Nighthawks refers to a nightclub that the player will eventually own in this RPG visual novel hybrid, not a painting from the 1940’s. Artistically, there may be some overlap. You, the player, are a newly turned vampire who wakes up at the start of the story in a dingy and crappy apartment because, as all fans of the supernatural know, only witches are allowed to use brooms. These are the rules. Anywho, you came to this modern city a few months back looking for your sire and maybe to make a new go of it.
The premise actually feels reminiscent of a certain other vampire-themed tabletop game, and has some similarities with that world. The most notable is that you are a vampire in a gothic noir setting, trying to come up while dealing with the pitfalls of a civilized society. Also, you get to use guns and do gang-like stuff, which is pretty fun. Where the big disconnect between the two comes into play is that in Nighthawks, the veil of secrecy, as several of the characters allude to, has come down. The world is aware of you, so you are functionally navigating a world that sees you for what you have become.
This adds to the flavor of some of the story beats, such as often being asked about your vampire powers. I chose to be a corpsetalker, but there are few others to choose from at the start. Similarly, the Nighthawks cater to clientele both living and undead, and can even serve as a hunting ground for you when you develop the need to feed. Naturally, some individuals have formed a coalition of sorts to hunt down and kill vampires, something you can expect to contend with more than a few times. It’s an interesting dynamic that begs some questions, but the game is so well presented I barely care to dig deep into them.
What you need to know is that while Nighthawks is an RPG, the visual novel element is going to be the most front and center. There was a game I WANTED to compare it to, but I was told, for modesty, it was better not to. The point is, scenes play out with big blocks of text for narrative, then character dialog, all of which is voice acted, and then the player is presented with a choice or several to further the narrative. There is a fairly robust amount of reactions you can engage in, though it mostly comes down to following dialogue trees for more information.
The game has pretty simple character customization, with abilities that will lead to you having a different experience whichever way you go. I went with corpsetalking, which I semi-regretted given how deep into story beats it comes up, not to mention how it kinda doesn’t gel with how I like to play. The ability comes up mostly in investigations at select points, and at least twice I had drained my blood to the point I couldn’t use it, which is my point, but frustrating in the context of having no idea exactly when it is coming.
Other abilities allow you to control certain characters through puppet hypnosis, or control animals to do your bidding. These are most certainly not as classy as mine; I made a high society vampire, you peasants. They do come up a lot more from what I have seen, such as getting access to locations or checking off-limits files. Corpse-talking is more like you just walked into a room of dead people; do you want to know more? I do love just how often all the powers seem to come into play, making it feel impactful to have power over this choice, just that it is hard to gauge the choice’s value till much later.
Once past this, the game is very open-ended. The city has multiple districts to explore, with multiple locations within each. The game balances exploration with a time limit presented on the character’s phone and, unlike The Blood of the Dawnwalker, I actually liked this one. Mainly because everything has a time penalty, but they are more logical. Asking somebody about some part of their backstory costs a minute of your life you will never get back. This is far less than a taxi ride to another district, which will cost you about an hour.
It also helps that the story doesn’t have time restraints on completing its main tasks. Going to sleep passes the day of the week and the date of the month, but you jump right back into the task at hand without much concern. This is actually very good, as progression can be arguably the most confusing part of playing. You have a journal to keep track of everything, but the journey can run into a wall more than once or twice. This will have you running around town, burning hours trying to figure out the one interaction you need to make progress and continue on.
This said, the story has a lot of narratives that don’t feel overly tedious, and they are dynamic in how they occur. Any time you interact with characters, such as heading to the bar at your nightclub, there is a high chance you will get new dialog between one or more characters. The game is insanely well voiced, with every single character being able to pull you into even the most innocuous conversation with the personality on offer.
Heading to a new location also has a chance of something happening. Perhaps you just see a preacher shouting about the end times, listen to them, then move on. Other times you find yourself in a protest that will genuinely drag you down a series of very important choices before something major happens to change the city for the better or worse. Other times you find the start of some long-form new quest which might be easier to get through than others, or the same multipart theatrics that you are used to.
I love the narrative in this game, but it is important to note that Nighthawks doesn’t offer much in the way of hints. This means that when you do not have a clear-cut next step, it can be very hard to figure it out. Settings off beautifully crafted art that feels like cracking open a 90’s comic book, with a haunting 80s melodrama noir soundtrack over both. This makes getting lost in the pages fun and engaging. But with only a few fairly unchanging options in each place, you can start pulling your hair out in frustration.
This is best personified by the game’s hard-to-navigate sewer system, which lets players move north, south, east, and west, with exits needing to be found. It is hard to put into words just how easy you can hit the wrong direction and then never see a ladder to the surface again. You also need to occasionally deal with feral ghouls down here a lot, which adds another layer to the annoyance of being lost. I actually found it was easier to be defeated in combat, which loses you a day, instead of continuing to wander around aimlessly.
This, in a way, ties into the stat system, which is also unnecessarily confusing. I understand the sentiment of wanting to limit skill increases, but at times it gets really bad. Take, for instance, the brawler skill. One of the first interactions you can have is with a companion character named Saoirse Kan. You meet her at a soup kitchen with a boxing ring, and you have the option to spar against her as she says she helps train vampires in combat. This increases the Brawler skill, but afterwards, the option is just gone. Despite the story setting up that this is what she does.
Flash forward to hours and hours later, when I was doing a side mission. Or, more so, I was stuck on a main mission and decided to finally try sorting out this other mission. It concerned an underground fighting ring I needed to gain access to, so naturally I thought of Saoirse. She, in fact, did help me get in and, as part of it, agreed to train my Brawler skill to fight. Now I had the option to train with her every night, but there was this huge gap in finding ways to improve, and you don’t improve by just doing.
Other skills I could barely find an instance where they could be improved. This was definitely the case with my mechanic skill. Where this becomes an issue is that weapons like guns require the mechanic skill to be equipped. Combat literally just plays out as a series of flashes and movements on screen, as the entire fight is handled back-end by your gear and stats, which means being able to equip things is a necessity. That fight club also employed key moments to increase survivability, with choices tied to several different states. You get the choice, but in a few cases I failed both, having no idea how to improve my thief skill and only being able to improve my brawler skill through this quest.
There are other less important attributes to unlock as well. You get the exhibitionist trait by running around naked, which was fun to earn, but damn, did it increase my suspicion level. One thing that I did like is that there isn’t really a money system. You do earn money, mostly through quests, but it acts more as a social standing tracker alongside your prestige. These unlock outfits and guns, but again, I couldn’t use the guns, so the fact that I could buy out the black market dealer was pretty meaningless. The easy solution is a more obvious direction in-game, or some more obvious dialog that points you towards a character or quest.
Steam Deck:
If you are looking to play Nighthawks portably, the game runs great. I had very little hiccuping from a technical standpoint. The tracking pads, which I was hoping to use as a mouse, only control the side paneling with dialog and options, which is a shame. That said, the controls are all in tact for controller, and they operate great. The biggest issue is that, as a text-based game, the text can be rather small at times. There are accessibility options to rectify this, but even then, depending on your eyesight, it might not be enough. I did have to squint a few times.
I’m sure this is partially why such a heavy emphasis is placed on picking a companion to travel around with. These characters add an inherent buff to your stats, helping overcome some of the random checks you can’t predict. These characters also have enough going on that they can offer specific quips to situations that make the story unfold more dynamically, or be leaned on to accomplish something the player can’t. Take Veronica Castiglione, who can turn invisible, and therefore can sneak into places or grab you a file you need without arousing suspicion. It’s a solution to my problem that offers multiple layers to enjoy, but a band-aid more than anything else.
Nighthawks also presents you with a few stats you have to maintain, and the hunting feature in general was one of the nice touches. On the one hand, you can plan a hunt for sustenance, tracking people till they are alone, grading the quality of blood. Or, you can just wander into the vip section of your club and murder somebody. Then you have to panic about disposing of the corpse. You also need to make friends with the other vampires; several factions control districts in the city, and you are either prevented or severely punished if you even attempt to hunt there. I once got the crap kicked out of me by an enforcer trying to exanguinate a rent boy bro ho. This is the most vampire I have literally ever been allowed to feel in a game.
Each day ends at 6 AM, in my case, with a mad dash back from wherever I was doing things I probably shouldn’t have been. If you stay out past, you don’t die, but there are consequences to your health, seeing your health bar chipped for the next day, and that can compound. Again, it’s these little touches that make me feel like I am in this life, presented far better than I have seen them before. By letting you fail in these ways, it feels more rewarding overall.
Verdict
Nighthawks has some pretty noticeable stumbles. The story hits dead ends way too often and can often feel like you are solving another case to figure out how to move on to the next portion. Similarly, progressing states is a mystery unto itself that can take a pretty hefty amount of time to start pushing forward. Where the game succeeds, it does so with enough force to propel past its faults. The RPG, while not necessarily deep, is very rewarding, and the open-ended structure leaves loads of room to explore. The narrative is phenomenal, with an engaging cast of characters that never fails to delight. More than anything else, though, this is the closest to a creature of the night I have truly felt in a long time, living out my VTM and True Blood dreams, and that is really saying something.
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Reviewed for Steam
*A key was provided for this title by Wadjet Eye Games for the purposes of this review.
Developer: The Curiosity Engine
Publisher Wadjet Eye Games
Release Date: September 22, 2026
Pros
+Great art style and soundtrack
+Open Ended Visual novel with plenty to do
+Strong Narrative with a great cast of characters
+Does a great job letting you feel like a vampire
Cons
-Progression can often times hit a wall, becoming confusing to figure out how to proceed.
-The sewer segments are not enjoyable.
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Nighthawks
