The dev isn't abandoning the game. It went to 1.0 and they are moving on to other things. I don't know why people expect this game to always have new stuff in 1.0. It's dumb. The game is finished and there are plenty of reasons to play it and enjoy the hell out of it.

I've gone through a lot of the negative reviews, and as someone that has 100%ed the game and played a fair amount of Vampire Survivors, I feel like I need to address some of it.

Some people have complained about it being similar to Vampire Survivors...but that's part of it being the same genre. Of course that will happen. As far as saying it's just a worse version, I wouldn't completely agree. I enjoy both games, and I get a totally different feel from both games. Maybe it's just me, but I found the grind for Vampire Survivor to be even more repetitive. While I did do some repeat runs on Nomad Survival to get some character upgrades, once I went through the full game once, I mostly found myself just grinding out the achievements which require different setups and challenges with each run. If I ever hit a wall, then I could quickly (about 10-15minutes or so per run at max speed) power up a bit more. Which is another thing I enjoyed seeing: many many different ways of slowly improving your character.

I also saw some reviews complaining about the difficulty being too high, which I also found a bit confusing. I am very far from being maxed out, but was able to 100% the game. I actually greatly appreciate that there are no achievements for maxing out, forcing a pointless grind, if you simply play well enough. There are some RNG elements but there are several options in place to help bypass a large majority of that RNG. Almost every single run, with the right setups and just paying attention, I could end up with exactly what I wanted. I may not always get it right away, and would have to do a bit of footwork to get through some of the final stage's early game, but it was always doable. And, if you're not that good, you have the option to grind to get strong enough in order to reach your goals regardless. I love RPGs that do this. Reward you for skill, and if you don't have the skill, grind to get it. I think it opens it up for all levels of players to accomplish their goals.

I also want to quickly say: Thank goodness for item magnetism, which had more than one way of being acquired. So for those reviews complaining about item pickups being a pain, they just needed to read and pay attention ;)

As far as the actual gameplay, I found it pretty addictive and satisfying. Reaching those breakpoints and killing massive swarms of enemies, and just seeing the chaos on my screen being created from my character genuinely made me happy. With certain combinations you get so powerful that enemies can't even reach your screen before dying. If that sounds boring for you, then you can customize your own difficulties as well (increasing enemy stats/lowering your own, or even adding special scenarios to each map) and even getting rewarded for it.

I have never written a steam review before, but seeing as much negativity as I did around what I feel like is a great game confused me and I felt I needed to speak up. People are too quick to compare it to one of the best and say 'this is bad' because of that. It has a lot of good ideas, and for being a single dev team, I think they did a fantastic job. I look forward to seeing what they come out with next :)

These new auto-attacking roguelite games are becoming a favorite of mine. This one is solid and a ton of fun. Check it out if you like Vampire Survivors.

Alright. Nomad Survival is done and dusted. All dungeons beaten, and I've done several runs with most of the character classes and heritages. The final (fourth) dungeon has quite the ramp up in difficulty, which encourages you to knock out a lot of the class and heritage achievements in the other three dungeons while grinding away until you have finally powered up enough to hope to finish that last dungeon. The final final boss (the Elder Dragon) is a tough mf'er. My last run, it went down quick as I figured out a strategy of upgrades I thought would work, but it definitely kicked my backside many times prior to that lol. So anyway, let's dive in.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3263925542

Nomad Survival is one of the older VS-likes, and although I've had it in my library for a while, I never quite got around to playing it until now. Which is kind of a shame since this is also one of the better VS-likes I've played. It leans in the arcade-y side of the genre and is super fast paced and at times completely insane. Check this screenshot out if you have any doubts, lol:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3263855428

There are a lot of options for the game that allow you to craft your own experience. From speeding up the game to increasing experience gain (at the expense of not being able to earn cheevos) to increasing enemy stats and reducing your own, etc...I pretty much lived in 200% speed mode after I really figured out how I wanted to play, but definitely don't do that until you are very comfortable with things. It's pretty easy to become overwhelmed.

You'll then select a character class and heritage class which will become the basis for your run. Each class has strengths and weaknesses, and each heritage likewise features a benefit and a hindrance. My personal favorite heritage was 'Statue', which doesn't allow you to move at all but compensates you for this by giving you hefty bonuses to a few things. I also thought 'Voidwalker' was really cool. As far as character classes go, I enjoyed the 'Crusader' and 'The Divine' the best. Once you make your choices, it's time to enter the first dungeon and try to unlock the second dungeon by completing the first. And so on until you've unlocked each of the four.

As you play and earn coins, you can spend them in between games to buy permanent buffs for your runs. This is essential to hoping to complete the fourth dungeon. Additionally, you earn special gems by completing maps, which you can also spend on a different set of personal buffs, as well as different tiers of pet upgrades. The pets are basically helper animals that will grab chest and such, and occasionally help you fight. I rolled with the raccoon throughout, so I have no real thoughts on the efficacy or intricacies of any of the other options.

Within each dungeon/map, you will earn the less rare upgrade gems, coins, and xp. When your xp meter has filled, the game will pause and allow you to choose ability or ability upgrade from a selection of three choices. You can also purchase a reroll using reroll points earned by levelling up. Each ability has ten levels, so choosing an upgrade path that makes sense for your run is ideal despite the element of RNG involved in the selections. You'll learn to sort of hedge things to your benefit. The fifth and tenth upgrade levels for each ability generally either feature a special ability attached to the base ability or and extra boost in the ability's stats (or both).

It is worth noting that the screen can and will fill up with quite the mix of enemies and an array of visual effects from your abilities, as mentioned earlier, and this can look really cool at times. The soundtrack is cool but does sort of fade into the background after a while. The in game sounds are pretty much on point.

I do also want to mention that I found gamepad controls to have a weird delay from joystick to screen which basically made it unplayable. K/M is definitely the way to go here.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3262738003

And that is pretty much the game in a nutshell. There is a fairly wide variety of enemy types which help to balance the game against the same four dungeons, which you will become very very familiar with, lol. I had a great time with the game and it obviously easily earns the $4.99 base price. But as we all know, Steam sales are literally always around the corner, so you will almost certainly find it on sale fairly regularly and it has also been bundled a handful of times, so you could easily grab it when it's discounted. If you enjoy VS-likes, this is one you should definitely play.

Enjoying this survival craziness a lot! Similar to Vampire Survivors, it took a few games to get a feel for the weapons / spells and game play, but once that was done steady progress has been made clearing those achievements.

For only $3, another fun little game well worth the time it takes to complete it.

For how inexpensive this game is - it's an instant classic in my mind.

I had to go get and complete Vampire Survivors before reviewing this fully and I can say I personally find Vampire Survivors to be better but not by much. I did not immediately feel this way, but after many battles - it has better skill combos that are more satisfying to use even if not always more effective or "better". I also appreciated the options in the maps for events or special items. This went a long way in replaying and achievement hunting - which was also a lot of fun to go through. Nomad has this too, but not to the same extent and as such, it suffers as a result. This all said, I put more time into Nomad and I came out of all this feeling like it was worth buying and "beating" both of them. They each have their own feel and strategies to them and are both totally worth playing.

Nomad Survival rarely slows down the deluge of mobs it throws your way but not without providing you with ample opportunity to level and skill up. As the enemies work to constantly surround and swarm you, you must strategically pick and choose which skills to equip and upgrade while you progress. Pick the wrong combos and you won't last very long. Pick the right combos and you could probably stop moving and could come out alive.

Lastly, I'd like to shout out to the devs in that the game's controls are incredibly accessible and easy to use. You only need one hand and your character is always auto-attacking. It makes for a compelling way to go about a bullet-hell roguelike.

This game is super cheap and super awesome. You should super get it.

Fun, but how is this not Vampire Survivors again?

Nomad Survival is Vampire Survivors meeting RPG-Clichés with extremely addicting music. Read this :"Nomad Survival is an auto-attacking, wave clearing, time-based Roguelite, where you can expect to become stronger as you play through each run as you upgrade your stats. The gameplay involves waves of enemies from all angles coming to defeat you, with each minute changing what types of enemies may be coming and how they behave in a predictable fashion. You control the movement of your Character, automatically using abilities available to you to defeat your foes, acquiring new abilities (or leveling up old ones) whenever you acquire enough experience to level up."

Here, I simply took the description from the store page and put it into a review. Foul play you might say but there is not really more to add. The game gets regular updates and the dev involved is very active on discord, listening to complaints and trying to make good use of Early Access. Those of you putting this down due to similarities with Vampire Survivors should look at what makes Nomad Survival fresh and fun. Heritages change the way each character plays on the fly, like Pox doubling your damage but changing it into a damage over time-effect. You can adjust everything like enemy health, speed, damage etc. right from the get go. Also; Pets. Choose one of five current pets, each looking very cute and fulfilling a certain kind of role.

The game is far from perfect yet and the amount of characters compared to Vampire Survivors right now looks kinda small. Then again, it is still very much in the making by one person. Nomad Survival is very easy to get into and, in my point of view, easier to approach compared to VS. Both games are fun and cheap so if you liked one of them, you don't want to miss out on the other. It's 5 bucks for both of them combined so skip your Latte for one day and get hours of fun instead.

[TL;DR] THIS GAME ISN'T VAMPIRE SURVIVORS AND IS REALLY GOOD! It is still in Early Access, but don't let that deter you. There's a LOT to love here.


Lets get right to the point. This game is NOT a Vampire Survivors clone. They are the same genre of game, but the dev has gone far out of their way to make sure that they play vastly different. The foundation of this game is incredibly solid and leaves a tremendous amount of room for content to come in the near future. The gameplay is fun and fast paced, while still challenging and leaving a massive variety of choices for you to make. Heritage options change each run based on however you feel like playing the game. None of the weapon or even passive choices feel like a wasted point when you acquire them. It all just comes together very nicely and I'm looking forward to seeing what the dev has in mind soon.

To go over some pros:
- Weapon Skills are an awesome take on making characters unique. Each character starts with their own skill that does not take up any weapon slot or anything like that. It is an innate ability unique to them (THAT CAN BE UPGRADED!)

- Speaking of weapon slots, there is no limit to the amount of weapons or passives you can pick up in one run. You can focus on a few or expand into all of them.

- Heritages are an awesome concept that can take any of the characters and twist them into a whole new playstyle, or change how you'd view weapons you pick up as a whole.
- The soundtrack is absolutely bumpin.

- Each active skill gets upgrades at levels 5 and 10, and not just more damage, but functionality boosts. Having your skills change and evolve throughout a run is so much more satisfying than just seeing bigger number.

- The chests also do this, they will augment random abilities to have new effects, not just level them up!

- There are options to change game speed to +50% and +100%

- The bosses that spawn are actually challenges with their own small mechanics! They're not advanced, but having something in the game that you actually need to think about at all when you fight it is such a change of pace compared to other attempts at this genre.

Overall, this game feels like it went around, took notes on what people loved and what they didn't, and combined them into a new experience for us to enjoy. For a first iteration, this game is phenomenal.

The only true criticisms I personally have had were that (I'll mark this as a spoiler in case people want to find out all heritage effects on their own) The Voidwalker heritage feels like it has no up side. The slip n' slide feel just makes you feel like you're in a perpetual state of less control for no real gain. The other heritages all have VERY clear strengths, where this one does not to me. Other than that, there are some minor bugs with achievements, some tooltip/information clarity that could be fixed, and maybe make Spectral Sword not just a one point wonder on almost all classes, and I'd be happy.

So if you enjoyed Vampire Survivors and are thirsting for a fresh experience with a lot of unique takes on this genre, you've found a hidden gem right here.

(Plus it's only 3 dollars??)