• Price: $19.99 USD (currently on sale for $17.99 until March 7th)
• Developer: Party for Introverts
• Publisher: Akupara Games
• Release Date: February 20, 2025

A review code was kindly provided by Akupara Games on behalf of Party for Introverts. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Content warning: Rated T; “explores heavy subjects including alcoholism, social conflict, death, and suicide.” Cartoon violence + blood and gore. Minor gambling scenes. Police brutality.

I must confess that while I’m fairly familiar with the many vampires in pop culture, I usually don’t consume much media about them because I’m pretty squeamish about blood. But there are times I’m willing to go out of my comfort zone, and I’m sure glad I did with Cabernet, a 2D choice-driven narrative RPG about vampires in Eastern Europe in the late 1800s.

Our story opens with the funeral of our heroine, Elizaveta Morozova – or Liza for short. One of the first female doctors in the country, she died tragically young in her early twenties. You’ll make a few selections as the eulogy goes on, which affect Liza’s beginning stats. There are 4 stat categories to manage: Music & Arts, Literature & Writing, Science & Logic, and History & Politics.

The scene then shifts to Liza, who somehow remains in existence… She wakes up in a dark locked room, with a bucket of blood next to the bed. Sufficiently creeped out, she makes decisions that help her to escape the room and runs into the people who will help her come to terms with her new “unlife” as a vampire.

These people include the influential Countess, her servant Hussar, and Doctor Volkov, Liza’s new mentor. As you talk to them, you’ll have to choose between dialogue options; your choices will improve your relationships with some people and worsen them with others.

Some dialogue choices require a minimum stat value, relationship level, or morality level. Liza has a morality meter that’s divided in two parts: humanity or nihilism. If you choose to steal, that increases your nihilism level, or if you comfort someone, that would increase your humanity. The meters are separate, and increasing one side doesn’t decrease the other.

You are introduced to a few of the game’s systems like this, as well as your first vampire ability: turning into a bat to fly around! Then you’re whisked away to your new home in a small town, where you’ll help the doctor with his patients and research.

I never thought I’d say this, but sadly Liza is not a vampire in the style of Twilight, so she can’t go out during the day and dazzle everyone with her sparkly skin. 😂 As such, all of her activity is restricted to nighttime, and you must get her back to her room before dawn – otherwise she’ll be “really most sincerely dead.”

One of Liza’s first assignments is to complete a task for the Countess by sneaking into someone’s house. True to vampire legend, she’ll need an invitation to enter, so you must go out and make nice with the townspeople to secure one.

The town is fairly small, but there’s a lot to do in this game. While working on the main quest objectives, you can explore the town and meet new characters to unlock their side quests and storylines. Befriend people by making the right choices, giving them gifts, or by making purchases from their store.

Funnily enough, the town feels more alive because the townspeople will often say something to you as you walk by them, and there are little details like tiny bugs flying around. When you’re flying around as a bat (which I often did to get somewhere faster), if you fly low enough the people nearby will even react!

Most of the people you meet are quite likable, and the fully voiced dialogue does a wonderful job of conveying the characters’ personalities. Hussar and Alisa were probably my favorite characters, as well as Faina and a character who’s close to her. You have the option to romance male and/or female characters as part of their storylines, with silly fade-to-black moments for kissing or beyond.

Some of the actions you take will cost you an action point, which advances time. If you have to press and hold to start an interaction, that’s something that will consume an action point. But there are some conversations that don’t make time pass, so before using up all of your points for the night you should check to see what all you can do.

You’ll earn experience points – and often coins or stat increases – for completing objectives in either the main storyline or side quests. (I really appreciate that the objectives and timelines are pretty clear!) Once added up, the experience points increase your rank, which allows you to distribute points into the stats on your character sheet.

There are additional methods of increasing your stats (both permanent and temporary). Reading in your apartment permanently increases the stat associated with that classic piece of literature. Checking Liza’s closet, she has outfits that will temporarily boost some of her stats once she changes.

I really like having different outfits and using them to manipulate my stats when I need a boost to be able to choose a dialogue option. You can earn money to buy new outfits as well as decor for your room, which is something else I love to see in games!

There’s a variety of ways to make money (some less ethical than others). You’ll need a decent amount of coins to pay for all of the options that ask for money. Besides money management, it’s also important to keep track of your blood levels. Enchant a friend to drink from them, buy bottled blood, or go hunting to remain sated.

I didn’t think it was terribly difficult to keep Liza’s blood levels up, although I did take advantage of an easy money making option to buy a lot of blood. Players are given the option to turn on “infinite blood mode,” which keeps Liza full at all times to make the experience easier (even if it is a “less authentic vampiric experience”).

You just have so many different ways to do things in Cabernet! I really enjoyed it. There are a few issues here and there; the other characters’ portraits are a bit blurry when close up, and I thought the text could’ve been larger in some places.

The quick time events also could have used some accessibility options, in my opinion, as some players may have trouble registering and then pressing which buttons they need to push in a timely manner. Additionally, I did notice a handful of crashes, but it didn’t affect me too much (especially with an auto save file in addition to the manual saves).

Cabernet has a couple of minor issues, but overall I absolutely loved it. There’s so much content and so many choices to make! I definitely plan on replaying it to see how the other choices affect each character. You can choose to be a good vampire who sometimes does bad things, or vice-versa. It was so much fun figuring out how to use Liza’s vampiric abilities to do something.

I found the artistic quality of the game to be incredibly impressive with the way they combined the character and environment designs as well as the voice acting and soundtrack. I also really appreciated the detailed glossary section with interesting information on history and folklore.

The writing is clever, and I loved having an independent female character who breaks the mold for her time period. I didn’t expect where they took the story over the game’s 7 chapters. It seems like there are 2 main endings, with the better one giving us closure on what happens to each character. Cabernet is a “FANG-tastic” experience that I highly recommend, and I hope to see more from Party for Introverts in the future. ⭐️

9/10