Vampire Crawlers sees Vampire Survivors dev Poncle jump into the world of deckbuilders
Coming to a mobile near you
- Poncle's first major spinoff of Vampire Survivors has been announced
- Vampire Crawlers shifts the perspective to 3D dungeon crawling
- Build a deck of weapons, items and even other survivors to help you out in screen-cracking combos
As far as bullet-heaven roguelikes go, there's few that have seen as much meteoric success as Vampire Survivors has. Developed by Italian studio Poncle, Vampire Survivors has managed to shift millions of copies since it was released in 2022, and with that sort of success comes spinoffs! Such as today's subject, Vampire Crawlers.
Set to arrive on iOS and Android, alongside other platforms in a series first launch, Vampire Crawlers can best be described as a mashup of dungeon crawler and deck builder. As they note in the trailer, it's absolutely not comparable to Balatro in any way.
But while you might be worried that Vampire Crawlers would sacrifice the fast-paced action of Vampire Survivors for the genre shift, you'd be wrong. Whether it's comboing cards together as fast as you can or summoning the most pixel-intensive abilities, there's no shortage of excitement in Vampire Crawlers.
Coming whenever
As noted in the trailer, Vampire Crawlers has a projected release date of sometime in 2026. Although in typically irreverent Poncle fashion, they note it'll be 'whenever we think it's ready'. And considering how big a departure this is for the series, it's rather impressive that we could be getting it so soon in the first place!Still, graphically speaking, while Vampire Crawlers lifts a lot of art and cues from Vampire Survivors, there's plenty of new, lavish, crunchy pixels to enjoy. And the perspective shift to pseudo-3D dungeon crawling action around a vast open world is an equally exciting addition to the series.
In the meantime, while you can sink hours upon hours into Vampire Survivors (as I have), this bullet heaven has inspired many new twists and takes on the genre. So why not sink your fangs into some of the top mobile games like Vampire Survivors for some of our picks?
