Vampire Survivors Nintendo Switch review – slaying with friends

Vampire Survivors – it’s not a looker (Picture: poncle)

One of the best games of 2022 finally comes to Nintendo Switch and it’s brought an addictive new local co-op mode with it.

Although many indie games are starting to look just as good as AAA titles it’s strangely satisfying that the most successful still tend to be games that would fail to impress even in the 16-bit era. The likes of Undertale and Baba Is You might look like long lost ZX Spectrum games but they’re much more entertaining than, for example, the far more attractive Atlas Fallen.

Vampire Survivors looks even worse – like some half-finished student project using ripped assets from Castlevania – and yet it was recently named Game of the Year 2022 at the BAFTAs. We do think that’s going a bit far, but Vampire Survivors is the ultimate example of not judging a video game by its cover.

Created by a small team of developers in London, the game’s low budget origins have ensured a long journey from PC early access to smartphones, and now consoles. It’s been available on Xbox since November but strangely there’s never been any mention of a PlayStation version. However, it’s on the Switch where the game feels most at home.

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Not only does Vampire Survivors look terrible but as soon as anyone explains it to you it sounds even worse. There’s no discernible plot – you’re just fighting vampires and assorted monsters, okay? – while the abstract environments and randomly spawning monsters bring to mind classic arena-based shooters such as Robotron: 2084, Smash T.V., and Nex Machina.

In spirit, Vampire Survivors is a dual-stick shooter except you don’t actually use both sticks. The only controls are movement-based, as attacks happen automatically for the variety of different cooldown timers each weapon has. Most of them are based around traditional Castlevania attacks, starting with a whip and including daggers, axes, boomerang-like crosses, holy water, and floating Bibles. Although there are many others as well, from fireballs to laser beams.

Although you don’t trigger their use yourself you quickly learn the range and rhythm of weapons, as you move towards and away from the crowds of monsters accordingly. By default, most of the enemies just mill around at random but often there’ll be wandering crowds of bats that have to be quickly avoided or a circle of tree monsters will form around you, slowly moving inwards towards your position.

If you haven’t played it before this all probably sounds like bottom of the barrel mobile trash and on your first go that will remain your initial impression, as the pacing starts off very slow and there appears to be little skill involved. The longer you last though the more complex the enemy formations become and the more you’re able to power-up your character, add more weapons and abilities, and unlock new avatars.

Again, this is not complicated: you kill an enemy, you collect the jewel it drops (often after having to circle around so you can reach it through the hordes of the undead), and your experience meter goes up a little. Once it reaches the far right of the screen you get a choice of three different power-ups, while randomly appearing chests offer similar boons.

When you die that’s it, but a roguelite element allows you to keep the coins you collect, which can be spent on the main menu and help increase base stats like speed and health. Although dying is also usually a good excuse to swap to a new character you’ve unlocked and see what they can do.

Vampire Survivors – things don’t stay slow paced for long (Picture: poncle)

Vampire Survivors’ ability to get its hooks into you cannot be underestimated, given how inane it initially seems, but then it subverts your expectations at every point. Not only are there some surprisingly deep tactical decisions to be made, about which weapons to choose and which upgrades to take, but it’s all a lot less random than it initially seems.

Its resemblance to some sort of free-to-play gacha game, desperate to frisk you for microtransactions, is uncanny and yet it’s actually the opposite. The whole game is available for one ultra low price and while there is DLC it’s even more absurdly cheap.

This Switch version is identical to the original PC version and that includes a small amount of slowdown when the screen gets especially full. Not only can there be hundreds of enemies on screen at once but once you level up sufficiently you turn yourself into a bullet hell-spewing super soldier. But, to be honest, the slight slowdown only adds to the retro charm.

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The only new feature for the Switch is a four-player local co-op mode, although the free update for that is being released at the same time for all formats. That’s where the slowdown gets even worse, for obvious reasons, but we haven’t played the PC version in co-op, so we don’t know if it’s just as bad on PC or not. Either way it’s still not disastrous and the co-op mode is very well thought out, with everyone sharing the same experience point bar and taking turns levelling up.

Given the incredibly low price we would absolutely recommend Vampire Survivors to anyone, no matter how it looks or sounds to them at first. There are some pacing problems, at the beginning and during the mid-game, where it seems like neither you nor the enemies are really evolving, but there’s always something new to see or do just around the corner, as you utter that eternally unfulfilled promise of ‘just one more go.’

Formats: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, iOS, and Android
Price: £3.99
Publisher: poncle
Developer: poncle
Release Date: 17th August 2023
Age Rating: 12

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One of the best games of 2022 finally comes to Nintendo Switch and it’s brought an addictive new local co-op mode with it.