Vampire Survivors
Year: 2022
Rating: T
Time Played: 30+ hours
For the few months I had Apple Arcade on my phone, I got to try out some games that I had occasionally heard about but never had the time to sit down and play. Vampire Survivors felt like a game inspired by the Castlevania aesthetic but with roguelike and shoot-em-up (or shmup) elements that had me regularly coming back to play it. And since it was on my phone, I could easily get a round of Vampire Survivors in when just waiting around for something. Be careful: this is addictive.
As with most roguelikes, Vampire Survivors progression depends on gathering a specific currency that is used to upgrade various stats. From health and armor to speed and attack, slowly unlocking the full potential of these characters helped to give me the edge to progress to each successive stage. Then I unlocked the “garlic” weapon. Having found the best weapon for my play style (i.e., where my weapon would damage enemies automatically before they reached me), I leaned into this weapon and chose it as often as I could. Sure, I could have learned how to best use other weapons, but I liked how I could cheese most enemies by just avoiding them long enough for the garlic to do its work.
And maybe that’s the one weakness with Vampire Survivors: it doesn’t give a lot of rewards for mixing up your play style. If you find something that works, you can use it to get through the entire game. But, if you just want to get to the end of each level, where your character is so incredibly powerful that you’re wiping out hundreds of enemies a second, then what’s to say you can’t enjoy that flashy experience however you want.
An addictive retro inspired game that lacks some forced variety, I give Vampire Survivors 4.0 stars out of 5.
