Vampires aren’t the only ones who get it in the neck, and no, not the bloodsucking endeavours, but the persecution for being immortal, cultured, sun-dodging, and non-appreciators of garlic. The latter is a crime. However, many still have their humanity – such as Liza in Cabernet – a game by Party for Introverts.
Set in 19th-century Eastern Europe, the tale begins with your death. At the eulogy, her loved ones remember her traits – a.k.a. the time to select some starting stats for Liza to begin with. Awakening in a dark, isolated basement, she rises once more to discover she’s been turned and must now live out her days as a rascally wampire. Whether that means a good or bad one is a choice for you, the player.
Cabernet is a narrative-driven RPG about discovering oneself and reminiscing on the past to help define your character in the present. Fellow nightwalkers will drip-feed a verb wheel of powers that can be used to your advantage or to help the weak humans. Liza is a bit of a blank slate in that she’s lived as a human and is still in touch with humanity, yet there’s a darkness within her that can be easily wielded to get the things you wants, albeit with permanent consequences.
Cabernet Review Steam
There’s an ongoing theme of class, but it doesn’t define the experience (unless you’re looking for it and it’s part of your latest forum discourse). Liza can fraternize with the poor, drink with the rich and pick and choose which path she will follow, or perhaps even be a hybrid of humanity and nihilism – the moral scales of the game. For each choice you make, the gauge will increase in one particular area, locking/unlocking options such as dialogue paths and side quests.
Choices do matter in Cabernet, and though it’s not real-time per se, there is a day/night cycle, and as you’ve probably guessed, she can’t go out in the daylight unless she wants to get burned. That’s roasted in the ashes sense. Liza is provided with a vessel, a.k.a coffin, that she needs to return to by dawn in fear of a permanent death. Fear not – there are autosave and manual ones within her room. Cabernet is relatively forgiving, but the current bugs and glitches mean you should save regularly. More in a bit.
The core narrative is the discovery element and deciding which path to follow. Do you retain your human traits, bite the neck that feeds, or mix it up? As with any decent RPG, which this is, the side quests often provide that satisfying itch of finding out more about the folk who occupy your world. There’s not much in the way of physical exploration and fast travel, and instead the pace is dictated by following the breadcrumbs of each and every side quest, pending you complete some of them in a set time, otherwise they’re gone. Forever.
Vampire Skills
Skills include morphing into a vampire to get the ‘cabernet’ of the title, turning into a bat to move quickly and reach greater heights, turning invisible, enchanting those you’ve built up a relationship with and making suggestions that may improve their quality of life or destroy it (based on morality points). Unfortunately, they don’t always work, and considering that Liza needs the blood to survive or face certain death, it can be frustrating when experiencing the glitches.
Some of these included Liza disappearing off the screen without returning, flipping on her side, being incapable of interacting with characters, and worse – being unable to move through time due to having a task at hand. Having explored multiple times, these issues weren’t resolved until exiting and returning to the game, with the quest progressing immediately on reloading. Hence why it’s important to save. Another one of these issues was that items in shops showed the wrong image and were not purchasable, nor could the inventory refresh when revisiting. Again, a reboot resolved this.
As for the actual story, Cabernet was excellent, and it was a refreshing take on the vampire genre. It’s beautifully written, and the voice talent throughout was brilliant (notably Liza), though a few of the voices were altered, no doubt due to the small cast and sounded a bit off. That’s being picky, however, as this was an experience quite easy to get lost in, what with all the choices and hauntingly alluring score throughout.
Cabernet Review Summary
Actions should have consequences and Cabernet delivers. For a relatively contained world, there’s an admirable amount of freedom with dialogue and moral dilemmas, which encourage investment in the intriguing cast of characters. Those technical aspects (played on Steam Deck) burst the bubble one too many times, though nothing that can’t be ironed out in the future. Vampire fans will find this quite enchanting.
