Vampire Crawlers is an interesting creature of a game. Poncle already knocked it out of the park with Vampire Survivors, creating an entirely new genre the MOMENT the game dropped on steam, leading to hundreds if not thousands of well meaning also-rans, cheap soulless moneygrabbing imitators, and genuinely interesting twists on the formula alike, across all sorts of platforms, including mobile.

VS as you may well know is the most high-impact perpetual dopamine generator that has ever existed. I have lost SO MANY WEEKS to this game, purchased every bit of dlc available, and adored every minute of it, but even I know that VS has its flaws. At a certain point you reach critical mass where you cannot see what in the hell is going on. It's pretty, it feels great, it's fun, but you're no longer playing the game. It's become an idle game instead. Sure, some folks think that's great fun but it can be a touch boring when all that's left to do is either wait the timer out, end the run manually, see how much longer you can survive before you get inevitably eaten by the crush of monsters, or just see how much sillier it can get before either the game or your platform you're playing it on explode from the stress.

With Vampire Crawlers, it appears poncle games recognised these flaws too. Whilst they probably aren't going to create a new genre with this, given it's a combination of VS, deckbuilder and dungeoncrawler formats, I feel like they've not only managed to blend them together in a really creative and clever way, but also managed to make even lategame play engaging, strategic, and engaging.

The combo mechanic alone is a work of genius, but the additional depth given to the game by the gem socketing, Crawler cards, evolution and sacrifice mechanics, and various other things mean that whilst you might not have as much opportunity to trim your decksize down like you would want to do it most other deck builders, having a huge deck isn't actually a problem, and can be very helpful!

Plus these all work together well in that wonderful way poncle has of approaching the problem of "game balance" as something of a cheeky, fun suggestion rather than something to be adhered to. Sure! Make that mana generation cost a negative number! Turn that single use card that is destroyed upon use into a card that can be reused multiple times and doesn't leave your deck ever. Make half your deck into wildcards and make absolutely bonkers combos to see how big damage can get.

What's that? Your Crawler cards run out too fast? Stack up a bunch of duration cards and make them wild, using them to extend combos and give ever bigger duration bonuses for your active Crawlers! Need to reuse a card several times in the same turn and don't want it to break and be destroyed? Slap an unbreakable gem on it and get an extra couple uses before you gotta end the turn! Want to do absolutely ridiculous amounts of single target damage and don't care about combos? Build a deck and party around getting cash, and have your mana generator card be Mild and have Coin Count on it! Need MORE cash? Midas gems! Coin bag gems! Greed!! you want it, you got it!

Sure, like I said, it's early days. I've unlocked all the CURRENT achievements and gotten all the unlockables that are available for now, but you bet I'm gonna come back to this when more updates and dlc drop. Poncle are 2 for 2 on absolutely stellar games now.

This is absolutely worth your money, and time, and it's a wonderful successor to VS, without making the original obsolete, as well as being a really fun blend of dungeon crawler and deckbuilder.

Fabulous work again, poncle. 10/10, would open infinite coffins in a futile search for potential vampires again.

It’s not quite as fun as Vampire Survivors, but I’d still recommend giving it a try. It starts off a bit slow, but once everything opens up, it becomes much more enjoyable. Building different combos and experimenting with the color interactions is a lot of fun. It’s definitely worth picking up, especially when it’s on sale.

made me crawl so hard i vampired