Will you take the hand and play along?
Eir life is slipping away. Ey is forever stuck on this couch, flipping through the channels. But Alex's life will never be the same after tonight. A chance encounter, or a surreal experience, will push em to have tea with a particular vampire... Or will ey?
This game includes NSFW elements including: heavy make-out scenes, depictions or mentions of abuse, trauma, depression, prejudices, unappealing food, nausea, vomit. The interface also includes flickering animations.
Teatime with a Vampire is a horror surrealist interactive game made in Twine for the Smoochie Jam and the Queer Vampire Jam. It follows Alex, a human on the brink of a life-changing meeting with the famous Mr. Orlok. That is, if ey takes the chance handed to eir, and plays all the games.
This game aims to explore and play with vampire "lore", transplanting them in a modern setting. With its talk-show setting (in the second half of the game), it also takes a jab at pop culture under capitalism, turning aspects of a group into entertainment for the masses. Along the way, the game touches upon themes of loneliness, identity, and feelings of otherness.
It was really fun working on this game, making fun of the talk-show format, that bizarre and surface-level type of entertainment. I guiltily watched re-runs and snippets of Vivement Dimanche, Ça commence aujourd'hui, The View, The Kelly Clarkson Show and The Wendy Williams Show. But I was also inspired by more comical/satirical talk-shows like Between Two Ferns, Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Very Important People when writing.
I think the shift between Alex's grim reality and the surreal talk-show section is probably my favourite bit of the game (aside from the cooking section). I wanted those two parts feel completely different from one another, both in writing style and interface. The first is your usual IF 3rd person POV, with a simple dark background, while the latter is formatted as a tv-script, complete with dialogue tags. Dark vs bright and in your face.
For a game that takes as its premise the guilty pleasure of a gossipy talk show (a format that the author really nails, btw, with segments like “Eat or Dish” where the guest has to answer a personal question or eat gross food), this game has a lot of depth and humor, and a pretty outstanding NPC in Mr. Orlok.
- Dawn S.
I was treated to some Videodrome/Alan Wake II reminiscent stuff that was flat excellent, including a graphic presentation change, some talk show format clowning that had interesting choices, impactful character moments, and took a fun, funny, kind of endearing path to a dramatically satisfying close.
- JJ McC
My favorite moment is where [Orlok] responds to a question about the most interesting place he’s visited by telling a story about walking to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and image of a deathless but hungry immortal slowly dragging himself to such an alien sight, fathoms-deep below the waves, is immediately compelling, and makes me want to know more about the kind of person who’d do that.
- Mike Russo