Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York

The player interacts with characters and makes dialogue choices through text-based gameplay, causing the story to branch.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York is a single-player, visual novel-style adventure game[2][3][4] with mainly text-based gameplay, and involves the player making dialogue and story choices.[5][6] As a vampire, the player character needs to balance their blood thirst with their humanity, while also ensuring that they do not reveal themselves as vampiric, breaking the Masquerade.[5] Based on the choices the player makes, the narrative branches.[7] In addition to the game's main quest, the player has access to side quests and loyalty quests; the latter involves creating bonds to the characters in their party ("coterie").[8]

The player character can belong to one of three vampire clans, which affects their character's ethics and dialogue,[7] and how the members of the player's coterie react to them.[9] The choice of clan also determines what vampiric abilities ("disciplines") the player can use:[7] a Brujah character can use Celerity (increased speed) and Potence (increased strength); a Toreador can also use Celerity, and Auspex (supernatural senses); and a Ventrue can use Fortitude (increased resilience) and Dominate (mind control); and all three can use Presence (attracting or scaring humans). These abilities can be used for problem solving,[10] as well as in combat situations and when interacting with characters.[6]

The game was developed and published by Draw Distance.

Coteries of New York was developed and published by the Polish studio Draw Distance,[2][9] and was designed by Krzysztof Zięba, who also was one of the game's writers.[1][11] The game was based on the fifth edition of the tabletop role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade,[2] and was produced in cooperation with Modiphius Entertainment, the developer at the time of the tabletop game, to ensure that it adhered to the Vampire: The Masquerade canon and lore; the story from Coteries of New York was in turn incorporated into the series' lore.[3] It was however also designed with players who are new to the series in mind,[12] and was written to work as an introduction to the series and setting,[13] with a focus on introducing basic concepts and different vampire clans.[14] Negotiating the licensing agreement for Vampire: The Masquerade, and the structure and content of the game, was a long process, starting at the Nordic Game conference in 2018.[15]

The developers used the sourcebook New York by Night as their main source of inspiration and reference for the cast and setting. As New York by Night was published in 2001 for the tabletop game's Revised Edition, it was considered a jump-off point, with characters originating from it being developed to account for the passage of time in the setting since the book's publication,[1] certain conflicts and events being resolved or progressing,[16] and new characters being added. In rare cases where the sourcebook indicates how a certain character speaks, this was taken into consideration in the scriptwriting.[1] In addition to New York by Night, the developers made use of information from Camarilla and Anarch, the sourcebooks that were available for the fifth edition of the tabletop game at the time.[6] Another big influence on the game was the works of the game studio Telltale Games, and their use of moral dilemmas.[3][9] Early on in the development, Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks were also an influence.[17]

In adapting the tabletop game to a narrative-driven video game format, the developers focused on what they considered what the tabletop game values – personal stories, and characters and their conflicting motivations – rather than gameplay mechanics. In doing so, they removed tabletop game mechanics such as leveling up and weapon stats, that were not crucial to telling the story, resulting in what they described as essentially a role-playing game without the things commonly associated with role-playing in video games.[18] Although Coteries of New York was not initially designed as a visual novel-like game, it ended up moving towards that as the best format for a dialogue-driven game given the available development time.[19]

The stand-alone expansion Shadows of New York was released in 2020.

The game was announced in June 2019 with a teaser trailer,[20] and was released on December 11, 2019 for Microsoft Windows,[21] following a one-week delay to allow for bug-fixing.[21] Ports followed for Linux and MacOS on January 23, 2020,[22] Nintendo Switch on March 24, 2020,[23] PlayStation 4 on March 25,[24] and Xbox One on April 15, 2020.[25] The console versions launched with additional character and environment art and improved audio design, which was added to the Windows version through an update.[23] An artbook and a soundtrack album were released digitally on March 24, 2020.[23] A Japanese localization of the game was released on November 12, 2020 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch by DMM Games.[26]

A stand-alone expansion with an independent story, Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York, was released on September 10, 2020, and has the player take the role of a vampire from clan Lasombra while investigating the death of the local Anarch Movement leader.[27][28] A physical "collector's edition" that includes Coteries of New York, Shadows of New York, an artbook, and a vinyl soundtrack, is planned for release in Q1/Q2 2021 for Nintendo Switch, PC, and PlayStation 4.[29]

The game saw a "mixed or average" critical response according to the review aggregator Metacritic,[30] but won the 2020 Central & Eastern European Game Awards for best narrative[38] and was featured by Dengeki Online in their serial about recommended downloadable games.[39]

The PC version was among the best-selling new releases of the month on Steam,[40][lower-alpha 1] and recouped development and marketing costs within a week;[15] on the other hand, the Japanese PlayStation 4 release did not appear on Famitsu's weekly top 30 chart of physical video game sales during its debut week, indicating that it sold less than 2,900 retail copies during the period.[42]

• Official website