• A DLC based on the Square Enix fantasy RPG franchise SaGa
  
• Featuring 12+ characters, 16+ weapons, and 9 new music tracks
  
• A New World-Weaving Stage
  
• Characters that come as a party, because no JRPG is complete without a squad!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3451100/Vampire_Survivors_Emerald_Diorama

• A chicken-themed update called The Coop
  
• New relic that lets you speed up the game!
  
• New stage, character, weapon, darkana
  
• 8 new Achievements
  
• 2 new Adventures with 6 chapters each:
  • “To End an Ice Age” for the base game
    
  • “Tides of the Foscari” for the Tides of the Foscari DLC

- To unlock the content of Emerald Diorama: find the new merchant in Moongolow and buy the Emerald Disk for 50k gold coins. Proceed with the chain of unlocks that starts in the new stage, Emerald Diorama.

- Banish/seal 80 items to unlock the final Seal power-up

- Complete once the adventure To End An Ice Age to unlock the new skin for She-Moon

- Collect a lifetime total of 500 Floor Chickens to unlock The Coop
- Find a Parm Aegis and the new relic on the right end of The Coop
- Don't kill enemies at the start of The Coop, for one minute in real time, to unlock the Gaze of Gaea
- Evolve the Gaze of Gaea with Parm Aegis to unlock Gazebo
- Pickup A LOT of food items with Gazebo, until there are no more bonuses appearing, to unlock Darkana III

Now available on PC, Xbox, Android, and iOS, please check out the Accounts & Cross-Platform Saves[poncle.games] page for info and instructions!
Nintendo Switch will follow asap. For PlayStation instead please see below.

We're sorry to say won't be able to bring the Vampire Survivors Cross-Save feature to PlayStation 4/5 alongside this update

Last month, we told everyone that Cross-Save would be available on PlayStation 4/5, PC, Xbox, Android and iOS alongside our next free VS update in April. But at last minute, we've run into a legal issue on PlayStation we weren't aware of that requires us to share info on our partners that we're unable to

The chances of Cross-Save coming to PlayStation consoles are now very slim, but not impossible, so we're going to keep working alongside PlayStation to resolve these problems. We're so sorry to build up any anticipation for this feature on PlayStation only to change plans at the last minute

Cross-Save will still be available on PC, Xbox, Android and iOS in the next few weeks, with Nintendo Switch following at a later date (plus Apple Arcade if we can do so without breaching any privacy commitments)

PS: for anyone wanting Cross-Save just to unlock trophies, it's worth noting that PS Trophies are automatically disabled on a platform level for all games when using a save file from another platform, or at least that's the policy we've been given to agree to if we ever manage to bring the feature on PS in the first place.

Last year we've put everything we had and then some in updating and bringing more content to VS, and we're not planning to stop anytime soon!
A huge thank you to all our players for continuing to support us, our partners, and to BAFTA for the award!
Vampire Survivors and Rusty's Retirement couldn't be any more different, but we're big fans of Mister Morris Games' idle-farming sim and thought it would be fun to have Poe 'retire' and join the game alongside a bunch of other VS characters. There's even waves of bats that swarm the screen (you can turn them off if they start making farm life too stressful)
The update is free and out now in Rusty's Retirement on Steam. For double the fun, you could play Rusty's Retirement and Vampire Survivors at the same time to be both relaxed AND anxious!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2666510/Rustys_Retirement/

Completely free of advertisement, banners, and all that sort of crap that gets in the way; just information, a user friendly website, and it's also fully functional on mobile.
Once again a huge thank you to all of our Wiki helpers on Discord our partners Weird Gloop for putting this wiki together, for their support, and for their guidance!
Visit now at http://vampire.survivors.wiki


The year is approximately MMXXI in Rural Italy…

Vampire survivors are on a relentless quest. Stumbling through the Mad Forest, climbing the calamitous Gallo Tower, searching the far reaches of the Inlaid Library. The Belpaese family, the Ladonnas, assorted clerics and supernatural folk all join the search. Why is there roast chicken everywhere? How is that dog making flowers bloom? And who – or what – is Poe Ratcho?

And where are the vampires?

That’s where I come in. I am the Merchant, and I can be your guide. If you have gold of course. Always gold. If you seek coffins, I may know where to find them… for a price. Though I cannot guarantee you’ll find the vampires you seek…

Pre-order here

[titanbooks.com]

We've now localised our Steam Achievements, so should you play in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese-Brazilian or Ukrainian, whenever you unlock a Steam achievement, this will now display in your language. If however you see a French achievement appear and you're playing in Polish (note this has to be a system level language, not in-game!), please let us know and we'll do our best to fix them.

Version 1.13 brought both The Coop and Emeralds, and there's a big chance that also the next update will deliver more than one entry from the roadmap. More than 1 Darkanas are also very likely. And who knows how much stuff are we still keeping completely hidden?
Real co-op has been in the game since last year. We don't have an exact date yet, but Online co-op instead is on the roadmap for the second half of 2025.

SaGa fans that played Vampire Survivors already know: I love SaGa. The base game already pays a lot of homages to the SaGa series, the first and most recognised one probably being NO FUTURE, the Runetracer evolution.
VS and the SaGa series couldn't be anymore different, and yet from my point of view they actually have a lot in common;
- Freedom to experiment with tight gameplay mechanics
- Straight to the point
- Quirky unpredictable world
- Spectacular attacks
- Over the top attacks
- A huge cast of characters
- Though to start - steamroll everything after you learn how to play
- A soundtrack that demands attention instead of fading in the background
SaGa has been hugely influential for me, so, while the game genres are so different, the base idea to me really sounds the same: "here's an unusual world, have fun!"
While SaGa Emerald Beyond revisits some of the points mentioned above, being the most recent brand new entry I thought it would be the most appropriate to explore in a collab.
I swear I didn't do this just to be given confidential access to SaGa Emerald Beyond three months ahead of its official release ːdireyesː

I'm pretty sure you don't even need to know anything about Vampire Survivors to play Vampire Survivors! There's no need to know anything about SaGa. If you've already seen any of the Extra or post-ending stages in VS, then you'll probably barely notice the thematic differences.
Even if you're not into JRPGs, this collab adds a lot of characters with special abilities and weapons with the new Glimmer mechanics; so since it's free I'd just recommend to download it and give it a try! (It does cost 50k in-game coins, just to prevent new players to start it by accident and be overwhelmed by the extra gameplay mechanics)

Paperwork. It took a very long time to sort out the paperwork for this collab, and it would have been twice as hard to get the licence if there had been any money exchange involved. That's simply how it works for big companies; even when the creatives on both sides just want to do it, like it has been the case for this and all other Collabs, there are a lot of hoops to go through because IP is serious business and a lot of different departments have to get involved when talking about money.
So we just did it the easy way, and in a way everyone wins: I got to have fun with SaGa, SaGa gets some more visibility, you get free content :)

As much as I love a lot of other SQEX titles, it's not like some magic SQEX genie came to us with a menu of IPs to choose from (not that it would have been any different, my first pick would still have been SaGa, sorry 😂 ).
We simply spoke directly with the SaGa team and everything clicked from there!
If the magic genie is reading this though, please know I'll gladly have one of each from the menu, thanks!

Every entry in the series is either different than the others, or wildly different that the others :)
The best way to pick one is probably to just go with your gut and, more importantly, have absolutely no expectations about how the game is going to play, because they'll be wrong: these are games that ditch a lot of the common tropes seen in other RPGs and invite you to discover and learn game mechanics on your own.
While I won't favor any entry over another, I just want any other fan out there to know that I also absolutely love Unlimited SaGa

I hope everyone will find something they like in this update, see you again not-so-soon with a Content and QOL patch (mostly to better organise all the content) later in the year!
- Luca

Other than our 2024 end of year wrap up that we ended up posting in mid January, poncle’s been pretty quiet so far in 2025. But that doesn’t mean we’ve not been busy! There’s lots of Vampire Survivors content on the way, including a free chunky update next month!

Here’s a little update on what we have planned over the next few weeks:

—


Vampire Survivors now has its own official Wiki!

Completely free of advertisement, banners, and all that sort of crap that gets in the way; just information, a user friendly website, and it's also fully functional on mobile.

You can expect info on every new VS update to appear here first before anywhere else, thanks to our Wiki helpers. The wiki is open to contributions and we will help confirming and providing technical information, but won't interfere with things like trivia and speculations because that's something for the community to have fun with!

A huge thank you to all of our Wiki helpers on Discord our partners Weird Gloop for putting this together, for their support, and for their guidance!

Our last content update was way back in October last year with Ode to Castlevania. We always knew this would be our biggest expansion ever, but we didn’t predict how obsessed we’d get with adding as many characters, weapons, and references as possible (in hindsight... we totally could have predicted we'd go nuts for Castlevania). This has delayed some of our plans for content this year, but we also want to make sure our next update is worth the extended wait.

The update will be free and available on all platforms next month. It's probably the biggest free update we've ever done, so please stay tuned for more info very soon!


Cross save will be available on PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Android, and iOS at the same time as update 1.13 next month.

Cross-save is a complex feature for several reasons. We had the technical bits sorted for some time, but, even with a lot of help from the various platforms, things like security, traffic, privacy, and platform policies have taken us a while to get right. The steps for submission are very different on each platform and, as this is the first time we’ve tried something like this, we took our sweet time to get it done properly.

All these very reasonable, preventive excuses are to actually say:

• We're sorry to say that cross-save for Nintendo Switch won't be available at the same time as other platforms. We didn't manage to successfully complete the submission on time for patch 1.13, so in order to avoid further delays we have decided to release the new content anyway, and then make a hotfix as soon as possible to add cross-save.
  
  On the bright side, once this submission is done successfully, it should also help speeding-up the future submission for Online mode, that should arrive later this year.
  
  
• Our investigation into Apple Arcade is ongoing as well. We're working closely with Apple to see if we're able to bring cross save to this platform one day in future without breaching any privacy commitments.

Thank you so much for all your patience while we figure things out. We'll share an update on the missing platforms as soon as we can 🙏


Back in November last year, 1minus1 arranged a live charity performance of songs from iconic game soundtracks. Vampire Survivors composers Daniele Zandara and Filippo Vicarelli performed some classic VS tracks alongside the Bonus Stage orchestra in aid of games charity, SpecialEffect[www.specialeffect.org.uk].

Through the use of the latest technology, SpecialEffect help to bring fun and inclusion back into the lives of physically disabled people by helping them to play video games.

You can now buy the seven track album (including 2 Vampire Survivors tracks) for £10 GBP - and all proceeds will go to SpecialEffect.


—

That's all for now, the cutscene is finally over and can go back working on my Hunter Rank time to finish everything above! See you soon!

Yes, hello, welcome to yet another yearly and vaguely formulaic recap of all the wonderful things that have happened around Vampire Survivors in the past year!
Plus, of course, information and teases for what we have planned for 2025.

Sorry we didn't share this earlier, Nintendo added a 2 onto something and we were busy watching the video on loop.
As usual we have to start with a thank you. This single player game (yeah yeah there's local co-op, alright) has been around for more than 2 years now, and thanks to your support is still going strong and its reception keeps being absolutely mindblowing.
Poncle has grown to 35 people now, so we are finally able to keep taking care of VS, while also working on new projects!

We have a lot going on behind the scenes, but this update will still be focused on Vampire Survivors.

Here's a quick recap of the past year:

• Space 54
  
• The incredibly stupid 1997 Vampire Survivors parody trailer always deserves a mention
  
• Laborratory
  
• It's Vampire Survivors x Contra, but we called it OPERATION GUNS
  
• Vampire Survivors+ on Apple Arcade
  
• Bug Fixes And Improvements (real patch notes here)
  
• Balatro: Friends of Jimbo
  
• Vampire Survivors on PlayStation 4 & 5 (can someone please put a TM after PlayStation, they care for that stuff a lot)
  
• Bonus Stage live concert[ukie.org.uk]
  
• Halloween party with Ode to Castlevania hands-on
  
• v1.12 QOL improvements and the tiniest collab in history ever, Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania
  
• Vampire Survivors on EGS
  
• ™

I'm not sure how much stuff we forgot to put on the list, probably a bit. Like the stunning, and free standing, Mask of the Red Death plush[youtooz.com] (sold out)

We're finally ready to roll out the feature to everyone, on all platforms. We're aiming for Cross-save to arrive with the next content patch, 1.13

We're sorting out the last few problems and scratching our heads a lot about user interface. We've been working closely with multiplayer experts coherence[coherence.io] to get things right and there's hope we'll be able to launch it this year.

We're still working with Story Kitchen on a live-action film, respecting all the strikes and taking our time to get things right.

As mentioned last year, rather than jumping the gun and make stuff for the sake of making it, we have preferred to wait to find partners that felt right, especially because to make anything that isn't a videogame out of VS requires good ideas, creativity, and that quirky knowledge of the game, that is a very difficult triplet to get 100% right. Please remember the game has no plot (it doesn't? :eyes:), so nobody can really anticipate how a film about it is going to be, that is part of what makes it exciting.

This year we should also be able to reveal a few other "cross-media" things we've been working on. I'm just going to leave this sentence here.

If the Chaos Roadmap™ is giving you a headache, don't worry, you're not the only one, it's just doing its job! In 2025 we're focusing on free standard updates, that will be a bit chunkier than usual. A lot of time is needed to QA and release patches now, since we're on so many different platforms, so the best way to optimise time is to reduce the amount of patches, but increase the amount of content in them.

If anyone's worried about for how long we're going to make patches, please know that we have accidentally started 3 different update cycles that we have to complete.
- The first cycle, started in 2022 with Tiny Bridge, was the "Stage Recycling™" one. The idea was to see if I could make new content quickly by recycling the graphics of existing stages. It worked, but guess what? Just as usual, "quickly" started to feel "cheaply", and it didn't feel right to just re-use the exact same graphics again and again. So now "Recycling" a stage just means "making a stage that has a vague reference to one of the original 5 stages and that is unlocked by playing the Inverse version of that stage" 🤷‍♂️
- The second cycle is about "Pickups™". It involves making a special stage for each of the pickups available in VS. These will include the most stupid stages ever, and I believe some of the future ones will easily top Space 54 or Bat Country. For example, patch 1.13 will be an accurate representation of how the average Tuesday feels at poncle. Don't worry, there's some serious stuff too.
- The third cycle is of course about the Darkanas™. There's 17 more to make, which means at least 17 more ways to break the game.

More Adventures are on the way too, including one for Tides of the Foscari. We are also considering an Adventure for Ode to Castlevania since we got some ideas to make it feel different than the standard expansion.

In terms of paid DLC or expansions, we're very well aware that there's high demand, but there's the problem that anything new will have to be able to somewhat be comparable to the latest expansion: Ode to Castlevania. If you have played it enough, then you probably know is a tiny bit bigger than all other ones, and that is a tiny bit difficult to produce that much content again, for the same or lower price, and in a reasonable amount of time.
That doesn't mean it's the end for large paid DLC packs; there's still a few shenanigans we can pull to provide good value for money, but we're surely going to slow down on that front.
Collabs in particular are especially tricky to make due to admin times and licensing costs. Anyway, I'd love to make at the very least one more original expansion for Vampire Survivors.

We know there's high demand for the collab soundtracks, especially Ode to Castlevania, to be available on more platforms and in more ways, but music licensing is very complex to navigate and so we're currently not able to provide anything outside of the playlists on our Youtube channel.
We're working with the various departments of KONAMI to see what we can do to better distribute the tracks online, including streaming services etc. but it's definitely going to take a long time; there's a lot of parties to talk to and a probably a long trail of paperwork to sort out. Rest assured we're working on it, and we'll provide updates when we start getting close to some results.

In the meantime I'll take the opportunity to thank again Daniele Zandara, Filippo Vicarelly, Evelyn Lark, and KEYGEN CHURCH to put together that incredible soundtrack that's inevitably forever stuck in my head!

It's time. This year we'll finally be able to show some results!
These experiments are a team-up between poncle and other indie devs to work on some VS-adjacent things. Of the 6 original experiments, 2 have been greenlit, 2 have been replaced, and 2 are still ongoing. Take a look at banner!
We have a few not-Vampire-Survivors-but-totally-poncle things to talk about this year, but all I can say now is: please stay tuned. We're still cooking, but 2025 is shaping up to be our biggest, chaotic-est, surprising-est, and other made up word-est year yet!


---

That's all for now, going back to work, bye!
Thank you all once again and see you in the next run!

- Luca & poncle (including the marketing team)

Our dreams have come true and Castlevania is now officially part of Vampire Survivors. Thank you so much to KONAMI, the team at poncle, our partners, and all the fans for making this a reality at last!

And remember: it's big. IT'S BIG.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3210350/Vampire_Survivors_Ode_to_Castlevania/

• 20+ new characters
  
• 40+ new weapons and evolutions
  
• 30+ new music tracks
  
• 1 HUGE CASTLE
  
• More info on the store page above and on the old post:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1794680/view/4511009460906765211?l=english

1. Reach Level 20 in the first stage to unlock Inlaid Library and therefore Stage Selection.
   
2. At the bottom of Stage Selection, choose "Ode to Castlevania".

1. Right Click the Steam icon -> Exit Steam
   
2. Wait a few seconds.
   
3. Restart Steam.
   
4. Go to Downloads, see that VS is getting updated to the latest version (1.12)

• All characters from Ode to Castlevania have the ability to find special pick-ups, in any stage. Initially this is limited to Wall Chicken (that is the big brother of Floor chicken of course) but 3 more types of pickups will be unlocked while progressing through the Ode to Castlevania stage.
  
• All characters have at least 1 unlockable Weapon Selector, that can be chosen from Character Selection by clicking/pressing a button on the character's icon at the bottom of the screen. All Weapon Selectors have to be unlocked; to do that, every weapon in a specific Weapon Selector has to be unlocked first 🙃
  
• There are a lot of bosses in the Ode to Castlevania stage, but you'll have to actively seek most of them instead of waiting for the right minute for them to appear. You'll find new icons on the map to help you navigate the stage.
  
• Evolutions are straightforward and work just like in the base game: find the right passive to pair with an active weapon (some might require the passive to be at Max Level).

There are 36 new covers and a more than 50 original Castlevania music tracks to choose from.
The covers are all available on the VS playlist on YouTube (minus 2 tracks that will be released on Nov 07 due to... reasons...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDuzoJqQflA

As fans of Castlevania and its music ourselves, we were expecting people to be excited for the covers, but we actually couldn't anticipate all that hype!
We had originally planned for 24 covers, but then asked all musicians to do more if they had spare time. That's how we ended up with a total of 36 music covers!
Just as for the rest of the contents of the DLC pack, we tried to balance the covers between homages, reinterpretations, experimentations, and plain remixes.
The only real rule I've put in place to choose tracks was "tracks that already have an official version that would fit with VS, we can also include that version" (which is purely arbitrary, stylistic choice by me, Luca, sorry!) and so I know we ended up leaving out several tracks that would have been amazing remixed in one the new styles.
In hindsight what we could have done is... start earlier to have the time to do even more! I really couldn't trade any of the current tracks for a different selection.
We can't make any promises now, but we'd love to cover and add more tracks in the future if we'll get the chance. In the meantime I hope everyone will be able to find a new favourite, maybe among the more niche tracks that got picked for this collab!
Thanks so much to Daniele Zandara, Filippo Vicarelly, Evelyn Lark, and KEYGEN CHURCH for this incredible soundtrack!


While most of the contents of the DLCs are straightforward, being a collab there are some differences. For example, there are no Steam achievements and the music covers won't be available in the paid Soundtrack on Steam (but we will publish them on YT as usual), so please read the FAQs here for more info: https://poncle.games/ode-to-castlevania-faq

1. Advanced Music Selection
   There are so many tracks in the game, especially if you have some DLC packs, that the little menu was really struggling to be functional anymore. And it comes from someone who knows the order of the music tracks by memory... so we have added an advanced menu to easily navigate through different albums and music tracks to chose from
   
   
2. MEGA SEAL
   After buying any of the Seal Power-ups, you'll also unlock the Mega Seal panel in the Collection menu. This panel lets you easily seal the content of a whole DLC, or even of the whole base game. Who needs weapons anyway?
   
   
3. Pause Menu Map ZOOM
   You can now zoom in and out on the pause-menu map. 2024 ho!
   
   
4. Pause Menu Arcana Info
   You can now get a reminder of what your chosen arcana do. Affected weapons are also highlighted. Another big step for humanity.
   
   
5. New Passives in Preview mode
   In order to complete the evos for Ode to Castlevania, we needed 2 passive weapons from the future to be available today! So, while the patch to properly unlock them will arrive sometime next year, for now it will be possible to access these 2 new passives, Parm Aegis and Karoma's Mana, through the Arma Dio's selection menu.
   
   
6. Memory usage improvements
   Several optimisations have been made to reduce memory usage, that should help the late-game running better on console and mobile.

In order to launch simultaneously on all platforms, we had to compromise a little on patch versions. This simply means that the game version will be slightly different across different platforms, but we're working to get parity across versions as soon as possible.
A special note for the Nintendo Switch version: it is already scheduled to receive a patch in about 2 weeks to address some very late-game issues.
The file size of the expansion is around 260MB, which is a lot bigger than our average (all those music tracks add up quickly), so if you're on mobile you might want to download through wifi.


Due to the massive size of this update, our next patch will take a bit longer than usual to be released, but it will come with free content as always. We'll try to make less updates, but bigger, so that there's less achievements-related stress and a bit more stuff to experiment with. Which content update is next exactly? Just take a peek at the updated Chaos Roadmap to find the answer:
Hope to see you all on our yearly recap post later in the year, where we'll also cover the usual suspects: cross-save, online, and experiments (everything is proceeding but still not ready for full launch atm).
(who am I kidding, the next Steam news post will be about hotfixes for this monstrously large expansion)

Thanks everyone for your support and hope you have fun with the absolutely surreal Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania 🙏

Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania is our third collab DLC, and our second made in collaboration with with the KONAMI team!

Vampire Survivors would have been a very different game hadn't it been influenced by Castlevania in the first place, so this is straight up the definition of a dream coming true.
This is not a standard DLC pack. This is a celebration of this historical game series, an incredible, full-circle moment in which we have invested all the energy we could muster, and then some!

As usual a huge thanks to all the fans for making this possible, and please try not to binge it when it releases: it's big. IT'S BIG.

What heroes from Castlevania will be able to resist the urge to join the Vampire Survivors in their hopeless search for a vampire? None.

------

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3210350/Vampire_Survivors_Ode_to_Castlevania

As the trailer suggests, we went by a simple rule when picking content this time: everything and everyone.

• 20+ characters
  
• 40+ new weapons between base versions and evolutions.
  
• 1 huge stage
  
• 30+ music covers
  
• We could tell you the exact numbers, but we don't want to scare you.

The DLC will add a new stage in Stage Selection as usual, from where you'll be able to start the chain of unlocks to get the new characters and weapons. Given the amount of content, it's very easy to start this chain of unlocks.

The new stage is our biggest one yet and features a lot of different biomes. You'll notice new special icons on the map that will help you in navigating the stage.

When it comes to the weapons, we have tried to reach a balance between referencing, reinterpreting, remixing, and straight up converting weapons of the Castlevania series. We have also added themed Weapon Selectors that will make all characters very flexible, so that they won't get stuck using their default weapon if you prefer to use something different.

There isn't an Adventure this time because the amount of content is probably already overwhelming (but we might add one in the future if we get the chance).

This patch will bring a bunch of QOL improvements to everyone. We'll see the details on release day, but in the meantime here's a summary:

1. Advanced Music Selection: when even that one weirdo that knows by memory the order of the music tracks in the game (me) has trouble choosing the right one, you know it's time to revamp the UI!
   
2. Mega Seal: you are now able to seal a whole "content pack", (including "Base Game", or "Extra".. who needs weapons anyway?) from the Collection menu
   
3. ZOOM: you can now zoom in and out on the pause-menu map. 2024 ho!
   
4. Arcana effect reminder in pause menu: just when you thought this list had peaked at ZOOM.
   
5. New Passives in Preview mode: we needed 2 passives to make the list of new evos feel complete, so we're adding them to the game ahead of time through special means
   
6. Memory usage improvements: probably invisible on PC, but on other platforms this should help better sustain some insane end-game runs

Will the main game still receive free updates?
As usual, yes, we're doing free content updates. There's a lot left on the Chaos Roadmap, especially after adding the Darkanas in the last patch! Going forward we are planning for bigger updates, but at a slower pace.

Why so expensive?
This DLC is absolutely massive; I know this might sound as an hyperbole, but I'm sure at some point you'll see why it's not. The idea was that for the amount of content and production costs, it feels fair to price it about 1 less money than VS.

Why so cheap?
Despite being so big and definitely being a big step up in production, we still have to price this fairly in the context of the other DLCs and of the base game. Normally something like this would not be sustainable; we could do this only thanks to the massive support we have received and keep receiving from the players, so we also want this to be accessible to as many fans as possible.

Are you lying again about the amount of content in the DLC?
What a preposterous question!

More DLC FAQS
While most of the contents of the DLCs are straightforward, being a collab there are some differences. For example, there are no Steam achievements and the music covers won't be available in the paid Soundtrack on Steam (but we will publish them on YT as usual), so please read the FAQs here for more info: https://poncle.games/ode-to-castlevania-faq

After the cryptic nonsense from yesterday, it's time for some proper patch notes!
It's been a while since we added a new major feature, so we tried not to spoil the contents of this patch immediately. Hope it worked to keep the contents a bit of a surprise ːdireyesː

- 9 new EXTRA achievements
- 1 new challenge stage
- 1 new relic
- 2 new special character skins
- 5 new Arcanas
- 🦇🦇🦇

Just like the original 22 Arcanas, the new ones introduced in this patch are to be considered experimental and subject to change. Please post your feedback and comments on the effects of the new 5 cards so that we can keep improving them over time and also influence the design of the future ones.


- Go to the "Secrets" menu and type "forbiddenbox" in the text field to unlock the new stage.
- Reach the bottom of the new stage to unlock the new relic.
- Go to the "Unlocks" menu to see unlock instructions for the new arcanas.
- Complete the available base game Adventures to unlock character skins.


New Arcana cards
There are currently 5 unlockable Darkanas in the game.
You can access Darkanas by pressing the new button on the usual Randomazzo screen. The only difference between Arcanas and Darkanas is their theme, functionally they are exactly the same.
Due to the increased amount of arcana cards, once you have 23 or more cards, every draft will come with a free Reroll and will allow you to pick between 6 cards instead of 4.

New special skins
This is a new game mechanic that allow characters to have special skins that alter them not only visually, but also in terms of stats and weapons. There are currently 2 special skins and they are both rewards for completing the current 2 base game Adventures once.
If you have already completed the 2 base game Adventures, just open the Adventure menu to receive the unlocks.
These two unlocks requries quite a bit of effort, so if that's not your thing please remember that the Secrets-Cast Spell menu (and some googling) are there to help you ;)

New special skin for Imelda Belpaese: Unblinded Imelda
She starts with a level 5 Empty Tome and gets the following bonuses: +40% projectile Speed, +40% MoveSpeed, -10% Cooldown. Complete "World of Light and Dark" Adventure once to unlock.

New special skin for Poe Ratcho: Retired Poe Ratcho
He starts with a level 5 Pummarola and gets the following bonuses: +30 MaxHealth, 5hp/s Recovery. Complete "A Garlic Paradise" Adventure once to unlock.

New stage: Room 1665
Unlocked by casting the spells "forbiddenbox" in the Secrets menu.
A serious challenge stage that strips you of the power of most relics. Enemies grow stronger as you do. You need to defeat around 100 enemies to clear a room and proceed to the next one. Standard light sources are rare, but they are also rewarded after clearing every room.

Relic: Darkasso
Allows to activate Darkanas. It comes with Darkana VI - Moonlight Bolero.
Unlocked by reaching the bottom of Room 1665.

Darkana: VI - Moonlight Bolero
Unlocked by default when obtaining the Darkasso.
It spawns an additional stage boss every minute. These bosses might carry special treasure chests, including Arcana Treasure chests that will let you get extra arcanas even if you have reached the standard limit. There are also Black Treasure chests, that have a chance to hold a new passive weapon that you aren't already carrying.

Darkana: I - Sapphire Mist
Unlocked by finishing a run when Space Dude has a cooldown bonus of -85%.
Every time any equipped weapon fires, it has a Luck-based chance to activate again. This affects is augmented on certain weapons, that will activate 2-3 times instead of just once.

Darkana: X - Hail From The Future
Unlocked by triggering a Weird Souls Purifier with Santa Ladonna.
Every time you level up, a Luck-and-Level-based amount of pickups appears on the stage. The possible pickups include Gold Fingers, Gilded Clovers, Candyboxes, and Arma Dios among others.

Darkana: XII - Crystal Cries
Unlocked by triggering a Starry Heavens with She-Moon Eeta.
When the character's health drops below 20%, an Orologion is triggered. This ability recharges when reaching full Health.
Defeating frozen enemies generates Crystallized Souls, that when picked up restore a bit of Health and provide little bonuses to Growth, MaxHealth, and Recovery.

Darkana: XXI - Wandering the Jet Black
Unlocked by reaching 665 MaxHealth with Bat Robbert.
Losing Health generates exploding projectiles. The amount of Health recovered during the run contributes to the damage inflicted by the explosions. Magnet affects the area and damage of the explosions too.



►When is the game relasing on PlayStation?
- August 29. We finally made it ☠️
►Does the PlayStation version include the Darkasso patch?
- Yes, it will launch at version 1.11

►Does the PlayStation version have a Platinum Trophy?
- Yes. There are in fact 2 PlayStation versions, one for PS4 and one for PS5, and they have separate trophy lists, with a Platinum Trophy each (you receive both the PS4 and PS5 versions, regardless of which one you buy).
All of the achievements available on other platforms will have their trophy counterpart, but due to technical limitations you'll need less trophies than you'd expect to obtain the Platinum.
Every new content update patch will come with a new Trophy Group, just like other platform achievements.
Collab DLCs will not have Trophies for the usual reasons[poncle.games].

►Cross-save beta
- Cross save is available on the beta branches on Steam, Android, and iOS too. We have tested cross-save on all other platforms and it's working fine, but we still have to submit the feature for approval to all of those platforms to be able to fully release it.
- FAQ here: https://poncle.games/account-help


►Other projects
- Online co-op for Vampire Survivors: the technical work is going well, still too early for more details!
- VS-EXPERIMENTS: we have put one on hold, subtituted another one, two are still ongoing, and finally we have greenlit 2 of them! We'll probably have to wait 2025 to reveal more info.

►Where are we on the Extra-content roadmap?
Right here:
If this makes you think we pick future updates by throwing a dart at the roadmap, you're.. ehm... partially correct 🤡
Other than new content, we are also working on some QOL improvements for the next patch, namely seeing Arcana effects on the pause menu, a new music selection menu, and a MEGA SEAL.
1.11.0 Bugfixes and improvements
- Obtaining the Yellow Sign also allows to see if a treasure chest has the potential to contain an evolution (Silver Chests)
- Carréllo projectiles won't be destroyed anymore when they hit the top or bottom edge of the screen
- GoldFingers are now pulled into Mad Groove, unless spawned directly on the map (e.g. Astral Stair ones are ignored)
- Fix for negative coin values (added correction on save data load)
- Fixed dodgy price formatting on powerups
- Fix for controller navigation on long lists on the recap page
- Fix for displaying over 5 arcanas in pause page
- Fix inversion of trigger zones in stages with visual inversion not allowed
- Fixed bestiary text overflow
- Fix for Pentagram scaring the rising water but not the Drowner
- Various fixes to Arcana selection and draft screens
- Various fixes to cursor navigation when playing co-op
- Stacking multiples of the same added weapons in recap screen (eg candy box)
- [Moonspell] Nightsword and Muramasa deal bonus damage depending on Greed
- [Foscari] Fixed collision shape and stats scaling of SpellStream
- [Foscari] Fixed Insatiable by making magnet values match original intended JS version
- [Emergency Meeting] Fixed mini-crewmates not being available in Adventures
- [Operation Guns] Fixed Inverse stage modifiers being non-standard
- [Operation Guns] Fixed issue with infinite Weapon Power-Up on level up in rare cases

- Bug fixes and improvements.

Bug fixes and improvements.


- Bug fixes and improvements.
- Bug fixes and improvements.
- Bug fixes and improvements.
- Bug fixes and improvements.
- Bug fixes and improvements.


Bug fixes and improvements.

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Operation Guns

• Increased frequency of Weapon Power-Up appearing as a level up option
  
• Improvement for Hectic Highway pickups not always looping
  
• Fixed Carlo Cart and Hectic Highway moving too quickly on high-refresh-rate monitors
  
• Fixed a bug with the Firearm weapon not firing for long periods of time
  
• Fix to Proton Beams infinite split causing screen flashes and crashes

[/b]

Diver Mines fly in the direction faced by the player before falling down (really noticeable only with the weapon from level 3 onwards)

Atmo-Torpedoe and Prism Lass can be spammed a lot more than before with low cooldown

Increased damage of Wave Cannon's charged projectiles

"Zephyr" track fixed with the proper music

Tweaked treasure chests in Neo Galuga

Fixed Lance's bonuses glitchy display

Fix for Ariana's hidden Cooldown bonus not working properly

Fix to hide floating Morphed Mortaccio head when entering a boss battle

[/list]

Main Game

• Fixed shared evolutions when using "Shared Passives" option in co-op

[/b]

Fix for arcana re-roll button displaying even if there were not enough arcanas left

Fixed Laborratory doors being incorrectly ventable

Fixed stage completion scroll bar navigation bug

Fixed word wrapping in stage selection

Fix for level up being empty/going straight to limit break in cases where everything else that would be available is sealed

Fix for missing translations showing in some treasure chests

[/list]

Vampire Survivors: Operation Guns is our second collab DLC, made in collaboration with the KONAMI's Contra team, and is now available on all platforms!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2887680

Content:
- 1 large stage and 1 bonus stage
- 11 new characters
- 22 new weapons between base versions and evolutions
- 6 new music tracks
- 13 music tracks directly from the Contra series and 6 brand new covers
- A new 6-chapters Adventure

How to start the DLC
After installing the DLC, the new stage "Neo Galuga" will appear at the bottom of the Stage Selection screen. Play the stage to start the new chain of unlocks.
Alternatively, go to Adventures and play the chapters of Operation Guns to have a strongly guns-themed experience using almost exclusively the new characters and weapons from the Contra series!

There is no DLC when I start the game
Please make sure you're on game version 1.10, as older versions won't detect the content pack. Fully closing and reopening Steam to trigger an update should do the trick!

Patch 1.10
We had a free content update last week that, among other things, also adds the Seal III power-up! You can read all about it, and about other VS news in general, here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1794680/view/4104540932629694732

Will the main game still receive free updates?
Yep, just like 1.10 mentioned above.

22 new weapons and evolutions?! My level-up pool!
We have added one more Seal power-up in the latest content patch, so don't worry, you'll still be able to easily manipulate the level-up pool.

Why only $2.49?
As usual we've been receiving kind comments about pricing and giving us more money, some intended just as a compliment, some actually serious. Collab DLCs have a much higher production cost for us, but that doesn't mean their price should skyrocket.
You've already given us the luxury to keep working on Vampire Survivors even just for fun (hence the constant free updates), it just seems fair to try keep the cost of major expansions as contained as possible and border-line risky. We'd need something very big to justify a higher price point.
And then if we accidentally inflate our own production costs because we decide to add 12 characters for fun instead of the usual 8... well that's our problem innit

More DLC FAQS
While most of the contents of the DLCs are straightforward, being a collab there are some differences. For example, there are no Steam achievements and the 6 music covers won't be available in the Soundtrack on Steam, so please read the FAQs here for more info: https://poncle.games/operation-guns

_
Thank you all once again for your continued support and I hope you'll have fun with the hyper-realistic gun fights of Operation Guns!

- 7 new EXTRA achievements
- 1 new challenge stage
- 1 new bonus stage
- 1 new character
- 1 new weapon with its evolution
- 1 new passive weapon
- 1 new power-up, Seal III

Since the early days of VS, people have been asking important questions like "Why is it called Santa Water?" and this patch is finally here to answer that; but what other dark mysteries will surface while looking for answers in the Laborratory?

- Pick up a total of 33 Rosaries to unlock the Laborratory stage. If you've been playing for long you'll most likely already have enough; if so, enter and exit a run to get the unlock.
- Use the levers in the larger rooms of the stage until you get the Santa Javelin and Arma Dio.
- Evolve the Santa Javelin with a maxed out Clover
- Use the levers at the bottom of the new stage to defeat a lot of enemies and unlock a bonus stage
- Survive 20 minutes to unlock Santa Ladonna.
- Seal/Banish 40 items in a run to unlock the Seal III power-up.


New stage: Laborratory
A challenge stage where everything is trying to kill you, including the narrow corridors. There are special levers you can pull to trigger mostly positive effects (depending on Luck) that could also spawn weapons and passives, depending on which room they're from.

New weapon: Santa Javelin & Seraphic Cry
Though starting weapon as it aims for random enemies, can critically hit and it turns the Duration stat into additional Amount for itself. Compatible with special arcanas (Gemini, Twilight Requiem, Tragic Princess). Requires a maxed out Clover to be evolved.
The evolution uses Luck to deal additional damage. Picking up Rosaries while it is equipped turns them into a quadruple screen clearing explosion that turns enemies into XP gems.

New passive: Arma Dio
Allows you to choose any base-game passive.
It actually counts as a weapon, so can also be chosen from a Candybox.

New character: Santa Ladonna
Starts with a temporary cooldown bonus and automatically triggers a Rosary when reaching critically low HP (recover hp to full to recharge the ability). Absolutely nothing else 👀

New stage: Carlo Cart
A silly little bonus stage where you cannot fully stop moving. It plays very differently compared to the average stage, so there are no extra unlocks tied to playing it, it's just for fun.

New power-up: Seal III
As the name suggests, it's a more convenient Seal power-up that allows you to seal 3 items per rank. This brings the total number of sealable items to 60!



►Cross-save beta
- Cross save is now available on the beta branches on Steam, Android, and iOS too.
- FAQ here: https://poncle.games/account-help


►Other projects
- Online co-op for Vampire Survivors: the technical work is going well, still too early for more details!
- EXPERIMENTS: going well, a lot of fun, I'm putting this here and planning to copy-paste this line for many future updates though, this stuff takes time!
[this was copy pasted from previous news as expected :p]

►Will you make more Adventures?
Yes! We had planned to make new Adventures more often, but then realised that while they work very well to isolate new DLC content, the base-game ones are missing something.
So we've been working on adding a new feature to the game (that will remain a little secret for now) after which we'll be back releasing new adventures.

The Tides of the Foscari one is an exception. Instead of just retelling the story of the DLC, we decided to do something different with it, but that requires yet another feature that still isn't in the base game. Hopefully we'll see it happen sometime during the summer!

It's worth noting that in the meantime nothing has stopped us from writing the deepest lore to accompany new future adventures, that, as we all know, together with environmental storytelling, is at the core of the VS experience /s

►Where are we on the Extra-content roadmap?
Right here obviously:
Our next Collab DLC releases in a few days, on May 9th, for $2.49 / €2.49 / £1.99 !
Read everything about it on the store page and here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1794680/announcements/detail/4104540932629701544

1.10.0 tweaks and fixes
- You can now PET the dog by pressing both triggers on a controller.
- When playing co-op, added the option to Share Passive among players for evolution purposes.
- Stage Selection is now split into two steps for ease of navigation if you're playing with a controller
- Updated pre-spawned arcana treasures so they get pulled in by VIII - Mad Groove.
- Improved loader to provide more information about the current DLC loading progress.
- Added missing retaliation damage to Pako Battiliar and its evo.

- Fix for tips not showing in the Treasure Chest info panel of evolutions.
- Fix for Bestiary mobile portrait info masking issue.
- Pickups group in recap page now generates a new row when exceeding max width.
- Fix for the game over red background overlay to use correct sizing after White Hand.
- Fix for Sole Solution causing tile map issues during the fight with The Ender.
- Fixed audio playback error in fight with The Ender.
- Fix for "new content available in store" button showing up incorrectly.
- Fixed character reveal so the characters are the correct scale.
- Hyper mode toggle is now correctly shown.
- Fix for text overlap/sizing in treasure chest info panel.
- Updated pause menu map to match old-engine implementation.
- Fixes for various weapons to hide them correctly when dying in co-op.
- Fix for errors with random arcana selection being triggerable before the animation is complete.
- Fixes for various stage collisions when playing in inverse mode.
- Updated the player stats panel (pause menu) to handle displaying the Recovery value to 2 decimal places, so small increments are shown.
- Fix for DLC ordering so that DLCs will now be loaded in a consistent order.
- Fixed cosmic egg in bestiary.
- Updated the Item Found page to check whether the item you are picking up allows duplicates, and if so displays the base level data.
- Fixed an issue where if you manually changed the window size the current resolution would not display correctly inside the options page.
- Fix for camera zoom issues when playing on displays less than the target 16:10 aspect ratio (both portrait and landscape).
- Fixed selection arrows sometimes showing on mobile when they should not.
- Fix to make drop downs hide when clicking anywhere outside of them.
- Fixed an issue with allowing player 1 to reassign controllers when toggling in options.
- Fix for Gatti chicken eating power and chance upgrades being reset on level up.
- Fix for drowner's spawned via trisection events after 30 minutes being invulnerable.
- Fix for disable moving background not being applied on stage start (only when toggled).
- Fixed formatting / centering issues with secrets page on mobile.
- Added a loader between menu and gameplay to show that the game is loading a stage.
- Fix for Moongolow secret check in co-op.
- Added scrolling to character selection progress panel.
- Fix for hyper (and inverse) mode creeping to stages without hyper (or inverse) unlocked.
- Added in missing scene fade transition between Moongolow and Holy Forbidden.
- Fixed hellfire rotation on world bounce.
- Various portrait UI scaling fixes.
- Fix for error with coin spawn in Poe's Adventure Chapter 3.
- Improved back button navigation on bestiary to be more accurate to JS.
- Fix for cut off character found animation on mobile portrait.

[LEGACY OF THE MOONSPELL]
- Evolving Four Seasons now only requires a maxed out Candelabrador

[TIDES OF THE FOSCARI]
- Evolving the Flash Arrow now only requires a maxed out Bracer
- Fixed a sprite error in Foscari Abyss' background.
- Fixed animation timing of World Eater.
- Fix for World Eater offsets.

[EMERGENCY MEETING]
- Fix Impostongue firing assassination when disabled.
- Updated the body part pickups that Shapeshifter spawns to allow them to be attracted by the magnet.
- Updated the font used for the Vent2Weapon when enemies are ejected.
- Fix for reactor engine sprite not filling in the black bars in portrait leaving visible gaps for the flames.