Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors Review - Card Slaying Combos Galore!
Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors is the brand new iteration, or perhaps reinvention, of the popular rogue-like Vampire Survivors. Now, as a turn-based card deck builder, is it a royal flush or a dirty diaper?
I had the privilege of playing the OG Vampire Survivors (VS) back when it was released as an Early Access game on Steam back in December 2021. Admittedly, I initially viewed the touted “reverse” bullet-hell game with some skepticism, thinking it a cheap Castlevania knockoff using premade assets. I soon ate my proverbial hat, sinking hours upon hours into the game, grinding away, unlocking the game’s multitude of power-ups and characters, trying to collect every relic, tick off every secret, purchasing every expansion, and playing it across every console available (including iPhone). I had become a Vampire Survivors evangelist.
I became addicted to its accessible gameplay, retro charm, and its winking reference to Italian culture. FULL DISCLOSURE: I was born and grew up in Italy, where I still currently live part of the year, and yes, I am fluent in the Italian language. I realised that a lot of the game’s characters and item names were Italian puns, such as the appropriately named revival dessert, “Tiragisu” (Pick me up), feathery companion “Peachone” (pigeon), or the desiccated skeletal character “Mortaccio” (slang for a curse phrase, “your wretched dead ancestors”). I soon discovered that the designer Luca Galante is, in fact, Italian, making the game while he was living and working in London, UK (where I also happened to live for a few years).
Being a roguelike & deckbuilder fan (of both Hades and Slay the Spire), imagine my amazement and excitement when Poncle announced a card-building variant, Vampire Crawlers! Now a turn-based dungeon explorer, you explore a 3D environment in a first-person perspective, defeating waves of familiar bat sprites, Skelingtons, bulls, lizardmen, etc., and watch dozens of gems spill out, filling your XP meter, granting you choices of card/item cards straight from the original game. If you’re a fan of the previous game, you’ll be very familiar with the collection of weapons and items, as they are pretty much the same as the first one, even the weapon evolution combinations are the same, Garlic + Pummarola = Soul Eater, yum yum!
Fangtastic Combos
One of the funnest elements in the original game was collecting game-breaking combinations of items and weapon evolutions and watching those synergies just evaporate enemies into dust via a flood of kaleidoscopic lights and particles; the screen strobing and shaking at the risk of giving me a seizure; my hardware slowing to a chug (particularly on a Mac or Nintendo Switch). This has been somewhat replicated via Vampire Crawlers’ combo system. Like Magic or Hearthstone, each card has a mana cost. Basic attacks or items have “0” Cost, such as knives or whips. Stronger items and evolved weapons will have higher costs and so on. The ingenious mechanic creates a combo whenever you use cards in sequential order, e.g., you play a 0 Cost card, then a 1 Cost card. This will increase the power of your 1 Cost card and increase your combo counter. So if you increase the power of the Spell Book, you will get more mana and therefore be able to play more powerful cards. Coupling in draw cards for increased cards, wild cards to continue your combo, you can potentially have endless streaks. This mechanic adds a more strategic element to the game vs the original Vampire Survivors, as each turn, you may have to carefully consider the order in which you play your cards. This can make the difference in surviving an intense boss fight.
Crawling at a Poe Ratcho Pace
A minor nitpick is that making the game more strategic, unfortunately, has the downside of making the game slower to play as opposed to its progenitor. The original VS game mercifully limited runs to 30 minutes or less, which was perfect when I wanted to squeeze in a digital quickie when I last worked in an office (my being let go had nothing to do with slaying monsters while on the job, I swear!). Crawlers’ runs, however, take an average of about 60-90 minutes to complete, which can result in frustration when you’re on the last level of a dungeon and die at the hands of the final Boss creature. This, in turn, makes grinding gold to unlock new crawlers and power-ups more gruelling
Final Verdict: Is Vampire Crawlers Worth Your Time? YES!
Overall, I’m really enjoying this evolution of the original game’s formula! So far, I’ve put in over 15 hours and still have to complete the final tower in the game. I have yet to see what the endgame and secrets involve. Vampire Crawlers has been a success in translating the real-time action into a card slayer, and I highly recommend it if you were a fan of the original and/or like deck builder games. I cannot wait to see the expansions for this down the line, hopefully with Castlevania and Balatro crossovers! Just like in Vampire Survivors!
This review is based on 15+ hours of gameplay on a Nintendo Switch 2
