StrigoiLens: Vampire Hunter

YOUR PHONE IS THE LENS. Point it into a dark room and the Strigoi Lens turns the camera, the compass, the light sensor and the step counter into a hunting kit. It reads the room you are actually standing in. It will not work in a lit one, and it says so. WALKING IS WHAT BRINGS THEM Steps in the dark are counted off the phone's own accelerometer. Twenty paces for the first one, twenty more for each after it. Stand still in a bright room and nothing comes, because nothing should. TWO WEAPONS, AND ONLY ONE OF THEM FINISHES IT Holy water works at any range. It burns, the thing screams and stops where it stands, and for five seconds it is open — a stake into that window goes twice as deep. But the flask holds three throws and holy water can never finish one. The stake is arm's length only. At some point you have to let it come all the way in. EIGHT NIGHTS, EIGHT THINGS A swarm of bats first. Then a thrall walking somebody else's errand, a newly risen fledgling, a moroi out of the wet earth, a strigoi in black velvet, a nosferatu that moves in bursts between the shadows, an elder who has kept the same house for four hundred years. And then the Count. He does not die when his blood runs out. He tears his wings out of his own back and comes at you again, stronger, and that is the fight that counts. Each of them is a different body with its own walk, its own scream under holy water, its own way of taking a stake and its own death — in its own voice. THE CASE LOG Every kill writes a page. Who it was before it was turned, the village, the year, what turned it, what it wanted, and what it said at the end. Every escape writes one too, and an escape costs you points. WHAT IT USES Camera, accelerometer, compass, light sensor, microphone, torch. Everything stays on the device. Nothing is uploaded, no account, no sign-in. BEST PLAYED In the dark, with headphones, alone, in a house you know. Not while driving, not near stairs, not anywhere you would not walk with your eyes half on a screen. It is a game. The vampires are not real. The dark is.