Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors

If you’ve been reading The Single Player Experience for any length of time, you probably already know that I am a roguelike sicko. Roguelikes and roguelites have become two of my favorite genres in gaming, and I have played more than enough of them to know when a game has that special “one more run” quality that can turn a quick 15-minute session into several hours disappearing from the clock. Vampire Survivors is probably the best example of that phenomenon for me. It is one of the most addictive games I have played in years, and I genuinely consider it one of those games that could live on my Steam Deck forever.

That is why I was initially hesitant about Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors. Not because I didn’t trust poncle, and certainly not because I didn’t think the idea sounded interesting, but because this game is such a dramatic departure from what made Vampire Survivors work for me. Instead of dropping me into a top-down arena and asking me to survive increasingly ridiculous waves of enemies, Vampire Crawlers takes the familiar characters, weapons, enemies, and visual language of Vampire Survivors and drops them into a first-person, turn-based roguelite deckbuilder.

On paper, that sounds like it shouldn’t work nearly as well as it does.

I wanted more Vampire Survivors. What I got instead was something that initially took me a little while to understand, but eventually became one of the better roguelite deckbuilders I have played this year. Vampire Crawlers does not recreate the magic of Vampire Survivors. It takes the ingredients that made that game so addictive and cooks something completely different with them.

And damn it, poncle did it again.

The basic structure of Vampire Crawlers is surprisingly straightforward. You choose a crawler, select a world map you have unlocked, and begin working your way through a series of dungeon floors filled with enemies, loot, upgrades, and bosses. Your objective is to survive long enough to make it through the dungeon while building a deck that becomes increasingly powerful.

Instead of controlling a character directly like you do in Vampire Survivors, you are essentially assembling a party of crawlers. Each crawler brings their own starting cards, abilities, and passive effects, and you can eventually bring up to three of them along for a run. That distinction took me embarrassingly long to fully understand, largely because I was coming into this expecting the character-selection system from Vampire Survivors. Once it clicked, though, I started to appreciate what poncle was doing with the idea.

Combat takes place from a first-person perspective, with your health and mana displayed on screen while you manage a hand of cards. Your weapons and abilities each have their own mana costs, so every turn becomes a small puzzle about how you want to spend your limited resources. You might have a whip, knife, King Bible, armor card, duplicator, or one of several other options available to you, but having a great hand doesn’t necessarily mean you can play everything in it.

That limitation is where the strategy begins.

I had one run where I built an absolutely ridiculous combination of knives, Holy Bibles, duplicator cards, and other offensive upgrades. I was shredding enemies in one or two turns and felt like I had completely broken the game. Then I drew a hand full of duplicator cards with nothing that could actually attack or protect me. Suddenly my brilliant strategy was completely useless, and I was getting punched in the face while staring at a hand that couldn’t save me.

That is Vampire Crawlers in a nutshell. You can build an incredible deck, but the game constantly asks you to adapt to what it gives you.

The card system is the reason Vampire Crawlers eventually clicked for me.

Every run gives you opportunities to acquire new cards, and your deck can develop in dramatically different directions depending on what you find. You can lean heavily into damage, build around armor, focus on mana, or create combinations that allow certain cards to trigger other effects. You can also banish, skip, or reroll cards through the progression systems, giving you some control over the randomness without completely eliminating the roguelite nature of the experience.

One of my favorite examples came when I discovered how powerful an armor-focused build could become. Earlier in my playthrough, I was mostly trying to stack damage cards and kill enemies before they could hurt me. Eventually I discovered upgrades that allowed my armor to persist between turns, combined them with gemstones that increased my defensive capabilities, and suddenly I had more than 24 armor during one encounter.

The enemies couldn’t touch me.

I was sitting there stacking armor while slowly dismantling wave after wave of enemies. It was completely different from how I had approached the game previously, and that is exactly what I want from a roguelite. I don’t want every run to feel like I’m executing the same strategy with slightly different numbers. I want the game to make me rethink how I approach it.

Vampire Crawlers does that constantly.

The gemstone system adds another layer to this. You can hammer gems into your cards to modify their abilities, allowing weapons to deal additional damage, attack multiple times, draw cards, add armor, or trigger other effects. Later, the Blacksmith allows you to add additional gemstone slots to cards you’ve already discovered, which gives your favorite cards even more potential during future runs.

Every time I thought I had finally figured out the game, it introduced another system.

The village does the same thing. You can spend the gold you earn during runs on permanent upgrades, unlock new crawlers, upgrade cards, unlock additional systems, and discover new ways to strengthen future runs. The Fortune Teller’s Pants, the Blacksmith’s Workshop, the Stardust Anvil, new characters, permanent stat upgrades, challenges, achievements, and other unlockables all contribute to a progression system that constantly gives you another reason to keep playing.

This is where Vampire Crawlers captures that Vampire Survivors magic.

You might lose a run, but you rarely feel like you’ve accomplished nothing.

I called Vampire Survivors the Pringles of video games because once you start, you can’t stop. Vampire Crawlers doesn’t produce exactly the same kind of dopamine rush, but it absolutely understands that same fundamental hook.

I would lose a run and immediately think, “Okay, one more.”

Then I’d lose another one and think, “All right, let me try this strategy.”

Then I’d unlock something and think, “Well, now I have to see what this does.”

Then I’d realize another hour had disappeared.

The game is deceptively exceptional because its presentation doesn’t immediately scream that there is an absurd amount of depth underneath it. At first glance, this looks like another 8-bit game. The character designs are good, but they aren’t necessarily going to blow you away. The visual presentation isn’t what initially sold me.

The systems are.

The card building, permanent progression, village upgrades, crawler combinations, gemstones, character unlocks, treasure chests, dungeon progression, achievements, and increasingly difficult stages all stack on top of one another to create something considerably more substantial than I initially expected.

It is also incredibly easy to pick up and play. I can play a few floors, put the game down, go back to whatever else I was doing, and come back later without feeling like I need to relearn the entire game. That makes it an especially good Steam Deck game, and honestly, I think the game feels like it was made for a handheld.

It runs beautifully on the Steam Deck, the controls feel intuitive, and the entire experience lends itself to short sessions just as much as it does longer ones.