Vampires aren’t like other monsters. They aren’t brainless corpses shambling towards their next meal, or fearsome beasts stalking their prey on animal instinct alone. No, vampires are traditionally more dangerous than your average creature: They’re members of an elite class. We’re talking about immortal bloodsuckers who hide in plain sight, quietly using their charisma to manipulate people and influence the world around them. They aren’t threatening because they have gnashing teeth and sharp claws; they’re threatening because they mirror humanity’s true monsters.
Cabernet can smell that fear. Released this past February on all major platforms, Cabernet is a narrative RPG developed by Party for Introverts. It’s a 19th-century vampire story about a freshly turned monster discovering her new life among a high society class of killers. Though it doesn’t have the production value of this year’s big-budget Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2, Cabernet stands tall as 2025’s best vampire game because it’s one that understands the underlying horrors that lurk in our world’s very real power structures.
Cabernet centers on Liza, a young doctor who is turned into a vampire after her tragic death. Her new life begins with a transformation, but it isn’t the horrifying one you might expect. Instead, she wakes up in a manor midway through a high class gala. That’s our introduction into the world of vampires: expensive suits, elegant dresses, and a feast fit for a royal family. It’s immediately intoxicating, as Liza enters a world that promises riches and power.
I don’t just mean power in an abstract sense; Liza also obtains powers as part of her transformation. Cabernet turns as much vampire lore as it can into clever gameplay. Liza can turn into a bat to get around town quicker, turn invisible, hypnotize people with song, and influence people’s thoughts with her mind. And, of course, she can suck blood out of ripe necks too. Feeding on someone isn’t as simple as sneaking up on them and taking a bite. Liza has to win them over in conversation to raise her relationship level with a person. Once that’s high enough, she’ll earn their trust and be able to persuade them to join her in a secluded space. Then she needs to sing to them to put them to sleep, take a bite, and make sure to take just enough blood to top off her hunger meter without killing the person or sipping too much and entering a drunk state.
All of those supernatural skills stand in contrast to Cabernet’s more human RPG elements. Liza has stats like “history and politics” that help her keep up in everyday conversations and pass skill checks as she completes quests for each of the town’s residents. (Different dresses give her stat modifiers, and reading books can boost her knowledge too.) She may be a monster, but she’s only a freshly turned one who still remembers what it’s like to be human.
That tension pumps blood into Cabernet’s veins. The story centers around Liza’s fight to keep her humanity intact as she falls deeper and deeper into a vampire society that preys on a town’s most vulnerable people. Her struggle is represented in a morality meter, where Liza’s dialogue choices can either give her humanity or nihilism points. She needs a bit of both to survive in the world. Humanity allows her to empathize with people and help them with their problems, but nihilism allows her to use her powers in more seedy ways to get the cash and blood she needs to survive. The more desperate she becomes to maintain her lifestyle, the more of herself she loses as she begins to treat humans as disposable blood bags.
I felt that moment myself after a failed mission. I had struck up a friendship with an eccentric poet over the first few hours of the game, who I grew a genuine fondness for. I helped him with his problems, and in exchange for those services, I turned him into an unwitting snack who I could feed on anytime I got hungry. (Let’s call it a symbiotic relationship.) His multi-step questline eventually circled toward a duel that I needed to stop if I wanted to keep him alive. Unfortunately, I lost track of the game’s calendar and missed the deadline to intervene. I woke up one day to word that he had been shot dead, and immediately sunk into despair — not because a friend had died, but because I had lost my meal ticket. I, as a player, had lost my humanity too.
Cabernet toys with that dynamic throughout its roughly 10-hour runtime, pulling both Liza and the player deeper into the allure of vampire high society. People with real problems become vulnerable prey whose weaknesses can be easily exploited. It becomes more and more tempting to betray those people’s trust and good will towards Liza in order to keep her lifestyle sustained. There are other ways to get her fill, like hunting down rabbits in the wilderness and draining them instead, but isn’t it easier to just manipulate some sad sack? Cabernet asks if it’s possible to have untold power without getting corrupted in the process.
That question turns Cabernet into a particularly meaty bit of vampire fiction that goes beyond a supernatural monster tale. It’s an RPG about keeping hold of your humanity rather than buffing your stats. It’s up to you to decide if all hope is lost for Liza, and where you end up once the credits roll around will say more about you than her.
