Vampire Crawlers, the new card-based, first-person spin-off of mega-hit Vampire Survivors, is an absolutely stunning game. We’ve already made that very clear. It’s also a game that’s so jam-packed with lovely little details that deserve to be individually celebrated.
The sheer delight of Crawlers is how entirely different it is as a game from Survivors, and yet how much they have in common. One is a top-down auto-battler roguelite with bullet-hell DNA, the other is a first-person dungeon crawling deck-builder. It’s bonkers that they feel so closely associated, and its testament to both Survivors creators Poncle and Crawlers developers Nosebleed that the relationship is so strong.
There are so many special details that cause Crawlers to shine so brightly, and the very best among them are the most important: the exquisitely balanced deckbuilding options for each crawler. But we’re not here to celebrate that today, Zack already took care of all that. We’re here today to sing praises for the features that can get forgotten: the pretty colors and crunchy noises.
It’s so faithful to Vampire Survivors, despite being utterly different
I have spent an awful lot of the last three years playing Vampire Survivors. It is quite normal for me to get in bed, close my eyes, and still see a field of blue gems occupying my vision. And without knowing it, so much of its aesthetic has soaked into my bones, such that when the same characters, items, attacks, and even colored outlines appear in Vampire Crawlers, I know exactly what I’m doing. Then there are the sound effects, the sparkly noises and slot machine sounds, and the impossibly satisfying aural pleasure of all your gems being scooped up and added to your XP.
What I’ve realized through this, through experiencing these same themes in a wildly different type of game, is quite how spectacularly well every element of Vampire Survivors was designed. It was, after all, a pretty crude pixel-art top-down game that seemed defiantly retro. Yet it communicated so much vital information through the most subtle of choices, so much so that the same messages are instantly conveyed in Crawlers. But worry not if you’re not a Survivors player: I’m pretty sure exactly the same will work in reverse if you start here and then go back.
Smashing stuff
I realize this is perhaps not the most nuanced or informed piece of games criticism, but damn I love games that let you smash stuff. Even if there’s nothing inside, I can while away many a happy afternoon hitting crates with swords, so long as the sound effect is strong and the crumpling satisfactory. Crawlers takes smashing things to an extremely happy place, seemingly performed by just ramming your character’s body at objects like a ludicrous bull. If you see it in a level, walk into it: that’s the motto. Doing so gets you money, health, new abilities, card upgrades, more mana or health, the works. But most importantly, it’s never not rewarding to do. It’s so stupidly aggressive, with excellent sound and a rewarding animation.
Sparkly chests
I didn’t promise highbrow coverage, OK? And I won’t be stopped from celebrating the sparkly chests! As a games journalist, I’ve a habit of taking screenshots as I play games, usually with barely a conscious thought. If it’s interesting I hit the key, and after I’m done I can go through the results like a parent scrolling through their phone camera after a child got hold of it. My screenshots for Vampire Crawlers are embarrassingly dominated by my spamming the screenshot key every time I open a chest. Seriously, look at this:
Every single one with the sparkles of light is a time I did that. What are they for? What do they usefully illustrate for people reading an article about the game? They’re just pretty colors, and like a keyboard-aware moth, I had to fly toward them all.
Garlic is still the best thing in it
I’ve never actually discussed Vampire Survivors tactics with anyone except my pre-teen son, so I genuinely don’t know if everyone else agrees that garlic is the best weapon in the original game. Me and the boy agree it is, and that’s good enough, really. So I’m delighted that it remains the best weapon in Crawlers too. It doesn’t work the same way, really—in Survivors it’s about having this disc-shaped field of danger all around you, hurting enemies as they step within it. In Crawlers, it’s more of a big, general attack on the front row of the enemies you’re battling, but it remains somehow equally as satisfying to use. It’s such a big “OOF” to their numbers, and used correctly can take out a whole bunch of them at once, and made even better when you add…
The Nduja Fritta Tanto is still the second best thing
Honestly, I only found out it’s called the Nduja Fritta Tanto immediately before writing this sentence. I had, until this point, thought of it as and called it “the sponge.” It’s obviously not a sponge. Sponges absorb water during bath-time fun. The Nduja Fritta Tanto unleashes hellfire from your mouth on all that surround. Those aren’t similar things at all. But I shall maintain that it sure looks a lot like a sponge in the games. In Survivors you pick them up when they spawn in the battlefield and then breathe extraordinary waves of fire that burn up enemies at a tremendous pace. In Crawlers they’re “gems” you can insert into a card to add a similarly destructive element. Putting these into garlic cards makes a ridiculously OP attack, and it’s my whole gameplan when using Poe Ratcho on a run.
Doing all the attacks at once
What I did there is lull you into a false sense of security by putting in a couple of entries based on useful information for playing the game. But forget that! I love that you can just spam all your attacks at once in Vampire Crawlers.
Sure, it’s not often a great plan, because a lot of how you play is reactive. You don’t want to use up your entire turn on attacks if they’re not going to prevent incoming wounds the next turn, and as you get used to the game the simple act of playing one type of card can result in receiving another, and you can design your decks around this. But then also sometimes you have five mana left, and three attack cards that’ll use two, two and one to fire off, and god it’s the best to just launch them all at the same time. But the real point here is that I love that Vampire Crawlers lets you do this at all. It could so easily have been designed around the more careful approach, and just not let you fire the next until the previous was done, and we’d not have noticed it as a failing. But they didn’t, and I love that.
It ends turns for you
Similarly, unless you tell the game not to, it’ll end your turn for you when your turn is done. I mean, that sounds obvious, but then think about any of the seven million other turn-based RPGs you might have played. They so often don’t! You’ve used all your AP, MP, and so on, every possible heal has been cast, you’ve got no other move to make, but the game still needs you to press “End Turn.” Crawlers picks up the pace so well by not requiring this. If your turn ends, it’s because there wasn’t anything else you could have done, so no one’s missing out! And it makes such a difference to the flow of the game.
The hammer
We’re back to John Likes Thing Go Smash I’m afraid. When you upgrade a card with a gem in Vampire Crawlers, the game puts the item in the card’s slot with an animation of a heavy metal hammer absolutely walloping it into place. It’s just so crunchy and brilliant! I enjoy it every single time, that ridiculous whack, the thumping, cracking sound effect, and the sense of satisfaction that should accompany any time a person hits something ridiculously hard with a hammer.
Should I have added another feature on the end here so this article doesn’t finish on such a puerile observation? No! Because genuinely, it’s these seemingly trivial details that give so much more power and atmosphere to a stunningly well-designed deckbuilder. It elevates a great game into a memorably great one. These are the elements that are responsible for the sense of a tactile and visceral game that leaves a hefty impact on top of its stunning mechanics. I love that, and it deserves our recognition.
