This review is up to date as of 8/20/2024.

This review is based on the PC (Steam) and Nintendo Switch versions of Vampire Survivors. It is also available on Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 5, Android, and iOS.

Vampire Survivors makes a very simplistic first impression. When you start the game, there's the all-too-common photosensitivity warning. Once you pass that, you are immediately greeted by a short audio fanfare and the title screen. No intro cutscene, no explanation of what is going on or how to play or anything. That sounds bad, but honestly, it feels like a breath of fresh air in today's gaming landscape. So many games set out to create these cinematic experiences seemingly with the intent to rival the production value and quality of Hollywood films. Vampire Survivors feels like a callback to the simpler days of gaming. It knows exactly what it wants to be and doesn't try to make itself seem greater than it is. So what is it?

Vampire Survivors takes the concept of a horde shooter or horde survival game and gives it a top-down 2d viewpoint with 16-bit era graphics. If you're a fan of the SNES or Genesis aesthetic, you will love the visual style of Vampire Survivors. This approach to visuals also allows for the game to run well on a variety of hardware, a quality especially appreciated when swarms of enemies as well as your curtain of bullets both fill the screen as runs approach their conclusion. Even on the lower-end Switch hardware, the game maintains a rock-solid framerate even during high-intensity action.

Speaking of high-intensity action, a friend of mine described this game aptly as a "bullet heaven," his logic being that in a "bullet hell" the enemies fill the screen with bullets and you have to dodge them, but in Vampire Survicors / "bullet heaven," you are the one filling the screen with bullets and defeating hordes of monsters. Going into the game for the first time though, this isn't the impression you would get. Runs of Vampire Survivors begin with your lone character using their singular, weak weapon to slay small bats or other weak creatures that slowly meander in from the edges of the screen. As you kill enemies, they drop experience gems. Collect enough gems and you will level up. Leveling up gives you the option of selecting an additional weapon (up to 6 total,) selecting an additional passive item (again, up to 6) or upgrading one of your existing weapons/items. The choices you are given are random, and as you play you will discover what your favorite weapons are.

Certain particularly powerful enemies can drop chests, which upon opening plays a slot-machine-like animation and music that seems like it was designed to give you the biggest dopamine hit of your life. The chests usually level up a random item that you have, while also rewarding an amount of gold (more on what gold does later.) Opening a chest while you have certain combinations of weapons and items will evolve the weapon into a stronger form. For instance, if you have a Hollow Heart and a fully leveled up Whip, you can open a chest to evolve your Whip into the Bloody Tear, which has increased range and heals you when it does damage.

At the conclusion of a run, when you have met your untimely demise, you are greeted with a results screen which displays your run statistics. This breakdown is rather in-depth, which is great for the number-crunchers and data-lovers among us. Your earned gold is also tallied up and kept between runs, which can be spent on permanent character upgrades, such as increased damage, reduced weapon cooldowns, increased max health, among other things.

The game is regularly updated, receiving both free updates and paid DLC at least once every few months. The paid DLC is rather inexpensive, usually priced around $2.50, and adds a slew of new characters and weapons as well as 1 or 2 new maps. The amount of content you get for your money is very worth it, and I almost feel bad for the developers as I feel they could easily charge twice the amount that they are charging and it would still feel like a more than fair deal.

There are plenty of secrets if you know where to look. I will not spoil them here, but a good place to start is by working on completing every achievement, of which there are plenty. In fact, the lion's share of my playtime in Vampire Survivors has been chasing achievements. It's the perfect game for you if you're an achievement hunter.

However, I would be remiss if I didn't mention some of the shortcomings of the game. Some of the secrets are so ridiculously well hidden that there's no way in hell your average player would find them. You will likely need to look up a guide if you want to 100% this game. Secondly, the audio can get a bit grating sometimes, especially as you reduce your cooldown further and some weapons begin firing very rapidly. This audio complaint does not extend to the music though, the music is fantastic and has a lot of nice bops. Lastly, the graphics are slightly inconsistent in their quality and style. Most of the game is pixel art, but some particles are just large squares and some menu elements contain moving images that evoke a more modern art-style than what is present through the rest of the game.

In conclusion, as I mentioned earlier, Vampire Survivors is a breath of fresh air in a world where each game, big and small is trying to compete for your time and attention. Vampire Survivors does not try to nickel and dime you with microtransactions and battle passes, and it doesn't try to suck up all of your free time with FOMO, dailies, and other live-service nonsense. It's simply a game that hearkens back to a simpler time, when all that mattered about a game was the fun factor.

Graphics:  3/5
Sound:  4/5
Gameplay: 5/5
Cost Value: 5/5
Replay Value: 4/5

Final Score: 8.5/10