Systems: Windows, XBox S/X, Android, macOS, Linux
Release Date: December 17, 2021
Publisher: Luca Galante, Games Delta, poncle
Developer: poncle, Luca Galante
I was initially turned off of Vampire Survivors for pretty petty reasons when I first started hearing about it a few months back. Knowing nothing about the game, all I saw was a screencap or two and the title screen art which rips off the pose of Bayonetta from Bayonetta 2. Not that I have any loyalty to Platinum Games, but I immediately made the assumption that if the title card on the Steam Store page was going to what I felt amounted to plagiarizing Bayonetta 2, then there was a chance that the game involved stolen assets of one kind or another. So I ignored the game. Then a few weeks ago, I actually looked into the game as I saw that it was not getting review bombed and everything else I saw online seemed to be favorable and then I recalled a video from Polygon's Clayton Ashton about power creep and how it is handled in different games, often to the benefit of the game and not always the detrimental type of power creep.
I considered picking up the game because it genuinely looked like fun as I liked the premise, although I am usually not one to play rogue-likes due to their often infinite play models and I like games to have an end game so I can feel like I accomplished something (there are obvious exceptions of course). The game was and still is, in Early Access, and that was only a little bit of a turn-off as I tend to prefer to play games that are finished. But then I noticed that the price of the game was only $2.99. I could live with losing $2.99 if I ended up not liking Vampire Survivors as that would be the cost of a video game rental in 1995. So I went over to Steam and purchased Vampire Survivors.
The premise of Vampire Survivors is pretty simple. You select a character (only one character is available at the beginning of the game) and you select a stage (only one stage is available at the beginning of the game) and you wander around an infinitely sized area that is constantly being repopulated with enemies. All you do is move around and survive. Your attacks happen automatically so there is no button mashing required aside from either the controller or WASD and the occasional click of the mouse. As you kill enemies, they frequently (but not always) drop gems that you pick up which give you experience points. When you level up, you choose from a randomized selection of skills and upgrades. The longer you survive, the more you level up, the more skills you have that you can upgrade. There are also gold coins that you can pick up which are used to purchase permanent buffs and access to additional characters in between games.
Confession time. In my first run-through of the game, I survived only 2m09s. Despite knowing the basics of the game (move, auto-attack), I found controlling the first character of Antonio Belphaese, who uses a single whip that strikes out in one direction to be difficult to control and plan attacks, coupled with not knowing or understanding what the various buffs were, which ones to prioritize and any kind of survival strategy left me dead in just over two minutes. My second game I fared much better, knowing how much damage I would take from enemies while walking through them and I focused on trying to earn more gold so I could unlock additional characters. I also discovered that like Castlevania, you could shoot candles/torches/braziers for gold and floor chicken. I played a handful of games with Antonio, unlocking additional buffs and weapons that would become available on subsequent playthroughs, although I hoarded my lackluster gold pile thinking that unlocking additional characters was the way to go.
Once I unlocked Imelda Belpaese, I really felt the game click and in the Inlaid Library, I had my first 20+ minute game where I genuinely felt invincible, mowing down hordes of enemies simply by walking as weapons fired off left and right while a maxed-out ring of Garlic protected me from anything getting within an entire body-width around my character. I ended up making the mistake of not being in constant motion this time and the ever-increasing in strength/HP monsters ended up closing in around me very quickly and I was killed in seconds. A couple of additional unlocked characters later (Gennaro Belpaese, Pasqualina Belpaese, and Suor Clerici), adding a couple of permanent buffs, and formulating a general strategy that feels like it hinges on getting the Garlic early on, I feel like I had a general grasp on the game. In my last playthrough, I lasted 30:02, at which point all of the enemies on screen die, and the Grim Reaper spawns who then flies straight towards your character and essentially kills you. I have read how you can have a glimmer of a chance of killing the Grim Reaper, but that seems pretty difficult as the enemy is there to end your game no matter how powerful you are.
But not everything about the game I feel is sunshine and cauterized rainbows. Having reached the 30-minute end-game point, part of me feels like, "Well, I beat the game then I guess," even though I know there is a lot that I still would like to unlock, which just requires more playing to earn more gold to buy more characters and permanent buffs. Lasting as long as possible to acquire all of that gold really means two things, or at least I think that it does. The first is that you need to have the Garlic buff which generates a damaging barrier around your character that grows in size and damage output as you get upgrades. Both times I have made it past the 15-minute mark, I have had Garlic, and I do not think I have managed to make it past 10 minutes without it. In my head, it is required to make any real progress and there have been a number of runs where the Garlic never came up when I leveled up.
The second is that you need to be lucky with the chests that are dropped from killing the larger mini-boss-type enemies. Each chest will always have a combination of gold and an upgrade to a skill you already have. However, each chest also has the chance of awarding you an additional two skills (for a total of three) along with more gold, or even four more skills (so five in total) and a lot of gold. Apart from your luck skill likely having some effect on the frequency of the three and five-item chest drops, I do not know if there are any additional factors, but I am pretty annoyed because in one run, I received at least three of the three-item-chest-drops and one of the five-item-chests, but since that run (one of my first five runs), I have only gotten a three-item-chest on one run and the rest have all been single-item chests. Yes, I am whining.
Vampire Survivors is a really fun game that makes you feel powerful, almost invincible for a minute or so before nearly overwhelming you with stronger enemies that immediately make you question how you built your character up until that point. Vampire Survivors is doing something right with the combination of Castlevania-inspired pixel graphics, concept and execution, controls, game balancing, and music that create a satisfying experience. A lot of my drive to continue playing is to unlock additional weapons and play other characters and to see if I do end up favoring the magic users as much as I am as I tend to play as Imelda Belphease, Pasqualina Belphease, or the recently unlocked Suor Clerici who was the character I made it to 30:01 with. Now let us just hope that on my next run I might be granted a couple of three and five-item chests.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Doch was, wenn man nicht sterben kann?
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