The Vampires

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

The Vampires, elsewhere referred to simply by the title Vampires!, is a family-friendly physics-based Puzzle game released on PC in 2017 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2022. In each level of this game, players must remove blocks in such a way that a rolling vampire head comes into contact with all of the rolling human heads in each level, thus turning them into vampire heads as well.

While this talk of rolling heads may sound macabre, in practice it’s anything but, with said heads being cartoony and emotionless, and really only stand-ins used as a shorthand – you want this circle to touch that circle, but not that other circle. The colorful cartoony visuals are not especially well-drawn, seeming a lot like an old-fashioned mobile game from the Angry Birds era, and that with the physics-based nature of the game definitely evokes that particular era of gaming. This is backed by a generic atmospheric “spooky” soundtrack and stock “mua ha ha” laughs every time you turn a human into a vampire. As you might imagine, this combines to make this game seem pretty cheap in its presentation.

That’s not to say there’s no fun to be had here. This game finds creative directions to take its puzzles, with priest heads that kill you if you touch them, but can be killed by werewolf heads, which turn back and forth into human heads depending on whether an on-screen moon is being hidden by blocks. And of course you’ll find a lot of swinging ropes that need to be cut in the right order at the right time. Again, if you’ve played the games of the era this title is evoking (such as… er… Cut the Rope), this will seem pretty familiar to you.

There are a few issues here. First, the game can be a bit slow-paced at times, with the rolling heads rolling pretty slowly with no way to speed them up. Even worse, this is a game that seems absolutely designed for a touchscreen, yet the touchscreen isn’t supported here. Instead, you have to move around an on-screen cursor (which thankfully has an adjustable speed in the game’s menus, but this still seems less than ideal.

In the end, for a mere $5, this is an okay physics-based Puzzle game, but it’s nothing truly groundbreaking, and the lack of touchscreen controls definitely seems like a major oversight. Still, if you’re looking for a family-friendly Halloween-themed Puzzle game, this might make a decent time-waster.

tl;dr – The Vampires is a family-friendly physics-based Puzzle game where players try to remove blocks to get a cartoony vampire head to roll into each level’s cartoony human heads. This game evokes some classic mobile Puzzle games, and it’s not especially original. Additionally, it lacks the touchscreen controls that this game seems like it would have been designed for. However, for only $5, it still may make for a decent time-waster.

Grade: C

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