Vampire Crawlers

Just one more round then I really must turn in and get some sleep. Famous last words, to say the least, and suddenly you realise it's half past two in the morning, your eyes are stinging, the inside of your head has turned into some sort of digital pixel slush, and you know you have to be at work in just a few hours. Panic.

That's a feeling many of us gamers are all too familiar with, but one that has become increasingly rare in our later years. Sure, you love gaming with every rotten fibre of your being, but somewhere deep down you're constantly reminded to "be an adult and take responsibility". So, grudgingly, you drag yourself to bed, even though all you want to do is glue yourself to the sofa, weld the front door shut, and lose yourself in digital madness.

Vampire Survivors has long been one of "those" games for me. I was a complete disaster when the game first came out and it's a pure miracle that I never actually got sick despite many far too late nights. Yes, I'm an adult... I promise. Digital narcotics in their purest form, with an instantly hypnotic gameplay loop filled with escalating numbers, increasingly colourful effects, and those ridiculously satisfying sounds. Resisting the madness was almost hopeless.

So what's the result when someone decides to take the same concept, turn it on its head, pepper it with a bit of deckbuilding, and season it with a pinch of roguelite? A complete meltdown in the best possible way. That's what. So, what exactly is Vampire Crawlers? Stick with me and we'll dive deep into the pixels and the Windows 98 screensaver perspective.

First things first, let me make one thing clear; Vampire Crawlers never tries to outdo its predecessor on its own turf. This is something new, but also eerily familiar. They've been clever here as instead of dancing around random dots whilst your auto-attacks do the heavy lifting, you get more control. You navigate on your own, square-by-square, step-by-step, and decide for yourself which battles you want to take on. Every card you play, every combo you try to build, it's all a constant balancing act that can sometimes quickly lead to defeat due to an unexpected enemy popping up, or an unlucky run of hands that gives you completely the wrong cards, in completely the wrong order. You swear, accept the reaper, and jump straight back in. Just one more time... then it's straight to bed.

Even though Vampire Crawlers is, on paper, a different game from its predecessor, it manages to capture exactly the same pulse, tension, and addictive gameplay. You choose a path from an overworld map, complete with names and areas you're guaranteed to recognise from Vampire Survivors, and build your deck in real-time. The most obvious and tangible shift is the game's pace, as here, it's constant action or nail-biting tension that's rewarded. You're staring at your hand, planning for combos, mana cost, and maximum effect. The former is, moreover, what one might call the backbone of Vampire Crawlers, where you play cards with increasing mana costs to build multipliers that can quite quickly degenerate into mind-boggling maths that would have made Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz break out in a sweat. When that near-perfect sequence finally lands, crafted from equal parts long-term planning and a pinch of luck, well... Mamma Mia, the screen explodes with colours, effects, and the satisfying sounds of monsters succumbing to your overwhelming force. It's so blissfully satisfying it makes you giddy.

The card system itself is also surprisingly easy to read, despite quickly becoming overloaded. Red cards represent attacks, blue ones are defence, yellow ones are buffs, purple ones give you mana, and so on. This keeps your hand manageable, even when it's expanded and grown into an unholy, overflowing toolbox designed for monster slaughter.

More often than not, Crawlers will also throw a curveball or two your way, as the game genuinely loves to sprinkle in oddities, often far more than you can reasonably handle. The best bit of all? You can always do something with them, however absurd and silly it may seem. If there's one thing you should never be afraid of, it's experimenting. Synergies can arise from the most unexpected things and Crawlers rewards creativity and curiosity rather than passive caution, which is a design philosophy I dearly, dearly wish more roguelites would dare to embrace.

Vampire Crawlers dares to let go of the reins and let you gallop off towards the horizon, fully aware that sooner or later you'll become overpowered. It's a game that lets you become a god, albeit only in pixelated form, which is also exactly what makes the game so damn charming. Every run becomes a mad experiment, every failure a lesson, and by extension, an excuse to skip yet another hour of sleep.

The meta-progression also helps keep the fire burning. Between each "run", you have the chance to fine-tune and tinker with the city. You can manipulate everything from which gems appear in the game - which in turn provide passive effects on your cards - to how powerful your bonus abilities should be, or which character you want to play. Just like in the original, there's a whole host of faces to unlock, each with their own unique quirks and abilities that encourage even more experimentation.

The system ensures that Crawlers always feels like it's moving forward; there's always a little progress to be made, even when you've been beaten and the Grim Reaper comes for the umpteenth time to taunt you and rub your defeat in your face. Just one more round...

Visually, Vampire Crawlers is pretty much what you'd expect, and doesn't stray far from its roots with overly pixelated representations of everything from monsters to characters. But it also features a clearer structure that suits the new gameplay and crisp effects that enhance the experience. In a way, it feels as though someone took the 3D Maze Screensaver from Windows 95 and threw it into the blender along with Castlevania, and the result is also very colourful and charming, as you're guaranteed to crack a smile more than once during your many adventures.

Sure, there are a few minor flaws as the first hour is rather slow, and it definitely takes a while for the machinery to really get going. I'll be honest and say that I scratched my head in puzzlement a bit at the start. Think of it as a locomotive slowly building up steam in its boiler or a snowball rolled from the top of a mountain but slowly growing into an avalanche. Once it's up and running, boy, does it take off.

Furthermore, the game can also get a bit chaotic, with an interface that's occasionally a bit tricky. Minor niggles, of course, and probably something you'll grumble about for a few seconds before just as quickly forgetting it and instead losing yourself once again in Vampire Crawler's absurd brilliance and clicking "continue" once more. Just one more round...

That's the thing, Vampire Crawlers refuses to let you go. It sinks its teeth into your neck and feasts away. For even though much is familiar and the similarity to Survivors is striking, Crawlers operates with entirely new tools. Forget reflexes and pixel-perfect navigation between charging hordes of monsters, here, it's all about brains, timing, and a slightly sadistic love of pushing systems to their breaking point.

The hours slip away, the day turns to mist and the numbers grow with your combo chains, all to the tune of that insidiously swaying music and a fireworks display of crackling pixels and effects. Goodness me, Poncle, what have you done... Vampire Crawlers is nothing short of outstanding and its possibilities are dizzying. Play at your own risk, for this is, if possible, even better and more polished than its predecessor.