In my time writing about games I’ve always been happy about my pick for Game of the Year, with one exception. That exception was back in 2022, before I had played Vampire Survivors. This refreshing and endlessly compelling take on the Roguelike genre would’ve easily been the best game of that year for my tastes, and I don’t really know why I didn’t play it. I may have been late to the party with Vampire Survivors, but I’ve more than made up for it since then with hundreds and hundreds of hours clocked across multiple platforms. I’ve made sure not to make that same mistake again with spinoff Vampire Crawlers, which is somehow just as compelling.
Vampire Crawlers takes all those familiar characters, enemies and weapons from Survivors, and throws them into a different subgenre of Roguelike. I wasn’t really sure how swapping swarms of foes and auto firing weapons with deck building and dungeon crawling would really work, but with some sort of wizardry the transformation is practically seamless.
Each run you go on in Vampire Crawlers features a dungeon to explore, usually made up of multiple floors and plenty of boss fights. In these classic first person dungeons you’ll find chests to open, candelabras to smash, and of course plenty of enemies to take down with daggers, axes and holy water. To begin with this is all rather simple (and gloriously fast paced) but before you know it all sorts of satisfying systems stack together to make magic.
When you confront a horde of enemies the card combat begins, and the initial setup isn’t unlike what we’ve seen before in other Roguelike deck builders. You have a set amount of mana to spend each turn to play cards, and always know what the enemy is planning to do on their turn. To counteract attacks you can try to kill them as fast as possible to reduce or negate damage entirely, or can play some armour cards to block it instead. The weapon cards are especially satisfying to play, with holy books and flaming orbs flying across the screen to deal damage in a very impactful way.
For the first floor or two of a stage you can survive by just slamming down any old card, but as the enemies get harder you’ll have to play with combos in mind. Cards can combo together if you play them in order of cost, so by playing a zero cost card then a one then a two you’ll multiply the amount of damage, armour, cards drawn or any other effects a card has. It’s so satisfying to wipe out enemies or even bosses in one turn with a perfect combo, and this happens more than you’d expect thanks to all the fantastic builds you can construct.
Each character in Vampire Crawlers has a different starting deck and unique card, which in your best runs you’ll be able to formulate a build around. This means with some characters you’ll focus on cards that help you gain more mana as these effects are boosted, and that means you can draft higher value cards that are way more powerful. On another runs I managed to make myself practically unkillable by maxing out my hand size and drafting so much armour I just wouldn’t take damage, which meant fights lasted about five times longer than normal but were impossible to lose in most situations. I’m not sure I’ve ever played a game with more builds that make you feel like you’ve broken the game than Vampire Crawlers, and I adore that about it.
As well as drafting the best cards and playing them correctly, you’ll also need to use gems to power them up in various ways. Most cards you come across have a slot to place a gem or two, and these add bonus effects to them making them more powerful. In the early game you might use these to add a cheeky armour boost to a low cost weapon, or double the damage of another, but as you progress you’ll find some absolutely wild gems. In one of my earliest runs I had a two mana card that granted me three mana for playing it, which is always pretty damn useful. It became one of the best cards I ever used though when I added gems to it that made it draw a bonus card and create a copy of itself in my hand. Suddenly I could play every card needed with mana to spare and had extra ones to throw down, and battles were over before they began. This is only the beginning too, with so many unlockables with synergy to discover.
Between runs of Vampire Crawlers you’ll go back to the village, which is a hub area with loads of ways to get stronger scattered around. Gold you earn on runs can be spent to unlock new characters, give you massive stat buffs and unlock extra gem slots for cards, resulting in you constantly getting stronger. You can also unlock the Arcana Tent which grants you those powerful passive buffs that Survivors fans will recognise, and check out a list of achievements to aim for to unlock even more powerful tools. It’s so rare for a run to not end with you unlocking something cool or at least providing the funds to boost a stat or two, and before you know it you’ll be so much stronger when facing tougher late game stages.
I love pretty much everything that Vampire Crawlers has to offer, and adore how much it references the source material. Weapon Evolutions exist in Crawlers for example, and you’d better believe they feel just as broken here too. At the end of dungeons Death will come to obliterate you too, and I bet just like in the previous game there’s a way to survive against him even though it seems impossible. It’s such a love letter to one of my all time favourite video games, while also providing just as much entertainment.
I can’t quite believe how incredible Vampire Crawlers is. This fast paced deck builder is almost impossible to put down, and might be the best the genre has to offer full stop. With so many builds and synergies to uncover, unlockables to tick off, and combat that just never gets old, Vampire Crawlers is an effortlessly compelling, fever dream of a game. Even if you don’t particularly like Vampire Survivors this game has to be played, just try to put it down sometimes to touch some grass: it’s just that addictive.
