Vampire Therapist

The briefest way I can say why I don't recommend this game is that it's based on CBT. The art is good, the concept is charming, it's polished. It is absolutely researched and based on real psychological principles. Unfortunately, they're CBT, and it was so deeply frustrating to watch my protagonist miss many opportunities for deeper emotional exploration in order to play cognitive distortion gotcha. Fallacies are intellectual; at best, they will give you a greater ability to shame yourself into a certain kind of functioning. This works in some situations for some amount of time. It isn't good therapy. The game is good but I kept having to pause to get upset about the modality and at 3 hours in I don't want to pick it back up. It was certainly made with love and skill but the method was so misguided I can't finish it, thus I can't recommend it.

THE CHARACTERS ARE AMAZINGLY FLESHED OUT, AND THE GAME USES REAL THERAPY TACTICS AND STRATAGIES also drayne is hot

I'm not sure I've ever actually left a Steam review but felt obligated here. This game was sitting in my library for an embarrassingly long time and I just started playing it yesterday. It is *FANTASTIC* Not only am I having a blast with it, I'm learning about some issues I need to work on in my own life. It has a similar format and feel to Phoenix Wright except instead of the ridiculous clues you use there, there are real actual therapy concepts you're using here. And doing so is a total blast. The art is amazing. The humor is great. The voice acting is spectacular. And the central premise is absolutely unique, fun as hell, AND full of useful information. If you think you might even remotely be interested in this, just buy it.

The number of times I have to pause and go "ooooh, that's why" in relating to some clients in this game makes me love it even more. I'm already a sucker for vampire-related games, so this already sucked me in and every time I play a session, I feel like I had therapy myself (in a good way!)

10/10 hilarious, great characters. I know gaming isn't any kind of substitute for therapy, but I did feel a lot better after playing this.

I enjoy this game. I've completed the first month of clients. The game has gone a bit glitchy as the cognitive dissidents are updated. Unfortunately the glitches are stopping me from selecting the correct answer. Using steam deck I'm unable to select from the updated list, so I'm stuck cycling the same conversation. I've tried updating the controller to use the mouse cursor, but clicking does not select the item under the mouse, instead sets the conversation to loop at high speed.