While I didn’t play it when it first launched back in 2022, it was impossible not to at least be aware of Vampire Survivors when it hit the scene. The game quickly became known for it’s incredibly simple but extremely addictive game play and was a lot of peoples first time trying a roguelite game. A genre that I’m sure just about everyone is familiar with nowadays given just how many games in the genre there are!

Saying that Vampire Survivors was a smash hit is a bit of an understatement. The game was not only ported to just about every system at the time, including mobile, but word of mouth spread fast. Like I said, I didn’t play it when it first launched but I was more than aware of it! Its crazy success really comes down to a few key factors. The simplicity of it, the satisfying game play loop, and it’s availability so let’s break these things down a little.

When I say the game is simple I don’t mean that as a bad thing but I can’t stress how simple it is to pick up and play. The game can literally be played with one hand after all. The game play of Vampire Survivors goes like this, you select your Survivor then a level and you are dropped right in. From here you roam around the level attacking enemies as they come at you and level up from the gems they drop. When you level up you select a weapon or item. Every few minutes a tougher than average enemy appears and beating this enemy gets you a chest that’ll shower you in gold and give you an item! And that’s basically it. The main thing that changes between runs is what character and map you play. Doing different things during a run can unlock new things too. Like reaching a certain level or finding another character in a specific level. All pretty simple! But what makes the game so addictive is the fact that you are always doing something. You never want to stand still in Vampire Survivors and simply moving, since you attack automatically, is enough to go around killing enemies which gets you gems which levels you up which gives you a new thing to play with and so on.

Now if the game sounds too simple to you I would say you’re not wrong at all. That’s what I thought and why I didn’t bother giving it a go. But when I finally did try it, it instantly clicked. I knew I was not only hooked but why so many others were too. That little dopamine hit whenever you level up or unlock something new… It’s so hard to resist! Not that there’s a reason to resist but still. And hey, if you don’t believe me, just give it a try yourself! Like I said another big reason why Vampire Survivors did so well, and continues to, is because of its availability and I don’t mean just the fact it’s on so many platforms the game is also crazy cheap! Hell, on IOS it’s free and not the bad kind of free either where there is a ton of ads, the only time there are ads is when you choose to watch them for a free revive. And when it’s not free, it’s $5 everywhere else meaning if you are at all curious about picking it up you have no reason not to try it!

Vampire Survivors blew up in popularity and even four years later is still being played and even supported with new content. The game has even gotten multiple crossovers with other games including Castlevania, which is particularly note worthy given Vampire Survivors is something of a parody of Castlevania!

So why bring this all up now? Well that’s because the developers of Vampire Survivors, poncle, has released something of a sequel called Vampire Crawlers!

So, what exactly is Vampire Crawlers? Well rather than being a top down game where you’re running around very open maps, Crawlers is a dungeon crawler played in the first person! Which is obviously why it’s called Vampire Crawlers this time around. Not only that, the game is a deck builder now rather than Survivors where you are just focused on building up your character by leveling up your weapons and items. Now you are building decks as you travel around dungeons getting into battles. On the surface, Crawlers seems pretty vastly different from the simple and easily addictive Survivors, and while that is partly true, they still share plenty of things. Like how both games are great! So let’s get into why.

Off the bat, Crawlers is far more complex and requires more thought and strategy then your basic run of Survivors. In Survivors, there very much is strategy! Just because the game is simple and can be played with literally a single hand doesn’t mean it’s mechanics don’t have depth. This mostly came in the form of what weapons and items you wanted to grab and what combinations you could make as there is a limit to the number of weapons and items you could carry. Survivors absolutely has character builds to strive for and all that but Crawlers focused on this much more!

Somewhat similar to Survivors, in Crawlers when you level up you are given a selection of cards to pick from. I’m of course not going to go over every card in the game but there are certain types. You have red cards that are mostly focused on attacks, purple cards which usually focus on mana in someway, yellow cards that provide stat boosting effects, and blue cards which tend to provide armor and healing! You then have the Crawlers themselves which have their own special Crawler Cards which provide effects to certain colors. For example, one Crawler will allow you to draw a card from your deck anytime you play a yellow card. So it’s important to keep colors in mind when building your deck! Already right from the get go this is more complex than Survivors. But we’re just getting started when it comes to talking about the game play!

After selecting a Crawler and picking a place to go you are dropped right into the dungeon! Each dungeon has a set number of floors and the goal is obviously to reach the final floor. Each Crawler will have their own starter cards as well with the only way to get more cards being leveling up. How you build your deck is entirely up to you! Though it’s always good to keep your Crawler’s color and ability in mind when it comes to selecting your cards. Like obviously you should have some purple cards in your deck if your Crawler is purple so you can actually make use of their abilities. That being said, you are given plenty of freedom regardless when it comes to building your deck! Something to keep in mind though is how much mana it’ll take to use your cards.

Each of your cards will have a number on them. This is the amount of mana they’ll cost in order to be played! The amount of mana you have is shown on the bottom right. The idea being that stronger cards will require more mana while weaker cards will require less or even not spend any at all! This is important to keep in mind for a couple reasons. The most obvious reason being you don’t want to run out of mana and not be able to play anything else. Having a deck of just cards that cost five mana to use isn’t great as you won’t be able to use a ton of them every round at least when starting out. As you probably guessed, there are ways to increase your mana. Sometimes you’ll find places in the dungeon that will just give you some extra mana, another spot can have you sacrifice a card to increase your mana as well and of course there are cards that will give you mana too! Specifically purple cards. Some of which will actually require you to spend mana in order to play them but it’ll always give you a bit more back than you spent. However, if you’re clever, you can get way more mana from these cards as well! Which brings us to the other important thing to keep in mind with mana. That being combos!

This is something the game teaches you early on. While you can just throw out your cards without thinking, it’s best to try and build a combo. How you do this is with the mana amount needed for each card. You build a combo by playing them in ascending order. For example, you could build a combo by playing a card that cost zero mana followed by a card that costs one, and so on. Why this is so much better than just throwing cards out is because as your combo increases so do your cards effects. Going back to the cards that give you mana when you play them, there is a card that costs one mana to play but gives you two mana back, meaning you’ll have one mana after playing them. Which as you can imagine seems pretty useless. However, if you were to play this card after playing a card that costs zero mana, then it’ll give you four mana for the cost of one meaning you’ll have three mana! And of course this applies to more than just mana cards, attacking cards will do more damage, support cards will buff your stats even more, armor cards will give you even more armor and so on. For me, this is where the real fun of Vampire Crawlers lies! Similar to feeling that satisfaction of clearing the screen over and over again with your crazy weapons and attacks in Vampire Survivors, clearing an entire boss fight with one long combo in Crawlers feels amazing… However, it’s a lot more complicated to hit that feeling in Crawlers than it is in Survivors which I do feel might make for a divide.

Becoming crazy power in Survivors isn’t exactly easy but it’s not horribly complex either. Not on the level I’d say Crawlers is with it’s deck building! Which is why I feel like the developers are kind of trying to separate these two games as being different experiences. Something I feel is for the best.

I don’t see nearly as many people picking up and getting addicted to Crawlers like they did with Survivors. It’s a lot harder to have that same level of fun while giving that same level of effort. Not trying to say someone is dumb if they enjoy Survivors and not Crawlers, but rather that these are two different experiences with very different game play styles! Which is why it’s so impressive that the developers managed to still capture that addictive rush in an entirely new game.

While I don’t see as many people picking Crawlers up, the ones that do pick it up are going to have a very hard time putting it down! Despite having a new and more complex system, the developers managed to capture that same satisfying rush as they did in Survivors! Which makes Crawlers an extremely easy recommendation. It takes a lot of skill to be able to identify and translate over something like that to a new and more complex system.

This review is far shorter than most I tend to write, especially recently, but it’s very fitting given how small of a game Crawlers is. Which isn’t to say it isn’t worth the price, it’s only $10 after all, but in terms of the amount of levels in the game it is pretty short. I even remember being surprised when I hit the credits! But of course, being a roguelite game, Crawlers is endlessly replayable and has many things to unlock! From more characters, to increasing stats, to the Arcane card system, as well as upgrading your cards themselves and even changing the rarity of certain things! Crawlers is extremely dense and very customizable.

So, while I’m sure the game’s more complex nature might turn some fans away, I want to urge fans of Survivors to give Crawlers a try despite that! It’s cheap, available on everything besides mobile currently, and it’s just as addictive! You just might need to do a little extra to hit that satisfying loop.

But those are just my thoughts! What are some of yours? Ever played Vampire Survivors before? Interested in giving Vampire Crawlers a go after reading this? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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