Vampire Survivors is a simple game. Such a simple game. It is programmatically basic; and its on these grounds I wish to review it. I'm sure I've played games like this before. The majority of them are probably on platforms like itch.io; but this, this is different.
This has the roguelike nature of a Diablo or Path of Exile hardcore run, but with the insane "Replayibility" and "addictiveness" of auto clickers, where you ascend to the next level, only to find there's another one beyond it.
In Vampire Survivors. You move your character. Your character has a starting weapon, and they start to attack the creatures that spawn around them. You get experience orbs, that you collect. This lets you then obtain new items and weapons which enhance your stats.
There's many stats, and in a programming context, think of these as the different variables in a basic program. Now, I don't know a lot of code, but I can certainly define these in python.
If you were doing real programming, you'd do this as an object, so you could create different characters. Luckily, the developers of Vampire Surivors are probably smarter than me, and have done exactly this.
The objects, which are characters, have a name, a starting weapon, and some modifiers that make them special. For example, Poppea Pecorina, gains +1% duration of effect with her starting weapon being Song of Mana, which gives you a vertical AoE attack which lingers, destroying all enemies within its range with magical damage.
You can then pick up artefacts and items along the way which further modify your character's stats.
The thing is, there's no real point to any of these things, beyond the rudimentary story that goes along with stage select, the the bestiary, and the very brief interludes when you unlock new characters along the way.
As you level up, and as the enemies level up; everything becomes progressively harder to kill. This ends up making the game incredibly challenging, and using a smooth scale of difficulty throughout.
Once you think you're doing well, the game throws new challenges at you, by allowing you to take onboard super powerful weapons, at the expense of also increasing the power of enemies in an exponential manner. It is indeed really quite elegant and beautiful, the same way that Space Invaders will always overwhelm you, thanks to its thoughtful algorithm.
Vampire Survivors uses simplistic visuals to get its gameplay mechanics across, and that's okay, because it is unrelenting fun.
Between the music, sound effects, and fast, responsive controls, the game draws you in and doesn't ever let go, just like a Vampire's embrace.
Get the game if you want to have no life for a few days. Please do. Its pure fun.
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