Vampire Survivors Review: Something New

It isn’t often that we get to see the birth of a new genre, but that’s what’s happened over the last year, thanks to Vampire Survivors. Originally released last fall in early access, Vampire Survivors isn’t the first game in this new genre, but it’s the game that has popularized it, and if the list of imitators popping up on Steam is anything to go by, we won’t be seeing an end to these games anytime soon.

While there are many alternatives at this point, none have managed to balance things nearly as well. Vampire Survivors is immediately addicting. After only a single session, I knew I’d be pouring countless hours into the full game, and that’s precisely what has happened over the last few months.

As Simple As It Gets

You won’t find many games simpler than Vampire Survivors, because you don’t actually have to do much of anything to play it. You start as a character with a single attack. Initially, that’s a whip, calling to mind the series’ clear inspirations, and frankly clear theft, from Castlevania, even if mostly on an aesthetic level. You don’t actually have to attack, though. That happens automatically with a specific pattern. All you do is move your character around, putting them in position for that automatic attack to take out the hordes of enemies that start to swarm you.

As you defeat enemies, you’ll pick up gems that will level you up. Every new level lets you pick from three new abilities or weapons. Sometimes you have the choice to take an ability or weapon you already have, which instead of giving you an additional skill levels that existing one up. That’s often your best option because you’re limited in how many skills you can have on each run, so if none that you’re missing are favorites of yours, keeping a slot open makes more sense while improving whatever ability you are already using.

Building Power

Time passes, and you start to grow more powerful. You’ll soon have multiple attacks thrusting out of you, abilities that improve your strength or health, and enemies that once required you to dodge and weave around them will go down like grass before your blade. At the same time, though, you’ll see the hordes start to grow. Instead of just a few enemies at a time, the screen will start to fill up. Then a boss will arrive, with more complex and powerful attacks, but also with greater rewards when they die. Before long, another type of enemy starts to show up who is harder to kill. Then more of them. Soon you’ll find tons of different enemy types flooding the screen.

That’s the secret sauce of Vampire Survivors. While you constantly grow more powerful, so do the challenges coming at you. It leads to an ebb and flow where you start to feel invincible, only for a new threat to come along, leaving you suddenly fighting for survival once again. Then you get more powerful, and the cycle starts again.

Just One More Run

Roguelite elements are all throughout the game, from the randomness of when enemies will approach, to which weapons and abilities you’ll be offered, to the skills you can purchase over time with the rewards you get from past runs. These skills can tilt future runs more in your favor, powering you up from the start or giving you cool options like the ability to skip certain upgrades. You’ll also unlock five different stages, which all have a different feel to them, as well as a handful of bonus stages that have specific rules that feel even more different. In your early runs, you’ll very likely die within a few minutes as the hordes overtake you, but as you level up your abilities and learn which options pair well together, you’ll survive longer and longer.

A full run of Vampire Survivors takes only 30 minutes. If you survive that long, you’ve beaten the stage, even if you still only have death to look forward to. The grim reaper shows up at that point and puts you down. There are some advanced techniques to survive even this for a time, but in the end, you will fall. That’s okay, though, as thirty minutes is the perfect session length. Any longer and the relatively simple gameplay might start to get stale, or it might become too much to manage. Even now, if things don’t go perfectly for my build, I’ll often spend the final minutes of a run surrounded and fighting for any space I can find as the entire screen fills with enemies. It’s an absolute rush, and kind of incredible when you think about the things that were a threat to you just fifteen minutes earlier. You’ll eventually unlock options to speed up future runs, but I love spending thirty minutes before bed going through a round. It’s become a sort of late-night ritual that I do at least a few times a week on my Steam Deck. I should add that this is one of the ultimate Steam Deck games. Many players will enjoy this on other devices, but there’s no better way to enjoy it than on the Steam Deck.

Conclusion

Vampire Survivors is simple in so many ways. The graphics are basic, with many of the earlier versions’ assets taken straight from other games and asset packs, but they have a look that reminds players of a beloved series and simply work. Gameplay is literally just moving a character around with some planning along the way. Yet somehow, it’s one of the most addicting games of 2022, the one I most consistently come back to, and one of my favorites of the year. If you have a spare thirty minutes now and then, absolutely check it out.

Final Verdict: 4.5/5

Available on: PC (Reviewed); Publisher: poncle; Developer: poncle; Players: 1; Released: October 20th, 2022; ESRB: N/A; MSRP: $4.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a retail copy of Vampire Survivors.