Vampire Survivors – P.1 – User Article

Vampire Survivors is developed by Luca Galante, known under the pseudonym poncle. in one article at PCGamer.com he states that he had “no big idea/vision” when he started developing Vampire Survivors. However, he did have the mobile title as a source of inspiration Magic Survival (to the Google Playstore) served. Magic Survival is free to play. If, on the other hand, you invest 3.99 euros, you bypass the “game recommendation” videos after a run and also immediately receive the one-time revival to continue a current attempt. The stingy only after watching a trailer for titles like Ant Legion—For The Swarm have viewed. Well, who would want to miss out on such insights into the free-to-play world?

In Magic Survival and also in Vampire Survivors you steer a character through a seemingly infinite, limitless area and enemies are constantly pouring towards you from all sides. If they reach you, they eat away at your life energy and if it drops to zero, the run is over. However, you are not at the mercy of the hordes, but oppose them with a steadily growing arsenal of weapons. The special thing is that you have no control over which enemy your weapons target. The game takes over this job and automatically fires at the attacker or attackers who are in the immediate vicinity. Level-ups give you access to new skills or upgrade the existing ones. Since it is up to chance which three (or at most four) skills are presented to you when you level up, you have to improvise from time to time or make do with a different setup than the one you want.

Magic Survival does not use unusual enemy designs. The smartphone screen is still banging and booming.

Visually, Magic Survival relies on a particularly simple style: all enemies consist of circles, the dangerous variants stand out from the trash in terms of color and size. The areas are barren and have no structural elements. A flat surface, every now and then you come across a chest or damaging element effects that you shouldn’t linger in. Magic Survival’s visuals may be a pragmatic solution. The individual areas still create a successful atmosphere through color accentuation. I’ve now spent many hours with Magic Survival, the game is good for a round in between, for example on the train – or while I’m waiting for it.

I haven’t played such gameplay-reduced games like Magic Survival or Vampire Survivors for a long time – maybe in my early youth? In which drawer do I sort “something like that”? Reverse bullet hell action? The classification in the GamersGlobal-Database as a roguelike does not fit at least. But also mobygames or the Steam tags only inadequately answer the genre question. thankfully the developer on Steam provides the solution himself:

A wonderfully honest description! Because every attempt ends after 30 minutes at the latest (more or less), but your first runs are much faster. The gameplay consists of a few actions: opponents that you don’t kill directly, you dodge as best you can by exploiting gaps in their ranks. You collect experience orbs, after a level-up you choose a new skill or improve an existing skill and thus become more and more powerful. During a run, you earn as much gold as possible to invest in the 20 permanent power-ups after the inevitable death: For example, you increase your basic damage, your maximum life, but also the difficulty.

Before a run, you choose your character from over 20 characters. Since these have different properties in addition to the starting weapon, the runs play quite differently.