is by now 1800 years old. Her client sheet say that much and the age is a constant point in the story. The problem: Bronze Age was from 2200BC to 800 BC. That’s a miss of a 1000-2000 years. Andy is from the Bronze Age! Meddy definitely not, this needs to be addressed and corrected. -Vampire blood stops ageing and heals/stops cancer but doesn’t regenerate bodies/bodyparts. Ok… that’s a bit weird I could agree on it if there would be a clean explanation. Especially weird since at some point Sam literally pulls out the gun and says then “the next months won’t be comfortable if I fire this” or something along those lines. So do vampires have human healing capabilities? What’s the internal logical explanation here? The game doesn’t explain it and the basic lore that vampires can regenerate are definitely explained away. But it simply left me scratching my head. Looking at Bert and the DLC characters, the is no clear thought out rule-set to this it seems. -In the actor arc, it’s brought up that the mother of him was an actress herself. Acting was seen as “dishonest” work for the longest time throughout western history, performed either by men (e.g. original Nosferatu movie), or if performed by women who got stigmatized and put in a specific social group for it. So it’s then even more interesting, that we get that flavour of this “dishonest” work reflected with feelings and everything back at us in the actors narrative and how he felt, but the whole impact it probably had on his mother gets conveniently clamped out and is not even talked about. This is what I call an insanely big missed historical opportunity. -Breathing/Meditating : vampires are dead. They don’t have a heartbeat. Do they breathe? Do they mediate with breathing? Again something which is overthinking the gameplay indiction, just a funny thought to consider. -German Grammar: in the DLC the crypt vampire first slings an insult, than uses either plural or what one would know as third person polite form. From a historical standpoint the derogatory term doesn’t fit, from a contemporary standpoint the second half of the sentence would look different. I understand the difficulty to get it right, but it’s a bit awkward if you know the language. [/spoiler] [h2]A Personal Conclusion:[/h2] I loved Vampire Therapist. It made me think and I engaged with the game on a deeper level than I engage with many stories of other games. Here is not only something to be said, but also humour and human experience. The love and will to make this game can be felt. That’s what I want to feel from the games I play. For me Vampire Therapist goes directly in the category “a bit flawed, but really cool concept worth to be loved for what it is”. I also want to congratulate the developer on finishing it and the many positives and well done things for one of their first games. I am up for part 2.
• Recommended Posted June 2, 2026 on Steam Most of the time the purpose of the videogames we play is fun. It can be clever fun or stupid fun but fun nonetheless. But it happens sometimes to find a game that is enjoyable and is also able to teach you [i]lots[/i] of useful things. Vampire Therapist might seem just another visual novel about vampires, but it's way more than that: the story is made by therapy sessions where you can learn actual psychology patterns, backed by real studies and real psychologist. Despite having different problems (dang I wish I was a bored immortal vampire too, but I digress) the characters' stories and traumas are often very relatable and grounded in reality. And while you know them more, you also know yourself more. It also happened to me to speak with a friend today and recognising cognitive distortions I had learned in the game... it's not something that happens every day. The voice actors do a very compelling job to characterize our vampires and the story is told in an open and mature way. I seriously recommend this game to whoever has the slightest interest in psychology or [i]horny bisexual vampires[/i]. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3735064836
• Recommended Posted February 10, 2026 on Steam Pretty good. Very interesting concept. I lov the art style and the simple animations. As someone with a BG in Psychology though, I have a few issues with some of the psych. stuff; but they are so minor I don't even think about them when I'm playing the game. The theory and the cognitons are all accurate and the use of them is really well applied. It's got a campy/cringy/self-awareness vibe that I just love
• Recommended Posted January 8, 2026 on Steam I completed this game last night and loved it! I feel like this is one that I will return to because of the educational value when it comes to Cognitive Distortions. I've worked with my therapist IRL on some of these and I found it so useful to see actual examples of them and their variations. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3642078874 [u] What I Loved [/u] [list] [*] It's fully voice acted and the artwork is lovely. [*] It's framed as therapy for vampires, and it totally works for digging into the more risque topics. I felt like it also added a bit of levity and humor to the game which deals with some pretty strong cognitive distortions. [*] All of the characters are so unique! I loved getting to see the various personalities and how they grew over the course of the game. The stories are all insightful, and Sam's in particular was really heartfelt. [*] The various types of cognitive distortions are taught to you slowly - I appreciated this because I felt like it gave me a better grasp of each one before more were introduced. [*] The game doesn't punish you for picking the wrong distortions (unless you're going for achievements). If you pick the wrong thing it gives you a hint or reminder so you can try again. I felt like this really helped to reinforce what each one was. [*] Loved that there's a fast forward through dialogue option. I used this on my second playthrough to get the achievements I missed and skip to Meddy's scenes to play through them all over again as she was my favorite of all the characters. I could see using this feature to play through other parts again as well, because while there is some overlap in the distortions, each one has a different primary distortion. [/list] [u] What I Wished Was Better [/u] [list] [*] The mini-games. The vampire biting was kind of meh and some of the bite spots seemed off. The meditation mini-game was more interesting, but it took me forever to figure out why I couldn't progress (it turns out the game was glitching because I had a controller plugged in in addition to my mouse and keyboard, once I unplugged the controller everything went smoothly.) [*] The DLC. I appreciated what the DLC was trying to do, but none of the stories felt nearly as in depth to me as the base game. I feel like it's still worth playing through but it felt a little disappointing. [/list] Highly recommend for anyone who likes learning, vampires, and/or visual novels. This is a game that's going to linger with me for a while and as mentioned, definitely one I can see myself replaying either as a whole or in parts. The love and thought that went into this game were obvious and I truly appreciated the balance it found between humor and painfully relateable mental health struggles. My review of the DLC: [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/starrymynx/recommended/3320590?snr=1_5_9__402] Couples Therapy [/url] For more reviews check out the [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45071674-Under-Starry-Skies/] Under Starry Skies [/url] curator page!