Review: Vampire Survivors (2022)
Vampire Survivors by Poncle
You’re a character in an Italian Horror film - meaning you play as one of a dozen devout Catholics or sinful heretics - and the film has aged too far to be taken seriously. You can run, but you can’t hide. You can shoot back, but you don’t get to aim. And your enemies are legion. This is the world of Vampire Survivors.
Vampire Survivors is a timed survival game with roguelike elements that handles remarkably similarly to playing Geometry Wars with a broken right stick (this is a compliment). One of the big mechanical twists of Vampire Survivors is that the player is not directly in control of any of their weaponry, of which there is a lot. By the end of a successful ~30 minute survival run, characters will be kitted out with up to ten weapons and upgrades like area-of-effect and damage, automatically filling the screen with bright flashes of exploding doves, kittens and swords (the in-game photosensitivity warning is very necessary here). You’ll be surrounded by thousands of enemies, most of whom only have the very simple programming logic of “walk to player to deal damage.” This forces you into tight maneuvers to weave through the crowd as you try to pick-up experience gems and other loot.
The loot. Let’s talk about the loot. By nature of its simple premise and ridiculous scale, Vampire Survivors constantly peppers the player with stimulation, and if the “plink plink plink” sound FX of picking up experience gems doesn’t get stuck in your head, the visual of the little hexagons scattered among stages is even more liable to be burned into your brain like the “wavy vision” after too much Guitar Hero. And don’t get me started on the Treasure Chest Theme song, which I’ve found wholly satisfying enough to immortalize in a meme (see below).
Is Vampire Survivors Worth it?
For just $5, the game wraps up these sensory pleasures in a surprisingly thorough package. With double-digits of characters to unlock, triple-digits of weapons and upgrades to find, and over half-a-dozen maps each with multiple challenge modes, Vampire Survivors is a generous offering in a world of time-gated and pay-gated content. I’m still working through the base game, but Poncle - a solo dev!!- has already dropped a DLC, Legacy of the Moonspell, which takes players to Asian-inspired locales and expands the arsenal with more weapons to not-shoot.
How Does Vampire Survivors Run on Steam Deck?
Vampire Survivors’ gameplay performance is super smooth even with myriad enemies and projectiles onscreen, and I haven’t seen any glaring issues . I’ve been playing it on my Steam Deck 64GB, where it’s been an amazing companion game before bed that controls very comfortably on the
The game is not without its flaws. The simplicity of the control scheme leads to minutes at a time where the player can get bored and stay alive without touching the controller at all. It’s satisfying the first time it happens - congrats on your good build - and a snoozer every time after that. Most levels have one to three pickups to find and upgrade your powers or access new features like a Music Library, but once you’ve found these there isn’t as much incentive to explore around the levels in future runs. Fortunately, there’s so much content to dig through across stages that you’ll want to keep pushing forwards in most cases anyway. Finally, its the titling and descriptions of characters, enemies and items that does most of the thematic heavy lifting - Poncle has admitted on social media to using stock assets in the game and while that’s understandable for a solo developer, most of the sprites are serviceable despite not making for compelling visuals on their own.
Overall, I would heartily recommend Vampire Survivors. Come for the deceptively simple gameplay, stay for the spaghetti horror charm. 5/5 Stars.
