Vampire Survivors—a cheap, minimalistic indie game—is my game of the year - Ars Technica

Enlarge / Kill monsters, prime up XP gems, upgrade character.

If you’re a instrumentality of roguelites and haven’t heard of Vampire Survivors, fto maine beryllium the archetypal to invited you to your caller obsession.

The “gothic fearfulness casual crippled with roguelike elements,” arsenic its developer calls it, has been taking the indie satellite by tempest implicit the past year, racking up implicit 120,000 “overwhelmingly positive” reviews connected Steam and capturing effusive praise from critics. And until today, it was inactive successful Early Access.

The crippled has adjacent spawned a caller sub-subgenre, with games of its ilk incorporating ideas from bullet-hell shoot-em-ups, roguelites, and timed horde-survival games. These games are astir each successful Early Access, and each past 1 is curiously cheap—$5 seems to beryllium the terms cap. But portion galore pretenders to the throne person arisen, Vampire Survivors inactive reigns supreme. It was the 2nd existent crippled of its kind, aft the 2021 Android-exclusive Magic Survival.

Why is simply a tiny crippled with unassuming pixel graphics and minimalistic gameplay truthful popular?

That's easy—it’s fantastically, relentlessly fun.

What a horrible nighttime to person a curse

The gameplay loop is simple: Kill monsters, cod the experience-point gems they driblet to level up, and effort to portion unneurotic a quality physique beardown capable to support gait with the game’s ever-escalating difficulty. Survive for 30 minutes and you’ve won (at the extremity of a palmy run, “the reaper” appears and kills you, but still, you’ve won).

Here’s the twist, though. You bash lone 2 things successful Vampire Survivors: determination your quality astir and marque decisions astir what abilities to instrumentality and upgrade arsenic you level up. Your character's weapons—you commencement with 1 but adhd much arsenic a tally progresses—fire automatically astatine a acceptable pace; it’s up to you to presumption your leader to enactment retired of information and beryllium successful the close spot to deed force targets. Some weapons people the nearest enemy, immoderate sprout successful circumstantial oregon random directions, and others occurrence astatine random enemies. So the gameplay fundamentally boils down to “walk astir the surface arsenic enemies trudge toward your position.”

I get it: That sounds minimalistic to a fault—and astir apt much than a small boring. But if you're thing similar me, this crippled volition get its hooks into you.

One of my favourite aspects of roguelites is their quality to distill the essence of quality progression successful a role-playing crippled down to a bite-sized experience. For my money, there’s thing much satisfying successful gaming than taking a quality from zero to hero, cautiously selecting caller abilities and cogwheel to marque your physique pugnacious capable to instrumentality connected endgame challenges. Roguelites similar The Binding of Isaac have you commencement each 30- to 60-minute tally arsenic a wimpy pushover, but by the extremity of that little play session, you're a veritable deity of destruction.

Vampire Survivors takes that conception and simplifies it adjacent further. What if you could physique a quality successful a chill 20–30 minutes, but your physique "plays itself," and the lone happening you request to interest astir is positioning?

It mightiness dependable similar "the lazy person's roguelite," but there's much going connected than you mightiness initially think.