– Bloodlines. The design of Night Road was in part influenced by the adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road, with a forward momentum together with a sense of being able to go wherever one wants. Marquis enjoyed writing a World of Darkness game set in the present, due to how the world has changed since the World of Darkness tabletop games were originally published in the 1990s. One of the first things he did when beginning development was to write a list of things he would not include in the story, due to editorial request, personal disinterest, or due to how they would not work in a courier story. He also looked through developer notes for other World of Darkness material to avoid overlap with other stories in the series; he specifically wanted to avoid including "ancient tomb" tropes, considering this something that had never been done better than the Ankaran sarcophagus in Bloodlines, and therefore not wanting to compete with it. Instead, he opted for writing a story about "mad science", forgotten experiments, and the eeriness of unexplained disappearances. He cited novels including Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series, as influences. He also took inspiration from mythology, with the shapeshifter Coyote serving as inspiration for a polymorphic Gangrel vampire. A challenge for Marquis was to balance horror with the World of Darkness tabletop games' systematized setting; he tried to counter this by drawing from more obscure parts of the setting, to populate the game's world with "the unknown" – things that belong to the setting but are less categorized than the Camarilla vampires. Release The first three games were announced in April 2020, and were published by Choice of Games through 2020–2021 for Android, iOS, Linux, MacOS, Microsoft Windows, and web browsers: Night Road was released on September 24, 2020, Out for Blood on July 29, 2021, and Parliament of Knives on October 28, 2021. In 2020, Hill said that it was possible that Choice of Game would develop further World of Darkness games; Sins of the Sires was announced in November 2021 for release in early 2022. "Usurpers and Outcasts", a piece of downloadable content for Night Road that adds the option to play as a Tremere or Caitiff vampire, was released alongside the main game on September 24, 2020. Reception TouchArcade