Screw it, let’s just play Vampire Survivors
Luca Galante's arcade-y Castlevania riff is deeper (and more addictive) than any number of bigger or more expensive titles
Games Features Vampire Survivors
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
By all rights, this week’s installment of What Are You Playing This Weekend? should probably be about something new, instead of a game that’s been out in Early Access since late 2021, and which has had several peaks of popularity in the intervening months. Shouldn’t I be talking about the mixture of innovations and familiarity powering the 1.0 release of Rogue Legacy 2? Talking up the Scrabble-based battles of the demo of Writer’s Block, a spiritual successor to my beloved BookWorm Adventures? Preparing some trenchant thoughts on this weekend’s new samurai game, Trek To Yomi?
Probably! But also: Screw it. I just want to play Vampire Survivors. You may be able to relate.
Released back in December, Vampire Survivors is, on the surface, a hilariously blatant, copyright-skirting parody of the Castlevania franchise. The twist here is that, instead of crawling through massive castles filled with every ghoul known to mortal imaginations, in Vampire Survivors the monsters come to you. And come to you. And come, in hordes, filling the screen with sometimes hundreds of sprites at a time.
Rather than Konami’s castle-based cash cow, Survivors is, in fact, a very slick and smart spin on the old Robotron arcade franchise, tasking you (and your chosen hero) with gunning, or boomeranging, or holy watering, etc., your way through endless armies of largely mindless opponents that arrive in treasure-packed waves. Created by Luca Galante, it has the paradoxical feel of being a port of a mobile app that doesn’t actually exist, with big, goofy buttons, extremely simple controls, and a progression scheme that feels lifted straight from the likes of Pac-Man 256.
All of which probably sounds pretty lousy on paper, but, get this: It is not lousy. It kicks ass, actually, in the most addictive of ways.
The most obvious point in Survivors’ favor is its wide array of weapons, almost all lifted (visually, at least) from the Castlevania franchise. You can hold six of them at a time, which sounds like a mess, except that every weapon in Vampire Survivors fires automatically; rather than manage a bunch of different attack controls, you just walk your little hero around while their whip whips and their axes go flying and birds drop bombs, and the monster hordes press in. Add in another six slots for passive upgrades, and you have a surprisingly deep set of build options, even before you begin factoring in the bonuses that different unlockable characters bring to the battle, or evolving weapons unlocked by particular combinations of item and armament. For a game that looks mindless from a distant view, there’s a remarkable amount of strategy in crafting each run through the game—with good item selection the key between getting quickly ground down to the dust or becoming a functionally unstoppable engine of screen-obliterating death.
And god, but do those runs pop. Vampire Survivors isn’t necessarily a quick game—if you get on a roll, a game can last up to a full half hour. But it still feels breezy, as you watch mountains of monsters melt away under a particularly powerful strategy. (Or crush in on you in massive waves if your build isn’t up to snuff.) Galante also has an almost comical knack for giving players regular kicks of dopamine, whether it’s the triumphant moment of leveling up and getting a new weapon, or the ridiculously over-the-top animations that play when you open a chest after killing a mini-boss.
The end result is a game that’s compulsively playable, of the kind that can be absolutely focus-destroying in the wrong circumstances. After all, why should I write a full ending sentence for this column? Vampire Survivors is right there, right now, waiting down in my Steam tab for me to just
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Well, in honor of Star Wars day on May the 4th, I played a little bit of Star Wars: the Old Republic, where I was continuing the Bounty Hunter class story on Balmorra.After successfully taking downs the first major target of the Great Hunt, Admiral Ivernus, and one of the rival hunters, I flew off to Nar Shaddaa for the continuation of the Great Hunt, which I’ll probably stream on my twitch channel (https://twitch.tv/lost_limey) as part of my Star Wars Saturday streams.
Something else I’ve been streaming this week was Tell Me Why by DONTNOD entertainment, a story driven game, with themes of LGBTQ+, childhood trauma and gun violence. It has what I consider to be extremely pretty graphics: I’m enjoying the narrative. I think I finished it last June as a Pride Month thing, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been selecting different choices this time, and there’s certainly narrative differences. I’ve finished the first two episodes, and plan on streaming the third after work tonight.
I had $5 in my Steam wallet, so I bought the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, almost purely because I liked the Netflix cartoon. This collection is basically the NES, Game Boy, and SNES Castlevania games, so “classicvanias” rather than “metroidvanias,” So far, I’ve just been playing the OG Castlevania: And I had forgotten the difficulty levels of those old NES games. I got to the very first boss, a giant bat, but I couldn’t figure out how to use Simon’s sub-weapons with a modern controller. I might cannibalize the SNES style controller from my RetroPie device and do that instead.
Another game that’s been basically impossible for me with a modern controller is the original Street Fighter, part of the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection: The game feels like it’s punishingly precise with its inputs, and I don’t have great timing, plus it only punches or kicks when you release the relevant buttons, not when you press them. I was able to beat Retsu, and have been getting close to beating Geki, but can’t time my blocks of his throwing stars. Also, it seems impossible to pull off a Hadoken or Shoryuken.
Oh, and a friend of mine just gave me a free copy of Planet Zoo, so I’ll be looking at that soon.
I’m also still playing Pokémon Shield on my Switch, keep messing around in the Wild Area, but should probably get to doing the grass gym challenge.
I really loved my time with Tell Me Why. In some ways, it feels more like a sequel to Life Is Strange than Life Is Strange 2 did — more small-town adventure than grand road trip. And yes, the views of the Alaskan landscape in the game are absolutely gorgeous.
Thinking about getting that Castlevania collection on the PS5 for $1 more, because I’m assuming the controller support is better. I miss me some Simon’s Quest.
After having completed Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between (meh) and Lume (ugh) this week, I’m on to NORCO, and in just 90 minutes, it has become one of the most absorbing games I’ve played in a while. I’m absolutely in love with this mash-up of cypberpunk and Southern Gothic. It’s both creepy and hypnotic, but it’s also rife with (sometimes juvenile) humour. (What can I say? I love a good poop joke.)This weekend, I’ll also be playing more of Season 2 of Halo Infinite. I don’t care much for the new Last Spartan Standing mode. The problem is that it has to focus around Halo’s most boring weaponry, because with the exception of Heatwave, most of its fun or unique weaponry has too short a time-to-kill. But I am getting a lot of mileage out of the new King of the Hill and Rumble Pit modes. Rumble Pit has a lot of bizarre game variety, including one game that’s just sniper rifles and shotguns. Halo is at its best when it’s kind of silly, and these games are a hoot.
For those of us not gaming on PC, if you have an android phone, Magic Survival is the original mobile game that the creator of Vampire Survivors said inspired him. Having played both, I actually prefer Magic Survival, broken English (it’s Korean and its translation is…interesting) and all. Plus the art is kinda more…weird, in a good way.
This weekend I plan on making more headway on Horizon: Forbidden West (I’ve actually enjoyed being super leisurely with it) and playing the Switch port of Nobody Saves the World when I can manage it. Although I might just drop everything and do some Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe runs, who knows?
You’re not obligated to have a new game to talk about every week. God knows the commenting regulars have written about the same games multiple weeks in a row, and with the updates Vampire Survivors continues to get, hell yeah, go back to that well. It’s a well-made game with a lot of replay value. I haven’t picked it up myself, but I’ve watched a few games of it, and I totally get it.I started the week playing Cultist Simulator, finished my third and final standard victory, and for the third time found the sort of NG+ playthrough just too skinny on resources to be fun to play. Starting out with beginner stats, a small pool of money, and some new random mechanism that really likes to have a competing cult steal money from you while you’re constantly getting sick… like, I’m sure that once you get your stats up, a few cultists who can manage your reputation, and a reliable source of high-income work from patrons, it becomes fun to puzzle through the apostate-specific mechanics, but the early game is just too cruel and random, and getting a game over means you have to do a several-hour standard playthrough to ascend and re-unlock the apostate scenario.So, enough of that bullshit. I had my fun with the game, but I’m not going to torture myself to see everything it has to offer. So I came back to Lightning Returns, which was a breath of fresh air. I’ve cleared two of five major quests and have reached the bosses of two others, and I think I’m discovering that order matters a whole lot in what you do in this game. and familiarity with which side quests give big stat boosts is vital.With a directory of info on which quests are available on which days, and what the rewards are, it’d be fairly easy to trace out a route to waltz through the game with enough strength and magic to destroy everything. On a first playthrough without that info, I feel like I’ve painted myself into a corner by making the assumption that taking on Snow was going to be my last major mission, because the mission numbering and the combat difficulty are suggesting that he could’ve been my target on day 3 rather than day 8, and at this point the enemies’ stat growth has outpaced mine. At this point, if beating Snow is possible and gives a significant stat reward, I might even be able to complete my last 3 missions in one day – I’m seriously at the boss door for all 3 at this point, ready to start a new day; otherwise, I may have hit a wall, but I have all the info I need for a much more successful second attempt at this game.And, god, the last four months of Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 are bananas. They’ve absolutely outdone themselves in finding creative ways to surprise players. We’re going to be finishing our campaign in two weeks, and after that, I can start opening game night up to other locals geeks and blow the dust off my other board game boxes, but it’s been a wild ride, and I don’t regret putting all of our focus on this game to make sure we finish before other people get distracted by other obligations. Having to wait months to see what happens in December would have been devastating.
Somewhat spoiler-ish for Lightning Returns, but the three bosses you speak of have different version depending on what day you fight them on, if I remember correctly. The later you fight them, the stronger they are, I think. (Please yell at me if this was too much of a spoiler)
And a second playthrough is receommended.
Nah, I definitely noticed minor enemies scaling over time and assumed there was a good chance the bosses might do the same. Banking on some bosses just having lower base stats than others is about the only thing I can hang my hopes on for this playthrough being completable at this point, since it’s getting to the point where I can’t keep up with the rarer random encounters without blowing all of my EP on slowing down time.The mechanics make the ideal route being a fun puzzle to solve, but guessing wrong at every turn has made for a pretty punishing first playthrough. I spent like a day and a half collecting all the soul fragments only to find out that major quest just gave me an extra EP slot and an extra recovery item slot, but no HP, magic, or strength. Oof.
If it’s any solace, I think the harder bosses have better rewards. And there should be enough time to get everything done. To assist with that, I believe completing every side quest you can should assist with the matter of time as well.
Also, if you can’t complete the run, I think NG+ is basically open at any point, so you just carry things over from the previous run, IIRC. So things should be easier the next time around.
Yeah, I’m aware there’s a NG+, but I’m not sure what carries over – whether it includes costumes, equipment, magic, and/or stats. Carrying over stats would seem to completely break the balance of the game in my favor, so I’ve been operating on the assumption that it’s everything but. If stats carry… wow, I’m just going to be tearing ass through the game the second time around.
I honestly can’t remember, since it’s been so long, but I do think equipment and outfits do. There might be some NG+ specific outfits, equipment and quests as well. My mind is fuzzy, but all of that sounds right.
At the very least, I’ve noticed that quest rewards show up as ??? on the first playthrough, so I’m certain that the ones I complete on this playthrough are going to be displayed on the mission select/menu screens on future playthroughs, so I can make much more informed choices on which ones are worth the time they take to complete.
Well I uninstalled Elden Ring. I debated doing a second run to try to get the last few achievements but I realized the NG+ mode does not leave grace points unlocked or give you key items that unlock certain doors and I am just not up for all that running and discovering a second time right now. So now I am looking for something new to fill the void. Grabbed Trek to Yomi, Search and Destroy and the Slay the Spire fan expansion. I know that none of them will be my next Elden Ring but ya never know. I am also debating going back to Horizon: Forbidden West. That franchise just can’t get a break, always coming out at the same time as a world changing open world by another company shows up
My plan was to actualy try to finish Cyberpunk this weekend, as I’ve put it off for too long. However, Rouge Legacy 2 has been a ton of fun, and I’ve fallen in love with Dorfromantik. Additionally, lost_limey showed me in their comment that the retro Castlevanias are super cheap, so that might happen as well (on Steam and PS, from what I see).
As for Vampire Survivors, what more can I say? Game is such a delight, and is so good at playing and dropping and coming back when the new stuff is brought into the game. It’s got the replayability Hades has for me as well. A couple of games I could always pick up and play again whenever. Honestly, it’s on my GOTY list.
And just patiently waiting for Horizon: Forbidden West NG+ or DLC. I honestly want to 100% that game again.
Okay this may be the time to drop this, but my Gamemaker project is out on itch.io now. Sorceress is a top-down action/shooter game where you run through a dungeon, zapping monsters with lightning bolts. It’s a short game, about 10 levels, and is available for Windows and Mac machines, for free. Give it a look and tell me what you think!https://evanwaters.itch.io/sorceress
It’s jostling for space with a thousand other games in my backlog, but I’ve downloaded it 🙂
I have been having an absolute blast on the Link’s Awakening remake for Switch. Just a delight end to end. I haven’t played it since I was a little kid clutching a friend’s big ol’ gray Game Boy at recess, and it’s just great.
I played through that a little while back, and I think it might actually be the best Zelda game.Pretty much every item feels like a game-changer, rather than a fancy key like some games in the series.
It’s amazing how it just keeps folding back on itself as you find more items and abilities, layering upward like a croissant dough
Just wanted to say thanks, William! I’ve been happily Surviving Vampires (and/or (mostly) Not)… But for only $3, I can already tell this is gonna be an amazing new retro-styled timesuck, yay