Vampire Survivors, the runaway hit roguelike released at the end of 2021 was developed by a solo developer, Luca Galante. It was released on mobile platforms, Windows, MacOS and Xbox and later in 2023 a switch port was also released. Its reception while starting late picked up immensely hitting the all-time peak on Steam of 77,000 players, ofcourse the total number is surely much higher when taking Mobile Platforms and Switch players into account.It was initially stated by Galante’s company that no official playstation release was scheduled.
In A Word, Its Simplicity Won Its Popularity
It’s a simple 2D game where the player is tasked with killing monsters and that’s it. The gameplay is controlling a character as it battles hordes of monsters coming at him from all directions and as he keeps killing them he gets xp points and enough xp points will grant him 3 choices or power ups be it offensive or defensive.
But that is enough to draw anybody in, as the excitement builds up to keep on massacring the hordes and see just how far you can go. This game draws out the thought of “just one more try” so easily it’s almost concerning. The player can also use the gold collected after each run to purchase upgrades such as new characters that each have their own unique attributes and types of weapons to offer a variety in playstyle and also upgrade the health pools of characters, their movement speed, cooldowns for spells etc. to make it a different experience for the next run as with any proper roguelike.
It’s Well Deserved Success
Its sudden success allowed Galante to just work on the game full time and thus he was able to release separate additional content such as weapons, new characters and stages and a new mode called “endless” and it has also received cross-over content such as with Among Us and Contra. Since then Galante has hired a 15 person team that worked on improving the overall performance of the game across all platforms and eventually releasing a port on the Switch.
Finally A Playstation Release
Galante’s company Poncle did state around June that there is no official release window for a PlayStation release but now it has been confirmed for an August 29th release. While its hype has died down, it no doubt reinvigorated the indie bullet-hell style games that we saw fewer and fewer of as the years went by. A playstation release no doubt means that new players will be introduced and likely get hooked into the satisfying gameplay loop of Vampire Survivors. Since it is the most played game on the Steam deck it could also raise the possibility of reaching that status with the PlayStation portable.
It’s Impact In The Industry
Vampire Survivors is one of the many games that time and time again reinforce the fact that a game doesn’t need good graphics (Vampire Survivors is literally pixels), 3D look and feel or even an in-depth story. All it needs to do is satisfy the player and encourage them to try again. Vampire Survivors is a callback to the retro arcade games of the past that achieves a sense of nostalgia so incredibly well that it should be noted by developers and companies who intend to remake their old games. It is among the many indies titles of recent times that have shown that while indie development teams or companies may not have the manpower that triple A studios do, they are not deficient in sheer work ethic and creativity as we have seen with Hades, the incredible Stardew Valley, Balatro and so many more.
A roadmap was released earlier detailing crossovers with other recent popular titles such as the critically acclaimed Baldur’s Gate 3 and World of Warcraft. There is no doubt more content is planned for the future along with reports of TV adaptation that is in the works but there is no confirmation on when and on which platform it will release. Dedicated players of the game made their excitement known across various social media posts wholeheartedly approving the planned crossovers and are already speculating on what new weapons, stages and cards that are to come in the coming months.
