Vampire Survivors

Overview

Vampire Survivors is a roguelike survival video game created by Luca Galante where the player controls a character that automatically attacks and must survive increasingly large hoards of enemy monsters while picking up experience points and upgrading their own weapons and attributes. The game was released in early access in December 2021 and officially released on PC in October 2022, releasing on Xbox a month later. Throughout its early access period, the game gained a substantial fanbase and was considered a game of the year contender by some. Despite the game's name, none of the monsters you fight in the game are vampires.

History

Vampire Survivors, inspired by the mobile game Magic Survival,^[1] was released for early access on itch.io^[2] December 17th, 2021. It was released on Steam^[3] in January 2022 and started gaining a significant fanbase that month. On January 17th, 2022, YouTuber Northernlion posted a video showcasing the game and praising it, garnering over 496,000 views in 10 months (shown below, left). On January 26th, YouTuber BaronVonGames posted a Let's Play video of the game, garnering over 265,000 views in a similar span of time (shown below, right). IGN posted a video of the game to YouTube^[4] on January 27th.

That day, Vice^[5] published an article about the game's rise to popularity. At the time of the article's publication, Vampire Survivors had over 27,000 concurrent players on Steam. The article features an interview with the game's developer, Luca Galante, also known as "ponce," where he describes how he created the game because he wanted a community to manage like he used to as an admin of an Ultima Online server. On January 29th, the Destructoid YouTube channel posted an early access trailer for the game, garnering over 28,000 views in 10 months (shown below).

On February 3rd, Galante talked to NME^[6] about the game's success, revealing that he was able to quit his job to work on it full-time. On March 24th, a game roadmap was posted to Steam.^[7] On April 10th, streamer and YouTuber Asmongold posted a video playing the game, garnering over 1.6 million views in seven months (shown below).

Release

Vampire Survivors left early access and was released in full on October 20th, 2022 on PC. On November 10th, the game was released on Xbox and made available for free through Xbox Game Pass. Ponce made the announcement that day through Twitter^[8] @poncle_vampire, garnering over 1,800 likes in a day. That day, the official Xbox YouTube channel posted a trailer for the game, garnering over 20,000 views in a day (shown below). Gamespot^[13] published an article titled, "Vampire Survivors, GOTY Dark Horse Contender, Is Out On Xbox And Game Pass Today."

Gameplay

At the start of the game, the player chooses from a number of unlockable characters, all of which automatically attack, with specific starting equipment and buffs. You are then dropped into a field where you must survive against a constantly growing hoard of monsters of varying difficulty. The player must defeat monsters to gain experience points and gain levels. With each level up, the player has the choice to either add a new automatic weapon or item to their arsenal (with a maximum of six weapons per session) or upgrade their current items or stats. There are also coins and treasure chests that award coins that the player can collect to buy perma-upgrades and new characters between sessions. The goal of the game is to survive for 15 to 30 minutes and defeat a "final boss." New stages, characters and items are awarded for successful playthroughs and completing in-game challenges.

Reception

Vampire Survivors has received generally positive reviews since its early access release. At the time of writing, the game holds an 85% positive critic score on Metacritic^[14] and 8.2/10 user score. On November 1st, 2022, the Washington Post's game reporter Gene Park tweeted,^[15] "I’ve played 30 hours of vampire survivors in just over a week. It’s in elden ring levels of captivating me. It’s the best $5 you’ll spend this year," garnering over 1,000 likes in a week.

Online Presence

The developer of Vampire Survivors regularly posts updates about the game to Twitter^[9][10] on the accounts @poce_vampire and @poncle_games. The is also a Fandom^[11] site dedicated to the game.

/r/VampireSurvivors

The /r/VampireSurvivors^[12] subreddit was created on January 7th, 2022 and has over 44,700 members as of November of the same year. Fan art, memes and discussions about the game are often posted on the board (popular examples shown below).

Memes

Garlic

One of the most common memes about the game surrounds the "garlic" weapon, which creates a constant but weak area of attack around the player. The weapon is advantageous because it offers a constant attack with no cool down, however, has weak overall damage and is seen as a waste of a weapon slot by some (examples shown below).^[16][17]

Search Interest

External References