If you’re one of the 200K+ people who’ve already excitedly wish-listed Vampire Survivors’ much-anticipated deck-building spin-off Vampire Crawlers, there’s some good news to carry you into the weekend: a demo is arriving for Steam and Xbox Game Pass on 23rd February.
Vampire Crawlers was officially unveiled last November, with developer Poncle describing it as “hopefully the first of a series of spin-offs” set in the Vampire Survivors universe. The idea, it said at the time, was to take some of the “accidental” core pillars of the mega-popular original – that its “accessibility, immediacy, affordability, replayability, lightheartedness, and tons of flashy stuff” – and apply them to different genres.
And thus, Vampire Crawlers – a “turbo turn‑based, card‑driven BLOBBER with rogue-lite elements”. It is, says Poncle, a game about building “busted” deck and exploring familiar dungeons (albeit this time with “functioning walls”), with Vampire Crawlers designed to work both as a slower, more tactical experience, and as a speedier game. “You don’t have to pause for animations to complete before triggering your next move,” the studio explains. “The game intelligently stacks and executes your ability inputs with precision, allowing you to play at your own chaotic pace. “
“Accumulate experience and level up to gain new cards,” it adds. “Headbutt chests for customisation gems and power‑ups; chase weapon evolutions and summon survivors to trigger cascade of effects and break the game.”
Vampire Crawlers doesn’t yet have a release date, but it’s scheduled to launch for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Switch, PC, iOS, and Android sometime this year. Impatient sorts, however, can get a taste of its deck-building dungeon-crawling more imminently, with a demo coming to Xbox Game Pass and PC (the latter arriving as part of Steam’s latest Next Fest) on 23rd February.
And for more immediate gratification, today sees the release of Poncle’s first Let’s Explore Vampire Crawlers video series, showing off some of the gameplay and features players can expect from the full game when it arrives. More videos, the studio says, will follow. Surely there’s only one question that needs answering though: will we get any vampires this time?
