Nighthawks review – vignettes that occasionally shine but more often miss the mark

Wadjet Eye Games' vampire RPG Nighthawks borrows its name and mood from Edward Hopper's 1942 painting, and it aims for the same feeling: fleeting human connection glowing amid urban isolation. Sometimes it delivers beautifully, telling small stories that linger long after you've closed the game. Just as often, though, its systems and structure undercut the very atmosphere it works so hard to build.

Becoming the Night's New Power

The premise drops you into a world where vampires have recently been revealed as real. You play a freshly turned blood drinker who rises to prominence by taking over the Nighthawks nightclub itself. Each night you can roam three distinct neighbourhoods: run-down Cradlebridge, the red-light district Angelbreach, and wealthy Fountaincourt. Dozens of miniature stories await, navigated through levelable traits like brawling and seduction, plus special abilities — mine let me pull echoes of the past from corpses.

Nighthawks lives or dies on its writing, and the presentation knows it. The painted backdrops and expressive portraits, paired with catchy music, give the city texture, but they're clearly functional rather than the draw. Portraits get recycled for minor characters, and the soundtrack's catchiness partly comes from repetition. Still, together they build a memorable mood: acidic blood, boot-tracked grime, a tension that boils over every night.

Two Stories That Prove the Concept

The narrative unfolds as vignettes across five acts, and the best of them are genuinely outstanding. Two stand out, both about freeing women from restrictive obligations, and both succeed by weaving timeless themes into the game's specific vampire setting. One feels centuries old because its central vampire is exactly that old, trapped by cultural holds that still echo today. The other is sharply modern, hinging on the fact that vampires have only just gone public and relations between night- and daywalkers remain unsettled.

Yet these successes expose the game's weakness. The anti-vampire prejudice that's meant to bind the larger arc together never convinces. Human supremacist mobs can attack you on the street, but you grow powerful so quickly that they pose little threat — and the story falters on a familiar problem: vampires really are dangerous, which muddies the oppression allegory. Worse, those two brilliant quests cluster together in the game's strong middle stretch, leaving the surrounding acts thin by comparison.

A Slow Start and a Structure Without Stakes

The first act is especially dry. The game leans on your companion and other key side characters for its emotional weight but gives them no early onramp — nearly everyone happily joins you at first meeting without hinting at their motivations. Fittingly, the exception, Veronica, who asks you to show her the city and push her boundaries, ends up with one of the great personal quests.

Pacing problems persist throughout. Each act covers a single month, with only nighttime hours to handle personal, companion, and city-wide quests. But there's no real time pressure. I regularly hit loose ends with nothing to do but skip ahead — possible, but it strips out any friction, strategy, or meaningful choice. That extends to roleplaying itself: you may as well feed on innocents and fund lavish social programs alike, because you have time and resources for everything and nothing is meaningfully rewarded or punished.

The RPG systems echo the same hollowness. Being locked out of outcomes for lacking skills is rare, and by the later acts you can max out nearly everything. Companions, clothing, and special items barely matter — by the time you earn them, you've likely already peaked in the skills they'd boost.

Where It Leaves You

These problems compound, and Nighthawks never quite comes into focus. The couple at the counter are painted in exquisite detail — at times I felt inside that warm diner, brushing hands with someone I cared about. But the rest of the canvas lacks the deliberate emptiness that should give those moments their sting. Instead, it reads as an uneven sketch. Nighthawks is out in 2026, published by Wadjet Eye Games, and it's worth watching for players drawn to character-driven vampire fiction — with tempered expectations about its systems.

Nighthawks' principal developer is Richard Cobbett, a frequent contributor to RPS until 2018.

Source: Eurogamer