Indie gaming hit Vampire Survivors gets a follow-up that’s in an entirely different genre but still has the same old school graphics and enjoyably addictive qualities.
Given what a poor first impression it makes, we’re still shocked that Vampire Survivors became such a massive success. Considering the second and third impressions aren’t much better it seems a minor miracle but despite its ugly visuals and seemingly shallow gameplay, Vampire Survivors is a great game, with far more depth and nuance than it first appears.
However, taking advantage of that success does present a problem (beyond agreeing to a movie adaptation). The game continues to receive updates, but what do you do in terms of a follow-up? A sequel that looks more or less the same doesn’t make much sense and neither does a big budget 3D version. So instead creator poncle, which started off as just one indie developer in London, has made a low budget 3D version, mixed the gameplay up a bit, and the result is Vampire Crawlers.
At more than twice the price of the original (which still makes it incredibly cheap), Vampire Crawlers has the subtitle ‘The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors’, which is a reference to the fact that it’s essentially a deck-building game, albeit portrayed as an old school first person dungeon crawler. It’s not exactly Slay The Spire 2, but it is proof that poncle are not doomed to be a one hit wonder.
Vampire Crawlers is not a complicated concept, but it is slightly more complicated to get your head around than Survivors. As before, it has no discernible story, other than vampires abound and you have to get rid of them and their evil minions. This is achieved by setting out from a village to a number of areas – most based on locations from the original game – which are represented as small dungeon mazes that you traverse in discreet, grid-based steps, like old Atari ST classic Dungeon Master.
The game is also available on smartphone, so the interface is not complex, and neither is the combat, which is technically turn-based but designed to be played at a fast pace. Each journey out from the village you’re given a new deck to play with, with the full selection of cards available being added to every time you level up, much in the way you gain new weapons and power-ups in Survivors.
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Which cards you start off with are influenced by the character (or crawler) you choose to accompany you, but most of the cards require a certain amount of mana to use. Play the cards in ascending order of mana requirements for a combo bonus and that’s pretty much it for the first hour or so.
Just like Survivors, you’re initially convinced that Vampire Crawlers is the dumbest and most simplistic game around. It’s arguably a bit too long before it starts to prove otherwise but after two hours or so you begin to run into problems powering all the cards you want to use and you realise you’ve got to concentrate on support cards just as much as offensive ones, especially those that increase your mana or the number of cards you have in your hand. At first it’s just three but actually, we’re not sure there is any hard limit.
Soon enough you’re introduced to the idea of attaching gems to act as buffs to your cards, as well as several stats you can increase during a run, that do things like increase the number of projectiles you fire or the strength of your attacks. Cards can be combined together to make more powerful variants, again just as in the original game, and each map is filled with secrets that often reveal lucky cards or other bonuses.
The addictive factor is due not only to you realising that there’s more to the game than there first appeared but also that even an unsuccessful run usually results in some kind of reward, whether it’s a new crawler, a new relic that acts as a permanent buff or feature, and things like a blacksmith that allow you to add more gem slots to your cards.
Discovering new areas and dungeons is rewarding enough but the other incentive for the all-important ‘just one more go’ is the Achievement-like unlock system which, you guessed it, also works just like Vampire Survivors. These give clear clues as to how you can unlock new card types and crawlers, amongst other things, and usually involve repeating a task like collecting X number of coins or getting a character to a certain level.
Once you really get a feel for how the game works you can start racking up the combos, to the point where it feels like you’ve broken the game – as you hammer enemies for ages after their health has run out. Nothing is broken though, it just seems like that, and being able to take full advantage of the game’s systems in this way is hugely satisfying, especially once things go off the rails in the endgame.
Not only does Crawlers have the same irreverent humour as Vampire Survivors (and the same obvious love for Castlevania, to the point where you’d swear they’ve stolen some of the original sprites), but the graphics are also largely the same. They look ridiculously low-tech turned into textures for a 3D wall, or as enemies standing in front of you, but somehow they have more charm than many a ray-traced modern game.
The last thing Vampire Crawlers would want you to do is take it seriously but beneath its amateurish appearance lies a disarmingly complex game that manages to overcome some of the flaws of the original, most notably its odd-pacing, which starts off very slowly and then ebbs and flows to no obvious pattern. That’s reduced in Crawlers, so that you no longer feel you’re going through the motions at the start of a run, which are also typically much shorter than a game of Survivors.
There is still a random element, that can seem frustrating at first, but once you get some relics unlocked and buy additional help in the in-game shop, that can all but be erased. We’ll have to wait and see whether this will be as big a hit as Vampire Survivors, but we can happily say it has already crawled its way into our hearts.
Vampire Crawlers review summary
In Short: An impressively successful follow-up to Vampire Survivors, that features entirely different gameplay but a similarly deceptive sense of depth and nuance to its charmingly low-tech action.
Pros: Gameplay is far more involved than it first seems, as you slowly expand your abilities and range of weapons. Very easy to learn and impressively fast pace for the genre. Simplistic graphics are very endearing.
Cons: There is still a significant random element to the action. The first couple of hours make it seem very shallow and uninteresting and even deep into the game you can end up playing it almost on autopilot.
Score: 8/10
Formats: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC, iOS, and Android
Price: £9.99
Publisher: poncle
Developer: Nosebleed Interactive
Release Date: 21st April 2026
Age Rating: 7
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