It has been about four years since the release of Vampire Survivors blew up the indie space, created the “bullet-heaven” genre, and developers have been chasing after its success. With the latest DLC inspired by Castlevania, I jumped back into the game to see whether or not the gameplay still works today in light of all the many games I’ve played since. Surprisingly, it still holds up and has lessons to teach the games that are trying to vie for the crown.
At this point, I don’t think I need to explain what Vampire Survivors is, and I want to skip to where it is today.
More Survivors, Less Vampires
Vampire Survivors has come a long way in terms of its design. The original map was simply an empty field that stretched on infinitely. Now there are multiple maps, multiple characters, secrets, additional systems, and this doesn’t even include the latest map.
What’s perhaps the most surprising about going back to VS today is that it still plays as one of the faster bullet-heavens on the market. When I last played it, the game had the option to increase the in-game speed so that 30 minutes became 20, now you can do it even faster, going down to 15 minutes — allowing someone to experience a full run quicker than any other bullet-heaven out there.
This gets at one of the biggest issues I have with a lot of other games that the developers keep messing up on — the speed. I’ve lost count of the number of these games where the very first run is slooooow — your character is slow, bullets are slow, enemies are slow; the entire game feels slow. I’ve had to institute a new rule — if I’m falling asleep before ten minutes are up in your game, I will end the run early.
With the notion of upgrades and unlocks, for the ones that I do manage to get to the end of a run, through death or completion, I’m surprised to find that I’ve unlocked literally nothing. If you’re going to do a game like this, there must be consistent upgrades to drip feed progression. I’ve lost count of the number of these games where the first upgrade takes multiple winning runs to unlock.
Vampire Survivors starts fast and then gets faster-er in the screen explosions (source: Author)
It’s this slowness that betrays a lot of the bullet heavens compared to Vampire Survivors. I bet the decision was that these games have nowhere near the amount of content that VS has at this point, so slowing down progression keeps them from running out. However, it’s that amount of content and the consistent rewards that keep someone engaged with VS. If I want to make progress in the game, I can go after a character challenge, weapon unlock, map unlock or just go for gold that I’m going to be using for more meta unlocks.
There is a puzzle to playing and mastering the many different items, tarot cards and characters that isn’t present in the other games. It’s that next level of understanding that provides a lot of the replayability for Vampire Survivors — yes, you survived a run, now how do you break it?
Vampire Vania
And to that, let’s talk about the newest map. The Castlevania/Symphony of the Night DLC is the closest fans have gotten to a celebration of the series in a long time, and definitely not from Konami themselves. Featuring remixed versions of popular songs, a buffet of characters from the series, the largest map to date in the game, and many different secrets to find.
Each “adventure” map adds more features and elevates the original formula, but this one is the most expansive to date. With a lot more characters to unlock, bonus areas, and more nods to the entire Castlevania franchise that you could possibly fit.
Picayune Dreams does things differently compared to other bullet heavens and doesn’t have to worry about being compared directly to Vampire Survivors (source Author)
What makes this one of the best bullet heaven experiences is the sheer number of secrets and places to explore does something that I haven’t seen in any other bullet heaven to date — it makes me want more time to explore.
There are so many new weapons, combinations, and permanent upgrades that you can unlock on the map that despite Vampire Survivors being the quite literal first bullet-heaven to blow up, it still feels like one of the most progressive takes on the genre. And it’s those details that keep Vampire Survivors on top of the subgenre and is the bar that other games must clear if they want to have any attempt at ever being better than it.
Based Bullet-Heaven
What continues to make Vampire Survivors the undisputed king of the subgenre is that it gets at what makes this kind of content so engaging. It’s not just about providing “things” on-screen blowing up, but letting the player have 15-30 minutes of rapid progression. The constant rewards and goals to go after providing a structure for players beyond just repeating for a high score or an unlock after hours of play.
While the game does not have the more technical aspects of newer bullet heavens like Death Must Die, or the RPG aspects of Halls of Torment, it makes up for that with the sheer number of items and evolutions that provide multiple ways of playing on a run-by-run basis.
This is not a game that “hides the fun”, it only gets better the more you put into it. It is going to take something spectacular from a developer if they want to beat Vampire Survivors at their own game.
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