Ahoy Draculads and ladies, V Rising is free this weekend

In V Rising, you’re a fledgling vampire on a quest to become the ultimate boss pheratu of a gothic open world. You’re given a Diablo-esque combat system, the ability to turn into a spider, and an entire castle to hop around in while you sing to the moon. I like this premise almost as much as I hate the fact that V Rising is also a survival game, requiring you to fell trees and master a crafting system like a regular turnip farmer.

What do we hope for when our interest in a game is almost perfectly balanced by our disinterest? We hope that the developers will treat us to a free-to-play weekend, where our perhaps unfounded reservations can be strategically offset by the endorphin rush of not paying a goddamn amount of money. That’s what the makers of V Rising, Stunlock, have done. The game is free to download and play on Steam now through Monday, September 16 at 5pm UK/10am PST.

Here are a few things that intrigue and enchant me about V Rising, based on how it’s been described to me. First, you have to worry about sunlight, a traditional vampire weakness that gets swept under the rug in many Hollywood adaptations—looking at you, Gary Oldman. You have to drink blood regularly, and it grants different benefits depending on your victim, encouraging you to develop a palate instead of just striking indiscriminately and sucking it dry. You can summon things like death knights and teleport around your castle like in the Castlevania show (once it’s leveled up, that is).

Still, it’s hard to look past the survival-game taint, which feels completely at odds with the vampire premise. “To become a more powerful bloodsucker, you’ll need to learn to craft pants and copper swords and increase your gear score à la Destiny,” Edders wrote in our V Rising 1.0 review. “To gain power, you’ll need to build things, until the thing you want to build requires you to build something else. And to build that something else, you need something else.”

That’s not how Dracula did it, Edders! Vampires are supposed to be monstrously decayed aristocrats! If Dracula wanted a new pair of leather pants, he’d chew on the tanner’s neck and turn him into a ghoul minion. Please, Edders: tell me this is possible in the game.

If the non-free version piques your interest, V Rising is currently 30 percent off, with 20 percent off cosmetic DLC (including a Castlevania-themed DLC pack) through September 24. Find it on Steam . I think I’ll give it a try myself, but I’m not going to make any pants.