Vampire Survivors is a time survival game with minimalistic gameplay and roguelite elements. Hell is empty, the devils are here, and there's no place to run or hide. All you can do is survive as long as you can until death inevitably puts an end to your struggles. Gather gold in each run to buy upgrades and help the next survivor. The supernatural indie phenomenon that lets you be the bullet hell! Supports mouse, keyboard, controller, and touch screen.Starting TipsTake your time to grab gems and items, they won't disappear. Get two or three offensive weapons at first, but focus on leveling them up one at a time. Armour and Luck are good starting power-ups to spend money on. Refund power-ups often, it's free, and try new upgrade paths. v0.1.0 release date: - itch: Mar 31, 2021 - Steam: Dec 17, 2021
It's hard to explain how this game is addictive but in an OK way. The first day I played I played it for about 5 hours straight, and unfortunately I started late at night so it took me into the wee hours of the morning. The next days I played a couple of hours. Lately I've been playing 1 or 2 half-hour matches every day and it's perfectly fine.
You only control movement and choose what weapons you get or upgrade when you level up. You have to move in the right way to dodge enemies and direct your weapons, a small dance that becomes muscle memory but keeps you on your toes through the peak spawn rates. There is also a degree of planning as you are aware of what powerups and XP lies where, but have to trick the simplistic AI into getting out of your path. You identify holes in the waves that you slalom through, angles where your weapons will hit the maximum enemies etc, it's simple but always interesting.
This is a rogue-lite, so you unlock things but every match starts off with only the character's starting weapon and a couple of modifiers. The progression is not entirely clear, as I feel like I have done most of the unlocks but I don't know half of the weapon combos that lead to evolving weapons - I think there is some room for improvement there, but it is not problematic, you can follow the unlockables list and make steady progress. The only other negative is that when I'm tired but I have created a very good combo, I tend to get very sleepy in spite of the intense flashes and chaos on the screen, you can disable a lot of this in the options but it is a bit tiring on the eyes.
Overall great game, but heed the warning about flashing lights and seizures, it's intense.