Vampire Survivors is the first in what was to be known as the Reverse Bullet Hell genre of rogue-like games. So, what does that mean... well, in the Bullet Hell genre, you are a little sprite dodging all manner of incoming fire... and in this reverse version, you are the one outputting countless sparkly colours of death on a relentless incoming enemy. And it is a rogue-like.. so, expect many deaths, and an ongoing meta-game of progression.
It took the PC gaming world by storm earlier this year... and I have to say that I was never into the bullet hell genre of games, and so I just let the hysteria pass me by. Until the game was recommended by a friend... and it is only a handful of dollars, and so I thought... what the hell, I will install it on the Steam Deck and see if it is good for passing the time on long bus rides between cities.
... there is no setup or story. Well, there is the barest of bare stories... that you glean from the level select blurbs. I don't even remember there being any intro either. It is straight into the game, no extra fluff. Lots of undead incoming, kill as many as you can before you go down!
You start the game with a single character unlocked, with three more ready to be purchased as you progress through the game. As you complete various achievements, you unlock more characters... each of which has particular starting skill and various perks and downsides. So far, it is pretty much similar to every other rogue-like!
... and just like every other roguelike, there is the metagame progression. You collect gold in the game, and when you die, you can purchase and level up different skills to try to help you to survive that little bit longer on the next run.
And there is a long list of achievements! At the start, it is quite a steady drip of unlocks that are incoming, but after a little bit it, it takes more and more effort to get the harder unlocks!
Oh man, I thought I was starting to do pretty well, but there is still a huge wealth on in-game drops, power-ups, skills, and items that I haven't even seen! What is pretty cool is that there is a synergy system between the active (damaging) skills and the passive ones... during a run, if you choose to pair them up, well... you are going to unlock some hugely devastating powers!
And once you are in the game... it starts off pretty simple, but rapidly gets quite hectic as you can see from this screenshot (well, photo of the screen... the Deck wasn't taking screenshots in this game for some reason!). Damage numbers and experience dings are constant... it is quite weirdly over-stimulating, but to survive, you have to remain pretty Zen throughout it all!
And treasure boxes are the way to get some hefty unlocks during your race to level up your character ahead of the incoming horde of undead sprites!
... the levels are not endless! I had thought I had hit a wall with my first completed level... but good old Grim Reaper comes out to stomp on you and call it a day! Killing you, and unlocking the next level!
Everything ran nice and smooth on my Steam Deck... there were a few moments of slowdown, but given that the entire thing is retro-pixel graphics, I don't imagine that it is very demanding on most modern hardware!
The game IS strangely addictive... short games (around 5-20 minutes) make for nice little breaks between other things, if you can be disciplined enough to stick to a single run! It isn't that heavy on the Deck battery either, which means that it is a the perfect travel game... however, like many rogue-likes... it does start to get to feel like a constant hamster wheel mechanic... do a run, die, rinse and repeat.
It was a nice diversion from Persona 5 and Baldur's Gate 3... but now, I really want to get back in to the meatier games again!
Steam Deck (1st Gen)
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