When I reviewed Vampire Crawlers back in May, I came away seeing poncle’s $9.99 deckbuilder as a fun pickup that ran out of discovery faster than Vampire Survivors did. poncle and Nosebleed Interactive have now shipped the game’s first major quality-of-life patch, version 1.5, alongside a content roadmap that lays out where poncle’s first Vampire Survivors spin-off is heading through 2026 and into 2027. The deckbuilder launched in April on PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S, Switch, Switch 2, and PC, with mobile versions still due later this year.
The headline fix in version 1.5, fittingly enough, is that you can finally quit the game. poncle owned up to that one in the patch notes, joking that the update ran late because the team spent days stuck trying to exit. The bigger addition is Endless Mode, which unlocks through a new Relic hidden in a teaser area that opens once you complete the game. With the Relic active, any dungeon you have already cleared can be pushed past its normal floors into tougher encounters, and the Jeweller is disabled so runs lean on base-game RNG instead of a preset gem setup.
Beyond Endless Mode, the rest of version 1.5 is a bunch of quality-of-life changes. You can now sort cards by mana cost or color (thank you!), pull up a single deck view that shows every card across your deck, hand, and discard pile, and read clearer information at the Jeweller, while a reworked Luck stat improves both how many gems you find and their quality. There is also a deeper list of balance tweaks and bug fixes in poncle’s full notes.
Alongside the patch, poncle laid out a 2026 content roadmap built on a new approach to expanding the game. Because Vampire Crawlers is designed to wrap up in 20 to 30 hours and is easy to break, each 2026 update will add a post-game Challenge Stage centered on a new mechanic, and clearing it lets you toggle that mechanic on or off across every stage. The first update, Death Parade, brings the Moongolow area, two new characters in Sir Ambrojoe and Big Troubler, and a Limit Hand Size relic that pairs a capped hand with card discarding. Two further updates, Bone Deep and Curdled Tunnels, follow with more characters, cards, gems, and Arcanas, though poncle is holding most of those details back and notes the roadmap assets are not final. The studio also teased a different kind of addition for 2027 called the Astral Stair. poncle frames the Challenge Stages as a way to keep a game that is easy to break and quick to finish expanding over time, which lines up with the repetition I described in my review once the combo system clicked.
Outside the gameplay changes, the update also brought Steam Community Items live, including a badge, five trading cards, four profile backgrounds, and five emoticons. The patch is live on PC now, with the console versions following soon. Switch 2 gets the most notable upgrades of that rollout, moving to 1080p in handheld mode and 4K when docked, with the controller’s mouse mode now working for dungeon navigation.
