Maintain the massively multiplayer Masquerade
The spring is looking packed with vampiric activity. Developer Sharkmob announced today that its free-to-play battle royale Bloodhunt, based in the Vampire: The Masquerade universe, is launching out of early access on April 27.
Bloodhunt is coming to both PlayStation 5 and PC in April. This follows several months in early access, as the battle royale has been sharpening its fangs on PC.
Sharkmob’s take on the Vampire: The Masquerade does expand out into a more multiplayer, action-oriented experience. The pillars of the universe remain, though: clans, vampiric superpowers, and upholding the Masquerade.
The PlayStation 5 version will get some DualSense haptic feedback. It will also make use of high-end headphones and the PS5 Tempest 3D Audio tech.
Bloodhunt is maybe not the Vampire experience that fans might expect from the series. The tabletop franchise became a cult classic in the video game world with Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. The sequel, Bloodlines 2, has pretty much dropped off the grid at this point.
That hasn’t stopped more Vampire games from steadily rolling out, though. Several visual novels have been published under the Vampire: The Masquerade label, the World of Darkness team held a Vampire game jam, and narrative adventure Swansong is due out in May.
Bloodhunt feels, to me, like part of that growing and expanding video game Vampire presence. We’ll see how months of early access have worked out for it, and whether vampires can hold their own again Warzone, Apex, and the like. But it certainly seems like the Vampire video game train is full steam ahead. If you want to down some blood in Prague and hunt other denizens of the night, Bloodhunt hits full launch on PS5 and PC on April 27.
