Review: Nighthawks
Nighthawks marks the first release from writer Richard Cobbett's micro-studio The Curiosity Engine, and the first game from publisher Wadjet Eye Games which falls outside of their usual point-and-click remit. They've not strayed too far from the path – it's still an adventure RPG, just a text–based one: think Fallen London (which, funnily enough, Cobbett previously wrote for) or the Citizen Sleeper series.
I think it's fair to say that the game has been a long time in the making – eight years ago today it was in the midst of its Kickstarter campaign aiming for a 2020 release, and only now is it finally seeing the light of day… or not, because, you know: vampires. That's not an insignificant amount of time for the less immortal of the game's backers, so, was the wait worth it now that there is finally something for them to sink their teeth into? (Fair warning: these aren't going to stop.)
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Developer: The Curiosity Engine
Publisher: Wadjet Eye Games
Release: 22 Septmber 2026
Retail Price (Steam): 16,79€/$19.99/£15.49
You begin Nighthawks in a brand new city, as a – by their standards – brand new vampire: just six months after your death, still barely used to your fangs and lack of pulse. You only find yourself in Cradlebridge as you're trying to track down another vampire, Elijah Morrow, a man who was turned by the same sire as yourself – and who seemingly has no interest in being found, fully aware that neither yourself nor that sire are best pleased with some of his recent actions.
While Morrow is skulking in the shadows somewhere, the same can't be said for the rest of his species: as of around eight years ago the secret is well and truly out, and many-a-vampire is making the most of their newly-found freedom – instead of keeping themselves hidden away from the rest of the world, they can now stalk the night proudly, running antique shops, government institutions, and, of course, nightclubs.
That does, naturally, come with some issues: primarily large swathes of the human population who are not particularly pleased to be sharing the streets with what they might refer to as 'coldbloods'. Even the more polite humans (those who would instead use the term 'revenants') are, perhaps rightly, apprehensive about your kind: sure, some of them might be alright – only sourcing their blood ethically, and attempting to live benevolent deaths – but it's difficult to ignore the more dangerous (and murderous) acts committed by other members of your community… potentially, depending on how you'd like to play the game, yourself included.
Your new home in particular is something of a powerkeg in that regard: a city ostensibly offering vampires amnesty and a fresh start, and quite clearly struggling under the weight of that promise – any vampire who arrives hoping for easy and trouble-free nights will have to get to grips with a reality as cold as their blood is. And if you think the humans are something to worry about, just wait until you meet your fellow undead, some of whom have had hundreds of years to learn all the best ways to screw a person over. You'll try – and most likely fail – to avoid that, all while attempting to carve yourself a little corner of Cradlebridge to safely call home, hoping that your choices don't come back to bite you in the…. neck.
Image: The Curiosity Engine / Wadjet Eye Games
The first of those choices are made out-of-character, via a short character creation screen, where you pick four cards to determine your vampiric background. Who was the vampire that made you one themselves? What ancient lineage did they hail from? Which sphere of knowledge are you most well-versed in?
Each of those choices significantly impacts the game: they might, for example, make you an expert in seduction or significantly more intimidating, and your area of expertise will provide you with special choices that are otherwise unavailable, but, arguably most important of all is the fourth choice: which hidden Gift your vampire possesses.
Because, as public as vampires have become, there are still some secrets they'd like to keep in the shadows: such as being able to meld into those shadows, or mesmerise weak-minded humans to do their bidding, or see echoes of the recently deceased. Not all vampires have these Gifts, and you'll only ever get one, so you need to make your choice carefully. Each offers unique opportunities in-game, all of which are tantalisingly shown to you, even when you didn't select them: almost mocking you with a "wouldn't it be nice if you could just turn into shadows right now."
Even with that, blissfully for an RPG, I never found myself regretting my decision enough that I felt the need to go back and reroll my character a couple of hours in, content with the choices I'd made for my past and accepting the opportunities that did or didn't provide.
Image: The Curiosity Engine / Wadjet Eye Games
If you strip everything else – the excellent art from Wadjet Eye veteran Ben Chandler, the wonderful, moody, soundtrack from other Wadjet Eye veteran Thomas Regin, the talents of well over 30 voice actors – you're left with a text-based adventure that the game lives and dies (and dies again?) by. I'm a big fan of almost all of that art and music and acting, but the writing is always going to be the most important aspect of a game like this: the foundations upon which everything else is built.
Given that the city's denizens are as coldhearted as they come – at least the ones you're spending the majority of your time associating with – you could be forgiven for thinking they'd be difficult to sympathize with, but I'm failing to think of a game that has made me care about its characters as much as Nighthawks did, which makes it all the more painful when, inevitably, bad things happen involving those characters – or, in a few instances, all the more satisfying.
And this is a big game – there's over 800,000 words in Nighthawks, my share of which took over thirty hours to get through – I'd argue that there are games out there which boast similarly massive word counts and have gone for quantity over quality: Nighthawks is dead proof that the two are not mutually exclusive. Some of that time was spent a little leisurely – towards the end of a couple of the game's acts I might've spent more time than I needed to tying up loose ends and otherwise seeking out trouble, and I probably didn't need to map out the city's sewer system in its entirety, but that thirty hours feels more-or-less representative of what players can expect from a single playthrough.
Image: The Curiosity Engine / Wadjet Eye Games
I think it's worth having a quick aside to cover what this game isn't, given that it was apparently horny enough that Valve (at least for a couple of days) mistakenly decided it was worthy of the 'Adults Only' tag typically reserved for illustrious titles such as Room 404: Erotic Massage or Sex, Secrets & Used Tech. (Note: I'm not a pervert, these were the example products Steam showed me.)
To quote Cobbett himself: "anyone playing Nighthawks expecting lots of sex and nudity will leave very disappointed. Any sexy scenes are text only, and the few scenes with nudity are presented with strategically placed props and hands covering up the naughty bits."
That's not to say it shies away from the subject, there's plenty of debauchery going on in the city, a lot of which you can choose to partake in should you so wish, but seeing a pair of buttocks here or there is about as risqué as it'll get. Should you engage in such behaviour, you'll not find graphic descriptions of what's going down and will instead be treated to a tasteful fade to black: Cobbett is British, after all. You'll spend a lot more time encountering things that are dark, disturbing, and – thankfully, in the midst of all that – humorous, than you will things that are erotic: so depending on what exactly you're after you may or may not find it here.
Image: The Curiosity Engine / Wadjet Eye Games
All the characters in Nighthawks are fully voiced, and I really enjoyed the majority of those performances, which, as fantastic as I think the writing is, really bring the game to life.
With that said, there were a couple of characters which I personally found somewhat testing to listen to, both for reasons that I think were entirely avoidable. Should you find yourself similarly bothered you can easily skip through the lines of any offending characters and practice the age-old art of reading: it's a shame that those took me out of a game where everything else was working so well at drawing me in – at allowing me to get lost in its world – but a miss rate of two out of, by my count, over sixty named and voiced characters is far from a big problem, and is more than made up for by the likes of loveable street urchin Agatha (Angel Rey), creepy bookseller Maze (Patrick Langner), or don't-let-her-hear-you-call-her-a-psychopath-even-though-she-clearly-is-and-actually-thinking-about-it-probably-wouldn't-care Monika Veil (Amelia Tyler), to name but a few.
I really enjoyed my time in Nighthawks: enough that I'm incredibly tempted to dive right back in and sink another couple of weeks worth of evenings on a 'complete arsehole' run, where I act entirely like the monster that I spent so much of my first playthrough trying to convince everyone I wasn't. I'm interested to see how far the writing might let me take that, but, at the very least, it might be more cathartic to show a little less mercy to those who were quite clearly never going to give it to me.
It's easily one of my favourite games this year and a must-play for fans of text-based RPGs, particularly if you like your stories with a little more… bite.
Nighthawks is awarded an 9/10 by IndieLoupe.com.
The reviewed product was provided on behalf of the publisher.
