Vampire Crawlers review - “This dungeon crawler has teeth, even if it can be a bit awkward”

• Vampire Crawlers sees Poncle take the Vampire Survivors franchise in a new direction
• But does it simply crawl, or run, with all the new mechanics presented?
• A genuinely solid new take on the franchise is hampered only by awkward controls for mobile

Poncle’s rapid rise from small-time indie developer to working with the likes of Games Workshop and Shonen Jump on spinoffs of their hit bullet heaven Vampire Survivors has been meteoric for the studio. So, it’s not surprising they’re pursuing spinoffs of the game that made them so popular in the first place, like first-person turn-based dungeon crawler Vampire Crawlers! But does it hold up to its predecessor?

Well, in a word, yes. But you probably want to know how exactly it does that. So, let’s go over where you’ll find similarities to Vampire Survivors, and where Vampire Crawlers stands on its own two feet.

Crawling in my skin

Vampire Survivors is a bullet heaven, all about slaying hordes of enemies with increasingly larger, flashier attacks, while Vampire Crawlers is a slightly slower dungeon-crawling experience. And I mean slightly, as you’ll venture out from your central village headquarters into different stages inspired by maps from the original.

Once you’re in, it’s business as usual: journey through each level, find treasure, slay enemies and the final boss before making your escape. Or, in this case, being taken out by The Reaper.

There are a lot of similarities between the two, with Vampire Crawlers featuring the same characters as your companions, alongside returning weapons and stat boosts that offer similar bonuses to damage, area-of-effect, experience and so on. Even the enemy sprites are virtually identical.

Where Vampire Crawlers really stands out is its combat. As the ranks of enemies slowly advance on you, you’ll play cards from your deck, building combos by playing them in ascending order of their mana cost. These range from increasing stats to simple attacks and buffs to armour or health.

At first, Vampire Crawlers feels rather slow, for lack of a better term. But once you get into the rhythm of playing cards automatically, occasionally mixing in a few higher mana cost options rather than using the auto-sorting feature, you’ll find it quite engaging.

Vampire Crawlers also features the same fun of finding new relics almost constantly, which can massively change gameplay, alongside evolving your weapons to gain new and exciting effects, such as the classic Whip to Bloody Tear evolution that adds lifesteal on a crit. It also introduces gems, which can be applied to cards so they have different effects when played, whether that’s increasing their AoE or just doubling their damage.

The music, graphics and visuals are all just as crisp and exciting as in the original Vampire Survivors. But if I did have to make a complaint, it’s that the mobile adaptation specifically doesn’t use screen space very well, with the controls at the centre and plenty of negative space that could’ve been better used by expanding it to a widescreen format. If there is an option to change that, I haven’t found it, and the smaller screen should justify a portrait mode too.

Those quibbles aside, Vampire Crawlers is a worthwhile spinoff that sees Poncle taking a bold step into a whole new genre, while keeping enough similarities that veteran Survivors such as myself can jump in and find their footing quite quickly. If you fancy a change of pace from bullet heaven, Vampire Crawlers slows things down just enough while having the same excitement of rapidly increasing power and slaughtering hordes of enemies.