Vampire Survivors | a Review
originally published on 13/12/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the survivor (of vampire attacks) G.E.M.Simov, a being so adept at not dying that I’ve come to the realization I need to share that knowledge with you. Thus, I will tell you about “Vampire Survivors”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Vampire Survivors is a horde-survival type of game. That means it features a Player Character (PC), a horde - loads of enemies that constantly spawn - and a timer that needs to reach a certain point for the Player to win.
Naturally, there is a bit more to it than that, but the gist should be getable just off of that description.
So, this game features a stupendously large selection of Characters - a tiny number are unlocked at the start, and the rest are locked, requiring certain accomplishments in the game to be unlocked. Some are hidden behind cryptic ‘puzzles’, while others just require that the Player go to a spot in one of the Stages.
Regardless, each Character starts off with a specific Weapon and has a unique ability - maybe they get extra Experience Points, maybe they get increases to a certain stat based on their level, maybe they just fire more projectiles? In addition to that, their stats are unique to them - one character might have 25 speed less than another, and yet another could have 25 speed more than anyone else.
What about the Weapons? Well, more on those in a bit - let’s keep rolling with the sequence of events.
After picking a Character, the Player is urged to select a Stage to play through - there are very few options at the beginning of one’s progression through the game, but later on the quantity increases significantly. When selecting a Stage, the Player can mess around with a few options (after unlocking them) such as making it faster, making it more intense, making it harder, making it endless and so forth.
Finally, when all is selected and set, the Player Character appears in the middle of a ludicrously huge map (the Stage), above them a red bar (their life) and even further above - an empty bar. Right beneath that empty bar is a timer that starts going up as soon as the game gets going - make it up to 30:00 and that’s a win!
The Player can use the WASD buttons to move their Character in one of the four cardinal directions, or the other four, which are the mixtures of said directions. The Player then is tasked with using the WASD buttons to avoid getting hit by the countless enemies who start walking at the PC as soon as the Stage starts.
In addition to that, the Player might notice that, aside from enemies, there is almost nothing in the entire humongous Stage. There are randomly placed braziers, which, if destroyed (which happens by hitting them once) produce a PickUp, and there are also a very small number of Items, each very far away from the point of the PC's genesis into the Stage.
So, killing enemies! As mentioned, each Character has a Weapon, and so they have a means of killing enemies. Killing an enemy occurs by waiting for them to die (of unnatural causes), as the PC automatically uses the Weapon it has on whatever timer the particular Weapon has, using it in whatever way the Weapon is used. There are some weapons that fire in the direction the PC is facing, and even need to be aimed, then there are others that automatically fire at the closest enemy, then there are others that just do their thing and whoever gets hit has gotten hit, and, lastly, there are ones that fire in a specific manner, which can be played around.
The gist of it all is that enemies will die as long as the PC does not die. So, what happens when enemies die? They drop gems, which are a type of PickUp. Gems come in three varieties - blue, green and red. Blue gems give tiny amounts of experience, green ones give more, and red gems can sometimes give an entire level of Experience.
In addition to that, some enemies drop Chests, but more on those later. There are also times when enemies drop other PickUps, like those dropped by destroyed braziers. Those can be gold coins - a Currency used for unlocking Characters and other goodies - they can be chickens, which restore some health when picked up, or they can be funky power-ups that either draw in all the gems in the Stage and force-feed them into the PC, that make the PC breathe fire in the direction they're facing, which fire does obscene damage, OR they can freeze all enemies for a few seconds (and make them unable to damage the PC)... The list is not exhaustive, there are other things, like… Eggs.
PickUps are great and also are a neat way to spice things up, or to save the Player from a hairy situation, since every 5 minutes something happens! Maybe it's a boss, maybe it's a specific type of wave that appears - it's something dangerous, and so PickUps can alleviate the stress of these 'events'.
Now, I mentioned items. I mentioned experience and levels. I mentioned chests. All of those are connected, so let's keep moving in line with those…
Upon collecting enough gems, which give experience, the PC will level up. By doing so, the game will pause and present the Player with a selection of Items. Some of them might be Weapons, the others might be just Items - regardless, the Player is given three (sometimes 4, depending on the Luck stat) options to choose from. These options could be of entirely new Weapons and Items, or of Weapons and Items already had by the Player. That is so because every Weapon and Item has a maximum rank, with each starting at rank 1, so by picking the same item again, the Player increases its rank and its efficiency.
It is important to note that the Player is allowed to take 6 Weapons and 6 Items, because there are 6 slots for each at their disposal. When the slots are full, no more new options will appear in these LevelUp screens.
With infinite leveling potential, this means the Player can easily get 6 Weapons and Items and upgrade them to their maximum rank within a single session (those 30 minutes I mentioned), but there's more to it. Chests, when opened, have a chance to contain 1, 3 or 5 items. They always contain upgrades for the items the Player has, except when the Player has maxed out the ranks of their Weapons and Items but has free slots remaining - in those cases the Chest will give the Player a random Item or Weapon. If the Player's slots are full, and their Items and Weapons are at their max ranks, the chests will give the Player coins.
However, and here comes the very near part - if the Player has upgraded their Weapon to maximum, and has the Item that the maxed out Weapon synergizes with, and the Player opens a Chest, then the Player is extremely likely to get the Fusion upgrade for that Weapon. Essentially, that version of the Weapon is its own Weapon, with 1 possible rank, which is a lot stronger than the previous version of the Weapon, while also sporting a brand new effect.
Some fusion Weapons might heal the PC based on the damage they deal, others might remove the timer on attacks and go off instantly and infinitely, others yet might change entirely - regardless, it is always better to get a fusion Weapon than anything else from a Chest.
There are some funky Weapons that require more than one Item to get that Fusion upgrade, and there are others that require two Weapons. There are even some fusion Weapons that can be fused with other Weapons. Whenever two Weapons are fused, one Weapon slot is freed up, allowing for the collection of a new Weapon.
Cool, right? Well, it gets even better than that. Those Items I mentioned, being strewn about in the Stage, but very far from the spawn point of the PC? Well, they can be collected even if the Player already has 6 Items, and their slots are full, thus allowing for the possession of 8, 9, even 14 Items at a time, providing great benefits to the Player.
So, with that said and done, what's left? The Player gets to minute 30, the Grim Reaper shows up and instantly kills them, and there's the win! Well, that's almost all there is to it.
There's an exhaustive checklist on what has and what has not been done with which Character, and there's an exhaustive 'collection' tab, as well as a 'secrets' tab, which serve as the main providers of motivation for the Player. The aforementioned changes that can be made to a Stage prior to its selection also come into play. There's a lot to do, it just takes at least 30 minutes at a time.
On top of all of that are also all the upgrades that can be purchased - upgrades which are purchased with Coins and apply to every Character. Then, there are also Eggs that can be collected to further increase a certain Character’s power beyond what the upgrades, purchasable with Coins, allow.
Overall? The game is quite wonderful, becoming more and more enjoyable as the Player progresses, providing them with the ability to reroll available options and even get rid of certain options for the entirety of a session, or even the option to skip choices all together. The way these things - Skips, Rerolls and Banishes - are divvied out is very smart, because by the time the Player has access to them, they would have already had all the joy of discovering what Items do what and which Weapons are the coolest, thus almost naturally expanding their options.
The game has some issues, though, mostly related to Presentation, so I'll save them for that section, but there's also stuff to do with the Gameplay. Whenever a chest is opened, there is no way to skip the animation that plays while it is being opened and while the game decides which Item or Weapon the Player will get. The length of those is considerable, adding at least 5 minutes onto the 30 minutes already being spent, meaning that there's a solid 14~% of the time added on top of the gameplay and spent doing nothing.
The worst part is that the Escape button sometimes works, but other times it demonstrably fails to do so.
That's really bothersome, especially considering the fact that the DLC added a wonderful quality of life change that skips the entire wait and just gives the Player coins (in the event that all slots are filled and maxed out). Previously, that was not the case, and the Player had to spend between a quarter of and nearly half a minute waiting for the game to 'roll the dice' and give them coins. Now, after the DLC, this is instant, and doesn't even cut into the Gameplay - just walk over the Chest and you get coins. However, there is no option to enable that with Items, too, which is really annoying and, frankly, takes a lot out of the experience.
And, let me reiterate - the experience is really solid, excluding that. The game presents the Player with so many opportunities for enjoyable entertainment, with so much value for the measly sum of money it asks for, that this is barely a problem.
But when one starts adding it up, this really becomes bothersome. Especially when the Player has seen the animation and heard the jingle a hundred times before on that very day! It takes so much time out of the Player's playtime, it forcefully stops the Gameplay, even if the Player does not want that, and it becomes a reason for not even wanting to open Chests when one does not meet the requirements for a fusion Weapon upgrade.
Overall, Vampire survivors is really fun, but it trips over its own feet at times. The Chest thing is one issue, but then there's also the feeling that's gotten. While that's a Presentation issue, partially, it's also related to the Gameplay, because the FEELING one gets from playing, while dependent on sounds and visuals, is very key to the experience. Vampire Survivors does not quite nail that down - it makes me feel somewhat sluggish, the way the Player Characters slide over the screen is very uninspiring and fails to convey that sensation of the thrill and tension of surviving an infinite horde's assault, which I'm seeking. 2/3
Presentation
So, this game is 2D. A 2D sprite of a Player Character in the middle of a 2D plain with an infinite number of other 2D sprites walking at them. Everything is 2D and everything is made up of Pixels. Pixel-art is one hell of a drug, and it's evident why.
Even though the fidelity of Vampire Survivors is low, even though everything in it looks like it was ripped almost directly out of those old school Castlevania games, it still looks good and pretty distinct, on top of that. Enemies are clearly different from one another, Characters look unique, for the most part, and the locations that the Player gets to visit are also very different from one another.
Visually, when things are not moving, it is great. When things start moving, it gets a bit wonky, because everything slides. The PC slides around, though at least that one has an animation. The enemies all slide, with an animation that makes them look as though they're breathing heavily or pulsating, but not walking. Weapons slide around, or are just effects that take place.
That was extrapolated upon higher up, in the Gameplay section of the review, but let's get to something else. The effects, the visual ones, have the tendency to grow in intensity and size, and they are very flashy. So flashy, in fact, that the game starts with a warning for epileptic folks, and everyone else. It is insanely taxing on the eyes to look at it, especially in the latter half of a session, because it just flashes constantly and blinds the Player.
Blinds, indeed, because everything is obscured by the effects - enemies, PickUps, Chests, Items - everything is covered by the effects. Now, normally, if the effects are so prominent, that means the Weapons are doing massive damage, and there's no need to worry. However, this can be achieved without the damage part, with only the flashy, blinding component, and that is problematic, because the Player needs to see the enemies to avoid them.
Then there's the other problem with the game's Presentation. There are many menus that allow for a mouse cursor to trot about, but there is no menu in which the mouse cursor can hover over things and reveal some information about them to the Player. This game is made as some weird compromise between a mobile phone game and a computer game, meaning that it can be played on the computer just fine, but it seems as though it's not really meant to be on the computer, which, in turn, takes away a lot of the convenience of being on a computer.
This thing with hovering over stuff - that's an issue in many ways, because the Player doesn't have access to information that might be helpful, but is not necessary, BUT it is also information that is needed to progress. Whenever an Item is offered to the Player, from the Level Up screen or the ground, there is a line of text accompanying it. That line of text typically describes what the Item does, but in the case of special, puzzle-related items provides a hint as to how to solve the puzzle.
Well, due to the fact that the Player can not see that line of text again, unless if they leave the session, navigate the menus and check the Item out in the 'collection' tab, we've got a problem. Sure, remembering it could work out, but not everyone has a penchant for that. And using the Wiki is a third-party appliance, this it is not in the game, thus it simply cannot be applied as counting.
Now, with that problem mentioned and kept in mind, I must mention that this game HAS multiple tracks of music. Playing the game would leave the Player hard pressed to find out that this is the case, due to the fact that the only thing the Player hears after roughly the fifth minute of a session is the insane cacophony of their Weapons going off constantly and gems being collected.
The SFX are not bad, but they are not immaculate either, and their tendency to drown out the music is very problematic, as they melt into an amalgamation of noise that's unfriendly to the ears. Much like the visuals, it's not downright bad, and when it is not overwhelming it's actually more than decent, but there's too much of it.
Overall? Vampire Survivors presents itself well, but it makes some major mistakes that make it difficult to listen to or look at at certain points. As a result of that it is only passable. 2/3
Story
In Vampire Survivors, there is something akin to a story, but it’s not quite a story. There is something about the Player Character(s) looking for a vampire, but that’s very waylaid by the other story, which is even more cryptic and esoteric than that, featuring the murder of the Grim Reaper, the subsequent murder of some pseudo-divine beings and, lastly, a visit to some… Odd dimension in which the PC merks some eldritch creature?
There is a big, vast bestiary that features a few sentences about the creatures encountered in the game, which sets up a world, some kind of lore is established, but stuff continues to remain overly vague.
There is something that happens, there is a plot that unveils itself, but it is so poorly conveyed and obscure that it barely amounts to anything. It is interesting, but that’s all it is. As a result of that, I can’t, in good conscience, do any more than a point. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? I like some things about this game, but I do not like it enough to give it the point, so no, it does not get the Legendary Point. 0/1
Conclusion
5/10. A perfectly average game that's a blast to play, so I would recommend it to anyone who wants to play something on their phone for a bit, as well as to fans of horde-survival games. It's got something for action and hack-and-slash, as well as beat-em-up junkies too!
In the bag of mediocrity it goes, but close to the opening, so that I might revisit it in the future. Perhaps a DLC will fix all its faults?