"Be the Bullet Rain"
Vampire Survivors is a rogue-like bullet-rain type game with a twist; You are the bullet rain. That is to say, Enemies never fire at you. Only you can fire at them. In return, enemies have the numbers. In between games, you can spend your earnings on permanent upgrades to make you slightly stronger for the next run.
I bought the game some months ago after a recommendation (can't remember from where) and has been playing it sporadically since then. I don't find much time (or mood) for games anymore, but when I do get the spirit, it's nice to have something that's easy to pick up. And this is the type of game that gets more fun the further in you get, even if you don't have much continuity in it, like me.
Here's a GIF from today's playthrough, to give you an idea of how it plays.
All firing is automatic. Your only job is to avoid enemies and choose your upgrade paths.
Selecting the mission
After playing this game for a bit, I realized a good way to play it is to give myself missions for what I want to achieve/obtain/accomplish. This took me a while to figure out, as the game doesn't give them to you outright. Instead, you get a list of certain available powerups, and a bunch of question marks.
Now, certain powerups combines, giving you the possibility to evolve them to become supercharged. Notice all those X+X=Y in the two left-most columns of items/powerups? They were all question-marks like the ones to the right. But I discovered them and evolved them one by one. To evolve powerups, you need to first get the pair (2 or 3 items). Then you must upgrade them all. And then, finally, you need to find and defeat a mini-boss, get the treasure chest it drops and hope it's contents will evolve your weapon/powerup for a significant damage increase.
I don't know what the end-game of this game is. All I know is I want to get more bullets and become more powerful. And that this will likely happen if I keep unlocking new stuff. So today's mission is to unlock the next item on the list; Whatever "Laurels" needs to be combined with (the highlighted box to the right of the above screenshot).
Given I'm not a kid anymore (and it's not 1998 with no walkthroughs available on the internet) and I don't have time to discover every single thing myself, I checked the game wiki to see what is required to evolve Laurel. Not that it will be an easy task anyway. As it turns out, we'll require the two Metaglio's, located to the left and to the right of the map.
With today's mission defined, let's go.
Complete run + Timestamps
You can see the entire playthrough in this video. I recommend using the timestamps below to skip ahead to see the key parts of the run. I'd provide timestamp links for you, but this is unfortunately not supported by 3Speak. Yet.
You may also get a better understanding of what's going on if you have a look at the Key Events section below, before you watch the video.
- 01:07 - Map orientation
- 07:24 - Found Laurel
- 10:25 - Located Metaglio Left
- 10:58 - Obtained Metaglio Left
- 15:09 - Evolved Magic Wand
- 18:10 - Killed Guardian #1 and collected egg
- 18:33 - Evolved Runetracer
- 22:06 - Evolved Cross
- 25:20 - Found Flamethrower close to guardian 2
- 32:18 - Located Metaglio Right
- 32:30 - Obtained Metaglio Right
- 33:03 - Flamethrower action
- 34:46 - Killed guardian 2
- 35:20 - Evolved Laurel, obtained Crimson Shroud. Mission complete.
Key Events
! [Map orientation ]First we gotta orient ourselves in the map. We can see the Metaglios located to the far west and the far east. We'll try west first.
! [Found Laurel] The main ingredient of the evolve recipe. Good thing we found it quite quickly! If we hadn't, the mission would've been a complete waste.
! [Located Metaglio Left] We've reached the Left Metaglio already. But what's this?! An enemy boss monster guardian following us. From experience only a single touch of these types of bosses will insta-kill us. Better avoid him!
! [Obtained Metaglio Left] Circling back and around, we obtain the Left Metaglio. It appears it "channels dark powers to protect the bearer". Sounds good! And we're gonna need it with this pesky guardian following us everywhere
Oh what's this? We killed a mini boss? They always drop treasure chests and look like this:
! [Evolved Magic Wand] As previously mentioned, the only way to evolve weapons is to upgrade all the ingredients to max level and then open a treasure chest and get lucky. Which is what happened here! The evolved Magic Wand fires constantly and should definitely come in handy
! [Killed Guardian 1 and collected golden egg] Holy crap, guardians can be killed!? And what did he drop, a golden egg? It apparently gives my character a permanent power-up. But the best part is, now we can relax for a bit. No insta-death in sight... for now
! [Evolved Runetracer] Another weapon evolved! This run is definitely going the right way
! [Evolved Cross] Yet another weapon evolved. This may seem easy, but it really isn't. I promise.
! [Map Check] Okay let's have a look at where we are. Back where we started, but with the precious Left Metaglio. Time to head for the Right one. Those leaves highlighted in yellow, circling the Right Metaglio are damage powerups. Should be quite easy to pick them up on the way.
! [Found Flamethrower close to guardian 2] What's this! A flamethrower bar. These babies deal insane amounts of damage over a short amount of time. If I can lure the second guardian over here, I'd surely be able to kill him quickly. I'll just leave this here for now
! [Located Metaglio Right] The Right Metaglio and it's guardian. Better grab it quick and make a run for the Flamethrower
! [Obtained Metaglio Right] No problem. But uh-oh. "Curses the bearer"?! Doesn't sound good..
! [Flamethrower action Killed guardian 2] Don't think he went this easy though. This is actually the second flamethrower I blazed full power in his face. These guys can take a ton of damage before dying.
! [Staying alive] Okay so we got all the ingredients, but we're not out of the woods yet. Both enemy density and enemy numbers are increasing, and we still need to level up all our ingredients AND fight a mini boss to find the chest to get lucky.
! [Mission complete] But alas. Against all odds, we made it. Now all that's left to do is to survive the final waves (still not a given, but we prevailed!
I hope you enjoyed this playthrough of a single run in Vampire Survivors. The post turned out a bit bigger than planned, but there was a lot to cover to give a proper understanding of the game for people that have never played it before.
My intention was to showcase a game I enjoy and to hopefully inspire someone to give it a go. Or to simply to provide some entertainment and insight into how the game is, for those that do enjoy games, but don't have much time to play themselves (like myself -- this post is heavily inspired by similar posts in the Hive Gaming Community that has filled just that niche for me personally).
Let me know in the comments if I succeeded!