Video Games: This hit indie game sequel innovates in satisfying ways

By Edward Brydalski
(Image above: Vampire Crawlers poster. Game & art by Poncle)

Vampire Crawlers is a whip-smart and satisfying *roguelike **deckbuilder from the developer of indie smash hit Vampire Survivors. Its tight gameplay loop and ultra-breakable mechanics are part of why it is one of Steam’s top sellers of April.
(Note: There is a glossary at the bottom of the story for those not famliar with gaming language)>

Crawlers plays like the love child of classic ***grid-based ****dungeon crawlers like the Might and Magic series and modern digital deckbuilders like Slay the Spire. Dungeons are *****first-person affairs with battles and collectables always visible for you to plan your path around. 

The art style consists of crispy, crunchy pixels. This dungeon takes place in a milk factory with lots of minotaurs roaming about. Dee-licious.

The one word I’d use to describe playing Vampire Crawlers is slick. 

Cards activate as fast as you can click them. The 2D pixel art meshes well with the 3D environments. Animations are reactive and scale with the strength of abilities.The music is even reactive. Each environment has its own song that starts atmospheric while exploring and seamlessly cross-fades to a heart-pumping, high-energy version when in battle.

But this is a game that’s all about the mechanics. So let’s get into how not to suck in Vampire Crawlers.

Many of the familiar hordes from Vampire Survivors make an appearance. Mowing them down is just as satisfying.

Fights consist of waves of enemies that attack, block, and mess with your deck between each hand of cards. It’s up to you to beat them down with a wide array of cards that strike, defend, ******buff, debuff, and most useful of all, draw more cards. Progress far enough into a dungeon to fight a boss and move on to the next one.

But it’s not just about clicking cards at random. Crawlers lives and dies on its *******Wildcard Combo System. Each card has a cost that depletes mana from your mana pool. The goal is to chain together cards of increasing cost, one after another. Doing so increases a multiplier that makes each successive card more powerful on use. But play a card of the wrong cost and that combo breaks and you have to start all over. Special wildcards can chain together cards of any cost, allowing you to make absurd combo chains, potentially wrecking boss monsters with a single attack.

There is very little ambiguity as to the player’s success. If you’re doing well, you will feel it … and so will the enemy.

So you beat monsters, level up, and gather more cards throughout a dungeon; gradually building your deck and eventually you win, taking a big pile of gold to your home village. That money goes towards the game’s ********macro-progression system. It’s like Hades, where each run makes you a little bit stronger for the next one.

Every time you enter the village inn to choose a Crawler, there’s a very small chance that everyone starts dancing in a rave. Isn’t it nice when games are fun?

In addition to statistical upgrades, you unlock dozens of unique characters known as survivors. Each has their own starting deck and passive ability to shape your run around. Play the game long enough and you can even play as several survivors at once, making for extreme combo potential.

At any point, you can refund all the money you spent on upgrades and reallocate it to better suit your next run. This game is perfect for the hyper-optimizer in your life.

There’s a good amount of meat on this bone. At the time of writing, I’m about 13 hours into this $10 game and still have more than half of the unlocks to go. And even if you unlock and accomplish everything, there are enough unique combinations and characters and abilities to keep you entertained for dozens more hours.

This was a pretty good deck. Lots of ways to draw extra cards and make more mana. Combos went deep into the 10s and killed bosses in a couple hits.

The game makes you feel like a genius for discovering how to optimize its tricks. The feeling of revelation I had when I first turned a card with zero mana cost into a negative one … It must have been what Isaac Newton felt when he saw that apple fall.

In an interview with Gamespot, lead developer and studio founder Luca Galante spoke on how he wanted to continue what made the first game, “Vampire Survivors,” so engaging. “It’s easy to play, makes you feel good, and tries to avoid frustration,” Galante said, “ I wanted to transfer all of that into (‘Vampire Crawlers’).”

Progress far enough into Vampire Crawlers and you unlock a nuke to quickly beat the first level of any dungeon you’ve already beat. How’s that for quality of life?

Let’s not ignore the game’s indulgently-long title: “Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors.” Galante tattooed his intent on the forehead of his game. He’s not just building on what worked with Vampire Survivors, but innovating in a brand new direction by establishing the “Turbo Wildcard” genre.

Just as Vampire Survivors inspired a litany of survivors-type games, Vampire Crawlers seems poised to spark a wave of Turbo Wildcard games. Time will tell how this pans out. But in the meantime, we have one hell of a game for a foundation.

Ready to take on the endless hordes?

Vampire Crawlers is available now for $9.99 on Steam, PlayStation 5, XBOX, and Nintendo Switch.

Videos:

Official teaser trailer:

Official gameplay explanation video:

Glossary

*Roguelikes are a subgenre of video game that uses random item placement and procedural level generation to make multiple playthroughs feel different every time. See: Hades, Spelunky, & Slay the Spire.

**Deckbuilders are a subgenre of card game focused on the improvisational creation of a personal deck. Cards are doled out over the course of a single game and taken back at the end. Strategy comes from building a deck that synergizes with itself and its surroundings to better accomplish an objective. See: Slay the Spire, Fights in Tight Spaces, and Dominion.

***Grid-based games restrict character movement to squares on a grid. See: Legend of Grimrock, the Megami Tensei series, and the Wizardry series.

****Dungeon crawlers are a subgenre of game where the objective is to explore an area, search for items, and defeat enemies. See: Darkest Dungeon, Exanima, and the Diablo series.

*****First-person games are viewed through the eyes of the player character.

******Buffs and debuffs are effects that either raise a character’s stats or lower them, respectively. Vampire Crawlers buffs include higher damage, more projectiles, and a larger hand size. Debuffs include freezing enemies and preventing their attacks.

*******Wildcards are a mechanic borrowed from the 52 card games of old, where aces could be sometimes be counted as “wild,” meaning they acted as having any suit or value. Vampire Crawlers’ Wildcard combo system uses designated wildcards to bridge together cards that would otherwise not go together into a single combo chain.

********Macro-progression refers to how a game doles out content throughout a player’s entire playtime over the course of days, weeks, or years. Macro-progression stands in contrast to the micro-progression of a single play session, such as the temporary cards and abilities obtained in a single dungeon of Vampire Crawlers.

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