This was a really interesting story. I can't speak to the accuracy of the therapy, but I've heard that the terms used are accurate and that it's developed in consultation with real therapists, so I assume it's legit. I personally found the stories and characters fascinating and compelling. I also really enjoyed the interspersed vampire jokes acting as comic relief for often quite heavy subject matter.

I started playing this with my partner but she quickly got bored and I continued alone, so it's not for everyone, but I found the details of cognitive distortions very interesting.

Note that this is a VN, it's not really a game; there's interactivity in that you occasionally steer the conversations with choices, and you're invited to identify the cognitive distortions being displayed by the vampires as you talk to them, but that's about the limit of the gameplay.

I'd recommend this if you're interested in stories about vampire psychology.

I almost never leave reviews but felt somewhat obligated to write this one. Despite the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed this game and am giving it a thumbs up, I am only really leaving this review to say that it absolutely will NOT appeal to everyone, and there are some things that should be made 100% clear to you before you decide to buy it.

Most importantly, this is probably the most on rails visual novel I have ever played. You are moving from point A to B in the story no matter what happens, with no input on the proceedings whatsoever. Not only that, there are no fail states either; you cannot lose at Vampire Therapist and you are not punished for wrong answers in therapy sessions (you are rewarded for repeated successes with achievements though, for what it's worth.) I saw a negative review that summed this issue up quite well by calling it a quiz edutainment game more than anything else. It's not that the game doesn't have more to offer than that in terms of character or narrative, but that is absolutely the core gameplay loop of Vampire Therapist and needless to say this all ends up hurting replayability.

Another small issue with the game that ties back to my first point is that because the game is so incredibly on rails your playtime is going to depend almost entirely on your reading speed. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I think most people who play this kind of game can generally read at a fairly decent pace so you might not end up taking very long to complete all of the content. You can see this in some of the positive steam reviews for the game with some people having evidently completed it in four hours or less. This is most apparent with the two free DLCs, which despite being said to take approximately 30 minutes each are not very difficult to read through in five to ten.

Lastly, in my very subjective opinion, the humor is also somewhat hit and miss. It is absolutely capable of being a very funny game, but that is not a rule. Most egregious in my opinion are a few jokes that end up dating the game, usually bits that refer to some kind of specific event from recent years in our time period. The game is small enough in scope that I imagine not many people will be playing it ten years from now, but if someone does something like that will absolutely feel very dated. Again, this is the most subjective part of the review by far, though.

I probably made the game sound pretty bad with these three points, so let me be clear in saying that I still very much enjoyed it. It is well written, usually funny, has a cast of interesting characters who all have enjoyable, complex personalities, and probably most importantly clearly has a lot of love put into it. Even though there are certainly elements that I did not entirely appreciate, that is not to say that there is nothing good about Vampire Therapist.

If all of the negatives that I listed out do not sound objectionably bad to you, I would recommend giving this a try.

I'm about halfway through the game and I think the trailer offered more than I've got. The therapy sessions sure must be really educational (I guess), but outside of therapy, nothing happens in the game: same two rooms, same 3 or 4 NPCs who do nothing and you can only smalltalk to them without any point; the main character's cowboy-talk and cowboy-manner sounds annoying and artificial (I never liked westerns), and the boss therapist is an unquestionable unfallible authority, which is a bit old-fashioned attitude now in the 21st century (who believes every word of a person without a doubt? what makes anyone to be such an authority?)

I tried to enjoy at least the therapy sessions, but I struggle with boredom, most likely will uninstall without completing.