Charlaine Harris: Dying for Daylight 1.0

Dying for Daylight is an adventure game with a thrilling story written by Charlaine Harris, the author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels which inspired HBO's True Blood. As in True Blood, the game is set in a time when vampires have 'come out of the coffin' and have been accepted by great part of society. After a vampire is seen walking in the daylight, rumors about the mythical sun potion start to circulate. This potion is thought to allow vampires to walk in the sunlight, and it was supposed to be a myth.

You play Dahlia, a vampire girl with a lot of attitude who is sent by her sheriff, Cedric, to New Orleans Vampire Quarters to investigate about the potion. All you know so far is that a vampire and circus owner called Alexandjo Philoff was seen in a wedding in broad daylight, so you set out to locate him. Once in New Orleans you learn that someone else is already after the potion and has attacked the Vampire Quarters. What starts as a simple adventure and excuse to visit the place, ends up involving you in a vampire war of bigger proportions.

The game uses a point-and-click mechanism, where you need to solve intuitive puzzles and pick up useful objects in different areas. Your main objective will be to gather seven ingredients to prepare the sun potion, which are in hands of seven vampires spread across the US. You will need to identify these vampires first, and then use your charm in order to convince them to hand over the ingredient. The adventure starts off in New Orleans, and takes you to Memphis, Charleston, and other locations. Thankfully, there is an interactive compass that shows you all the areas you can explore and blinks when new areas open up.

As far as difficulty goes, puzzles are not excessively hard to solve but not obvious either, that is a good thing. You do get some interactive help at the beginning of the game and a couple of subtle hints, but it's up to you to decipher riddles and find a solution for a puzzle. Aside of hidden-object instances and logic mini games, puzzles include the most varied situations; you will need to disguise yourself to sneak past enemies or security cams, bear with the whims of a ghost that can help you at a given moment, and use your wit and vampire senses to access non vampire-friendly places.

Although it is a bit of a dark game with some Gothic environments, it proposes a suspenseful yet fun atmosphere all along the way. This is mostly thanks to the wide array of eccentric, supernatural beings that add humorous moments to the story. It has top-notch graphics illustrating city and country landscapes and uses a comic-like style for the cutscenes. In short, a game with plenty of things to do and explore, lots of humor, and an offset story that will captivate you from the very beginning.