So many live service games have had their plugs pulled lately that it’s hard to keep track of them all — Apex Mobile, Knockout City, Marvel’s Avengers— but now that developer Sharkmob is no longer updatingBloodhunt, I’m genuinely upset. The game was a little buggy, sure, and sometimes the matchmaking left something to be desired, but it just felt different from other battle royales in a way that’s hard to place. Its failure is a harsh lesson in the difficulty of bringing a truly unique proposition to the ruthless live-service market.
A good deal of Bloodhunt’s appeal was the lore: There are several different vampire factions roaming the streets of Prague, and the human population of the city are doing all they can to minimize the damage the clans are doing in their quest to stamp one another out.Vampire: the Masqueradeis an incredible IP that’s just always struggled to catch a break in video games, with the excellent RPG Bloodlines being buried beneath; still, its story-telling power is undeniable. Its social systems are complex and interesting, and they formed the perfect framework for Bloodhunt’s unique character class system.
Each group had their own specific clan trait, and each further archetype had an additional ability, making the classes feel unique and yet interconnected at the same time. Enforcers, members of the Ventrue clan, could make themselves temporarily invulnerable like their Warden counterparts, but only they had access to a silencing ability that would dash them through an enemy and leave them incapable of utilizing their own abilities. The Nosferatu clan were unique since they looked dessicated rather than humanlike — and, perhaps suitably, they throw sewer bombs to deal AOE damage to enemies. The Toreador clan was split into Sirens and Muses, with the former focused on dealing damage and the latter focused on healing teammates.
The movement mechanics felt incredibly unique, too. You could teleport, flashbang other people before you jumped, or even go invisible, and while that made it a bit harder to track people, it felt like there was more to the game thanbeing a good shot; if you used your abilities correctly, you could outplay even people who were more technically skilled than you. It helped level out the sometimes ridiculous matchmaking a little bit more, so even if you were completely outmatched you still had fun zipping around in those precious few seconds before you were downed.
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And the in-game leveling system—based entirely on how many people (including other players) you fed on—was great, too. The fact that players could see and track you if you had a bounty for illegal actions made it feel like a blend ofApex LegendsandGTA, and it really added to the roleplaying atmosphere of the whole game. Even the cosmetics were absolutely incredible; from the metal masks that looked like something out of a Ghost concert to the gothic makeup styles to the simple jeans-and-a-graphic-tee look, there was something for everyone. What’s more, they really made you feel like you were a vampire roaming the streets of Prague.
Bloodhunt had so many truly unique things going for it, but unfortunately, they weren’t quite enough. The game just didn’t maintain a high enough player base to warrant consistent updates, which is a real shame. Despite debuting to about 20,000 active players and peaking at around 30,000, its numbers very quickly dwindled to just 1,000 active players a month (viaSteamCharts).
Bloodhunt lacked the polish to keep up with other BR frontrunners. The game was undeniably buggy. Sometimes, you’d die to zone (in this case, a red gas that rolled through Prague, poisonous only to vampires) without even standing in it; though this bug was first noticed during the game’s initial launch, it wasn’t resolved for several months because of how complicated the coding issue was. More than once, I lamented the fact that I could only look over one shoulder when firing my gun, which made taking cover a lot harder. And melee could be ridiculously overpowered, which led to people sprinting up and swinging on me a regular occurrence. But still, I loved Bloodhunt. Even when I was losing, I found myself wanting to play, and that’s more than a lot of games can say.
There’s something to be said here about the high standards and huge investment that certain major multiplayer IPs get, which it seems that Bloodhunt wasn’t able to match, and therefore wasn’t really given the time to grow. This is a smaller team than the one behind a Fortnite, or Apex Legends, or PUBG (well, these days anyway), and perhaps players were less forgiving of the game’s flaws and quirks when they could just go off and play one of the many more polished competitors out there.
Sharkmob, Bloodhunt’s publisher and developer, had just been founded when the game was launched. Despite the veteran talent onboard from people who worked on games like Far Cry 5 and Hitman, it was a brand-new company launching its very first game, and really couldn’t be held to the same standards as Fortnite or Apex Legends. It would have been nice to see them given more of an opportunity to grow into the game.
Luckily, Sharkmob is already working on a few other games, and I sincerely hope one of them is a new Vampire the Masquerade RPG; I’d love to see some of those mechanics and even the lore recycled into something that could use them a little better. The IP is definitely due for a lucky break. I do wish more people had given Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodhunt a chance — the game just felt so inherently different from other battle royales that it’s a shame it didn’t have the popularity necessary to keep it alive. If we can’t keep Bloodhunt, though, I hope other games learn from some of what made it so great, and I hope that we see something like it again sometime soon.
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