Embark on a text-based adventure in Vampire: The Masquerade — Night Road [Android Game of the Week]

Night Road
Night Road (Image credit: Jordan Palmer / Android Central)

This week's Android Game of the Week is a fresh face in a sea of familiarity. It's special because it's set in the World of Darkness, where you play a vampire courier who must outrun hunters, assassins, and the sun to survive. So if you like vampires, whether you've played the tabletop Vampire: The Masquerade or not, this game is definitely one to check out.

Or perhaps you played the cult classic Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and you're craving more to tide you over until Bloodlines 2 comes out. Regardless, this is a really fun text-based adventure/RPG.

That's right, Vampire: The Masquerade - Night Road is a text adventure told in second-person. You have many choices to make, all of which affect the game in different ways. The writing is great and this game is quite large. If you don't like reading, then you're out of luck with this game. It's basically a solo tabletop session as you read through the story and make choices.

There aren't any fancy graphics or sound effects here, just good ol' blocks of exposition. It's actually quite the relaxing game, I found, and it is very well-written. You basically create your own character with his/her own backstory, clan, and more. The developer says this game contains 650,000 words, which is staggeringly huge.

I mentioned that you have a lot of choices to make, and I wasn't kidding. It is a Choose Your Own Adventure/RPG after all and it's up to you to make the most out of the game using the power of imagination. The story is quite gripping and, like I said above, very well-written. I was able to immerse myself immediately and it felt like I was in a tabletop session.

Night Road is an excellent addition to the World of Darkness.

Vampire: The Masquerade is a very interesting world to explore. To be fair, that can be said about any of the IPs in the World of Darkness, but Night Road is an excellent addition to that universe.

I suppose my only gripe with Night Road is the ads that take up the bottom portion of your screen. You can pay ten bucks to unlock the full experience (which includes the conclusion). You have to fork over a single dollar is you want to play as a Tremere or Caitiff, which seems a bit odd to me, but I digress.

What's great about this game is that you can start a fresh playthrough and make different choices the next time around. The story will be the same, but you'll face different outcomes. I love that you can pick up the game wherever you are and get through some more exposition and choices. Any phone can run this game and it's free to get started.

And that's that. If you're looking for some other great games, be sure to check out our list of best Android games and our back catalog of Games of the Week.

Jordan Palmer