Vampires Dawn is probably one of, if not the most well-known game series within the german RPGMaker community. It holds a special place in my heart, even though I haven’t played it in nearly two decades. To understand my relationship with this game it is important to understand at which point of my life it was released.
In January of 2001 a 20 year old Alexander “Marlex” Koch released his first ever game in the form of Dunkle Schatten (“Dark Shadows”) which he developed within 4 months in RPG Maker 2000. According to makerpendium.de (a wiki chronicling german RPG Maker history) it is one of the oldest german RPG Maker projects of all time. It’s mostly a basic and plain RPG Maker game and nothing special but helped him become familiar with how RPG Maker worked. In late august of the same year he released Vampires Dawn - Reign of Blood as freeware. A game that would accumulate over 2 million downloads by 2021.
The game quickly became quite popular within the community but its true success laid in the fact that it became also popular within the wider german gaming landscape. One of the main contributing factors is the inclusion on the CD included in the then popular german gaming magazine Bravo Screenfun. It first was included in the 08/2002 issue together with a special about RPG Maker 2000 and what you can do with it. In total the first game would be included on the CDs of 5 issues of the magazine, more than any other game! The 08/2002 issue is how I got to know of this game. My dad had a gas station which was more or less the focal point of most of my after-school life. It provided me with unlimited access to the gas station’s gaming magazine selection and whenever cool stuff was on a CD I begged my dad to take it home.
In 2002 I was 11 years old and this game hit me like a truck. Up to this point I had never played a proper JRPG. My world consisted of the Gameboy, the N64 and the occasional PC game. The most epic game with a coherent story I had played at that point was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Vampires Dawn is told as a scary bedtime story from an old man to his grandson. It follows Valnar, our protagonist, who one fateful night violently loses his girlfriend at the hands of a mysterious stranger. The next day he can’t believe what happened and starts looking for her, retracing his steps from the night before. This is when he meets Asgar, a vampire, who tricks him into believing that he will help Valnar look for his girlfriend only to turn him into a vampire at the first possible moment. Through a series of story beats Valnar, Asgar and Alaine (Asgars’ beloved) end up as an unlikely RPG party and look into the mysterious stranger who seemingly kidnapped and/or killed Valnar’s girlfriend as he seems to be a threat to the few remaining vampires in the world.
Even through my fading memory and the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia I can tell you that this is not the greatest RPG ever made but it certainly had a big impact on me. I remember that back then it was heavily emphasized in the Bravo Screenfun that this was the work of a single 20 year old person from Germany. That was mindblowing to me and sowed the seed for the ever recurring thought “maybe I could make a game one day”.
Looking back at what I remember of the game it seems like it used a lot of the standard RPG Maker features. The battles were pretty much built with out of the box systems. But the game offered a variety of mini games, menus and systems that back then felt quite customized, even if it was “just” clever skinning of built-in stuff. I was really impressed with the more open world aspects once the overworld of the game opened up. You could, for example, conquer silver mines from the humans and summon skeletons to mine silver for you which you could then use to purchase better gear for your party.
But I think the games’ biggest achievement at the time was that it told a coherent story from beginning to end and that it got actually finished. This might sound like a backhanded compliment but back then the german RPG Maker community was only about 1 year old as it was more or less born with the german release of RPG Maker 2000 from what I can tell. So the whole scene mostly consisted of people trying to figure out the tools and building little projects that were often unfinished demos and half-baked ideas. But this was a full game. With a story and multiple endings.
The writing and story I remember have pretty strong amateur fan fiction vibes with lots of dark and edgy humor and over the top emotion and violence. The way I remember it, it feels endearing and like the first steps of someone who had never done this before but was genuinely trying his best. But I can’t tell if I would still think that today. I was 11 back then and nostalgia can be misleading.
I do however have multiple strong memories of playing this game in 2002 and 2003. As well as it’s sequel Vampires Dawn II - Ancient Blood, which I never finished for some reason.
But why am I talking about this at all and especially now? I remembered reading a while back that after a long pause a third game was planned to be released and it was! (all the way back in May of 2021, lol)
Nostalgia is hooking its claws into me and I’m actually considering revisiting the series. The first and seconds games are being kept alive by dedicated fans and apparently there are now english versions available too! Maybe I’ll download the first game this weekend and see how it holds up. But for now I’m enjoying remembering and thinking about playing it.