Vampyr

It's a Monster's World

This paper examines Vampyr, a 2018 horror role-playing game by Dontnod Entertainment set in early twentieth-century London, through the lens of ludonarrative dissonance and the construction of monstrosity in play.

• The paper argues that Vampyr (Dontnod Entertainment, 2018), a horror RPG set in early twentieth-century London, casts the player as a doctor-turned-vampire, and its central tension is between what the game mechanically rewards and what its story asks the player to feel, a case of ludonarrative dissonance.
• The author frames Vampyr as a 'technology of subjectivity,' drawing on Halberstam's theory of monstrous bodies to analyse how the game directs players to act monstrously.
• Avoiding killing is possible but makes the game markedly harder, while the most efficient way to gain experience is to drain named civilians with personal bonds to the protagonist, often after healing them and exploiting private information about their lives.