Vampire Survivors

2025-01-09
I avoided this game for a long time because it just seemed like the junk food of the gaming world. Brainless, addictive, dopamine-drip gameplay that keeps you coming back. And while it's definitely addictive it's not brainless. It's not incredibly smart but there's enough substance in pursuing different builds and trying different strategies that it's actually a really fun game to play for a bit.

The key hook to the game design is that as you vacuum up enemies you're always leveling up your different power ups and weapons and that different combinations of these unlock further evolved forms of them. It's this fun little loop of trying out different combinations to see which ones are sufficiently OP enough to break the game. It's the allure of build-crafting but in bite size chunks of 10-20 minutes. It's really a beautiful little piece of game design in that sense. And it's a loop that even 5 or so hours in after I had beaten the game several times I kept coming back to see what else I could try out.

Vampire Survivors is an Idler With Brains. Which at the end of the day means it's an idler and doesn't have enough substance for me to rate it super highly like some people are. I mean Rock Paper Shotgun put it above Elden Ring for GOTY 2022 which is fucked. I mean it's good, great even, but not a legendary game. In fact most of the time it feels like a waste of time in a way a lot of other games don't when I play them.

2023-01-05
I avoided this game for a long time because it just seemed like the junk food of the gaming world. Brainless, addictive, dopamine-drip gameplay that keeps you coming back. And while it's definitely addictive it's not brainless. It's not incredibly smart but there's enough substance in pursuing different builds and trying different strategies that it's actually a really fun game to play.

The whole system by which you level up your different power ups and weapons and then combinations of them unlocks more powerful versions is very fun. It's really a beautiful little piece of game design.

After about five and a half hours I had beaten the game a couple times and seen most it has to offer and I keep coming back because there's still more unlockables and trying out the different weapons and characters is very fun.

At the end of the day though it doesn't have enough substance for me to rate it super highly like some people are. I mean Rock Paper Shotgun put it above Elden Ring for GOTY which is fucked. I mean it's good, great even, but not a legendary game. In fact most of the time it feels like a waste of time in a way a lot of other games don't when I play them.