Vampire Survivors may have first exploded in popularity in 2022, but the roguelike survival game that might not actually include any vampires had an incredible year throughout 2023, and developer Poncle has even more ahead for the upcoming year. From so many planned updates that the team doubts it’ll finish them all in 2024, to news of a potential online co-op mode, and even “Vampire Survivors adjacent experiments” in collaboration with other indie devs, this year promises to be just as big and bold as the last.
Vampire Survivors might not have been the first game to adopt the auto-attacking, wave survival format, but it’s almost unquestionably the most successful game to do so. Rated by tracking site SteamDB as the third top-rated game on Steam and fellow site Steam250 as the number five, it sits as the highest-rated roguelike game on the Valve platform, putting it ahead of even the likes of Hades, Slay the Spire, and The Binding of Isaac.
“Even after being out for more than one year, the reception to Vampire Survivors keeps being absolutely mindblowing,” Poncle writes in a blog on Steam. “Poncle has grown to 20 people now and we’re all still busy working exclusively on Vampire Survivors due to the ports, engine changes, frequent updates, and releases.”
Following the release of its 1.8 update and the Vampire Survivors Emergency Meeting DLC, Poncle shares its “chaos roadmap” of updates it has planned for the future. The first of these will be Vampire Survivors 1.9, which can be seen on the roadmap as ‘Honey Moon’ but will actually be called ‘Space 54’ when it arrives. Poncle says we can expect to see this next patch arrive in February “if everything goes well” during its ongoing beta tests.
Of the rest, Poncle says “the vast majority” are free content updates, and are all approximately the size of the Vampire Survivors Whiteout update that, for comparison, introduced a new stage, another character, additional endgame content, and more achievements. “I doubt we can get all of these done in 2024, and that’s why there are no dates nor an order,” it says, “but we’re here to try!”
The team also says it’s continuing to investigate the potential for online co-op, given the success of the game’s local co-op mode. “To retro-fit online multiplayer in a game as simple as this, but with so much content, is still a huge challenge,” it says, but adds, “We’ve got help now, and things are looking promising, but it’s still too early for us to be able to make any promises.”
There’s one final tease in the works, too. “Something I’ve been trying to put in place almost since the beginning of Vampire Survivors’ crazy ride is finally happening,” founder Luca Galante says, “Poncle is teaming up with other indie devs to work on some Vampire Survivors-adjacent experiments.”
“We’re starting with just an idea, we don’t know where that will lead us and that’s okay,” he explains. “We don’t know when, or even if, we’ll be happy with the final results and be ready to share them.” While there are no further details given yet aside from the image seen below, I’m all for seeing what weird and wonderful ideas the team at Poncle can conjure up in collaboration with other indie developers.
In the meantime, if you’re still busy unlocking all the Vampire Survivors secret characters and discovering all the Vampire Survivors weapon evolutions then we’ve got you covered.
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