When Vampire Crawlers was announced during the Xbox Partner Preview last November, developer Poncle made it clear this wasn’t a Vampire Survivors sequel, but a spin-off that takes the franchise in a completely different direction. Now it has a release date. Vampire Crawlers launches on April 21 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, and PC via Steam for $9.99. It will also be available day one on Xbox Game Pass, with Android and iOS versions coming at a later date.
The full title is technically Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors, which is a mouthful, but the game itself looks anything but bloated. It’s a roguelite deckbuilder that swaps Vampire Survivors’ top-down bullet heaven chaos for first-person dungeon crawling. Players pick a Crawler from the Vampire Survivors roster and explore grid-based dungeons while building decks of attack and utility cards. Poncle calls it the “Turboturn” system, where you play cards in ascending mana order to trigger combos that multiply each subsequent card’s effect. You can play it slow and tactical or burn through turns as fast as your hands can move.
The game’s demo was a hit during last month’s Steam Next Fest, landing as the fifth most played demo of the entire event and outperforming demos from Capcom’s Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection and Pragmata. Having played the demo and sunk dozens of hours into Vampire Survivors, I’m now very much looking forward to the full release of Vampire Crawlers. For $9.99, Poncle continues to be one of the best values in gaming.
