Moreish roguelike bullet hell Vampire Survivors is getting a cousin next year. It's called Vampire Crawlers, or as per its Steam page: Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors. It's a first-person roguelike deckbuilder in which you can fight Merdusas with spinach and it's set to hit PC in 2026.
В рамках Xbox Partner Preview издательство Poncle анонсировало свой новый проект – ККИ-рогалик Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors. Как признались разработчики, они намерены «доить до посинения» франшизу Vampire Survivors.
- How did this project start?
Shortly after the initial success of Vampire Survivors, I was already thinking of getting in touch with other indie studios to start working on spin-offs, so that I could focus on building my team to keep working on VS, while also getting some of my game concepts for existing genres to be developed. This means that it is something that has effectively been in the works for almost 4 years! I've been calling this kind of projects "experiments" in the past Steam news.
- Is this some sort of sequel to Vampire Survivors?
This is just a spin-off of Vampire Survivors, hopefully the first of a series of spin-offs! The idea is to take some of the accidental core pillars behind the development of VS and to apply them to existing genres. I’m talking about accessibility, immediacy, affordability, replayability, lightheartedness, and tons of flashy stuff.
- Why is this a "Vampire Survivors" game and not a new IP?
VS is very well known, so I hope that this will help players understand immediately that this game has been made with the same core principles in mind, simply applied to a different game genre.
Also this helps massively getting out of the way one of the major blockers I always had when making games: defining story, settings, lore etc:
When making VS, I managed to put all of that aside and let it all come out organically while developing the game, by taking inspiration just from a weapon icon, a music track (from the usual VS composers Daniele Zandara and Filippo Vicarelli, who are back, covering each other’s music tracks for Vampire Crawlers), or even wacky theories from the community! Now all that lore has a huge value, it allows me and the other devs to just focus on the gameplay aspects of the game, while at the same time allowing space for new ideas thanks to the open-endedness of VS.
- Will you update Vampire Crawlers post-launch like Vampire Survivors?
Yes, we are already planning to keep supporting the game post-launch and we have a thousand ideas about what we could do! Vampire Crawlers is a whole game, with a beginning and an end, so we are going to wait and see what the players say and suggest before choosing what to do post-launch.
- When is it releasing?
When almost every other game is releasing: before GTA6 :)
We're aiming for early/mid 2026
- So, is this a deckbuilder dungeon crawler?
As I'm getting similar questions so I shall re-post. VC is not a deckbuild game. Could move subjectively but not a dungeon crawler game either. By incorporating with the concept of turbo(turning), it's totally brand new genre called action Turboturn™ game(Turbo Turn system).
(YES, it's just a rogue-lite deckbuilder with a touch of dungeon crawling)
- Is this a new game from Luca Galante?
Yes, hello, the game concepts for the VS spin-off are born from the same Italian-memes-ridden mind, then expertly developed, improved, and brought to life by the teams partner of poncle
Poncle’s mega successful Vampire Survivors has inspired an entirely new genre—the “reverse bullet hell.” However, now the company is taking inspiration from a different genre to deliver a brand new experience.
Announced at today’s Xbox Partner Preview, Vampire Crawlers will be a roguelike deckbuilding dungeon crawler set within the Vampire Survivors universe. True to form, players will be able to create unbelievably powerful decks to mow through hordes of enemies as they explore dungeons and collect treasure.
What separates Vampire Crawlers from other roguelike deckbuilders, however, is its unique, “snowballing” combo system—where players play cards in ascending Mana order to land combos, where each step multiplies the next card’s effect. Whether players want to use cards one-by-one or generate mass chaos by playing as quickly as possible, thanks to the “turbo turn-based engine,” players will always get accurate outcomes,... Read more