Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
Sometimes a game is so good it creates its own genre. Whether you call it a survivorslike, bullet heaven, or something else entirely, Vampire Survivors pretty much invented an entire roguelite subgenre. So, when your game creates a whole new genre, where do you go next? Cards, of course.
Vampire Crawlers is the latest game from the Vampire Survivors studio, Poncle. The greatest trick that has been hiding in plain sight is that Vampire Crawlers isn’t a sequel. It’s not a spinoff either. Vampire Crawlers is an adaptation. It translates the survival sensation to a deckbuilder really well, twisting familiar tenets into a new creation, and it’s mostly structurally sound, even if it sometimes buckles under its own weight.
Vampire Crawlers is all about combos. Like traditional deckbuilders, you have a pool of mana, and each card costs mana to play. However, the order you play cards matters greatly. If you play cards in ascending mana cost order, you’ll get a combo, multiplying the damage, Armor, or other effects you gain from the next card played in the combo. For instance, if you play the Whip (costs zero mana), then play Garlic (costs one mana), Garlic will deal double its usual damage.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
That’s not the only combination mechanic, though. Evolutions are also here, allowing you to combine your cards into more powerful ones. Most of these formulas are exactly as they were in Vampire Survivors. If you know your way around those weapons, you’ll be right at home combining weapons here.
My go-to quickly became NO FUTURE, an explosive bouncing device created by combining the Runetracer and Armor. It’s very powerful, scales really well with the Duplication Ring, and is probably the reason for the photosensitivity warning that displays when you launch the game.
If there’s anything to complain about regarding combat, it’s that it’s a little hard to strategise. New cards are gained by levelling up, much like how you would receive weapons and equipment in Survivors. However, when you level up, there’s no way to look at your deck to see which mana cost card you could use more cards of to boost your combo, or create possible evolutions. You gain more control over these level-ups as you buy upgrades in the game, such as the ability to skip rewards or banish certain cards from the reward possibilities, but it would be nice to lay plans a little more carefully and with more knowledge.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
Certain user interface elements can be a little tough to manage in fights, too. It borrows the very helpful intention system, allowing you to see how much damage and shield the enemies will be looking to use. However, it’s hard to tell how close enemies are to death. If you hover over a card, you get to see a preview of how much damage it will do to each enemy, and those numbers will be red if it’s going to take one out.
But because of not having max health numbers, it’s hard to know if you should be more aggressive to take out enemies or build up Armor on certain turns. And like Vampire Survivors, once you get a powerful enough build, you don’t really need to think about the numbers. You just kill everything.
Where Vampire Crawlers really lets its combat sing is its lack of limitations. There are cards to increase your mana and allow you to draw cards. This is the easiest deckbuilder I’ve played to essentially create an endless turn. Though there are some mechanics built to curb these infinites, you can continue pushing your luck to keep the numbers going up forever. There’s no limit on the amount of cards you can have in your hand at once. There’s no mana cap. The only thing limiting you is getting the right cards to make your build work.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
It wouldn’t be a game in the Vampire Survivors series without a ton of unlocks. New cards, characters, and other gameplay modifiers are unlocked as you play, and while you may eventually find the character and cards you turn towards whenever you get the option, the constant drip of new things made it always feel like I had at least one new way to freshen up my next run.
You can even modify cards in really unique ways. In one run, I created a Whip that cost -1 mana, meaning I had a lower floor to start combos on, and I got 1 mana just for playing it. Oh, and it stole money from every foe it killed.
However, under the weight of all this content and depth, some cracks start to show. I had a frequent visual bug where, despite all enemies being defeated, one or two remain on screen. It was easy to move past in the dungeon, but could make things a little confusing for a moment.
The worst bug I faced was after defeating a boss encounter, but the encounter didn’t end. I had to use a technique to summon another enemy just to defeat it and end the encounter; if I didn’t have the means to do that, I would have had to reset the run (which was going really well!). I’m not sure if these issues are Switch 2-specific (I played the Switch 1 version on a Switch 2, although Poncle has since revealed a native Switch 2 version), but I’m crossing my fingers they’re eventually fixed regardless.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
Speaking of Switch 2-specific, Vampire Crawlers really sings, especially in handheld mode. With how busy the screen can get with various effects and how crowded your hand can get, the touchscreen is a godsend. You can tap pretty much everything on the screen to see what is going on with it, and get definitions for certain stats. The cards in your hand can also be rearranged using this which feels great. It’s a dream “I have a half-hour lunch break to play a run” roguelite.
Conclusion
If you’re going to create a deckbuilder out of Vampire Survivors, I think Vampire Crawlers is pretty much exactly the result you’d hope for – minus some bugs. It combines all of the weapons and power-ups from the first game with clever fusions and twists on traditional deckbuilding tentpoles.
Even things that are annoying — not being able to check your deck when selecting an upgrade and hard to track damage numbers — feel like quirks of the franchise. It scratches my brain in a familiar way, and the euphoric feeling of creating a broken build still feels great.
