{"id":23916,"date":"2022-11-08T16:15:35","date_gmt":"2022-11-08T06:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=23916"},"modified":"2022-11-08T16:17:22","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T06:17:22","slug":"vampire-survivors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=23916","title":{"rendered":"Vampire Survivors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"vampire-survivors-poster\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Developer:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Poncle
\nPublisher:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Poncle
\nPlatform:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>PC<\/p>\n

R<\/span>oguelike dungeon crawlers are a dime a dozen.\u00a0 Most of them aren’t really my jam.\u00a0 I like the big hits like\u00a0Hades<\/em> but that’s all.\u00a0 But then I played\u00a0Vampire Survivors<\/em>.\u00a0 And for various reasons – some that I can quantify and others I struggle to put my finger on – I was immediately hooked.<\/p>\n

This game costs five measly bucks.\u00a0 It’s also on Game Pass.\u00a0 But honestly its worth ten times that.\u00a0 The game art appeals strongly to my fondness for\u00a0Fighting Fantasy, Hero Quest<\/em> and the kind of stuff Games Workshop were known for in the Eighties.\u00a0 At face value this game kind of looks like\u00a0Gauntlet<\/em>.\u00a0 You choose one of four character classes and start the first map.\u00a0 It’s actually a big open field with a couple of small enclaves which aren’t really worth visiting.\u00a0 A handful of enemies on the screen (barely animated), march towards you.\u00a0 Thats about as complex as the enemy AI gets.\u00a0 You kill them, collect some XP gems, and then prepare for the next wave of enemies.\u00a0 There’s a counter on the screen.\u00a0 Every minute, on the minute, a new type of enemy.\u00a0 This goes on until you are either killed or if you make it to thirty minutes, an unstoppable creature (think\u00a0Ski Free<\/em>) emerges and kills you in five seconds.\u00a0 Then you spend the money you accumulated on your run unlocking either new characters or some permanent perks.\u00a0 Then you go again.<\/p>\n

I guarantee you it is impossible to play this game for less than an hour when you first try it.\u00a0 The basic\u00a0tenants of the gameplay loop can be learned in three minutes.\u00a0 You kill enemies, accumulate XP and every time you go up a level you can choose from three or four new weapons and items.\u00a0 Maybe you have a melee weapon and need to add a ranged attack.\u00a0 Or maybe you’ll choose an item that helps you level up faster or absorb more hits.\u00a0 It’s simple but it gets its hooks into you fast.\u00a0 It didn’t take me long to realise ohhhh this is going to be one of those games I will regularly come back to and never uninstall.\u00a0 It keeps the same sort of company as\u00a0Slay the Spire<\/em> or\u00a0Rocket League<\/em>.\u00a0 If you got a little bit of free time, you may as well do another round of\u00a0Vampire Survivors<\/em>.\u00a0 Those big, bloated AAA adventure games with a hundred hours of gameplay can wait.<\/p>\n

\"vampire-survivors-screenshot\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So whats the secret sauce that makes\u00a0Vampire Survivor\u00a0<\/em>so good?\u00a0 I’ve thought long and hard about it.\u00a0 There’s a few things that stand out.\u00a0 Firstly, it doesn’t require the ability to aim.\u00a0 I’ve heard it described as “a twin stick shooter without the second stick” and it most certainly is that.\u00a0 So for players like me who are dreadful at aiming, thats a big part of the appeal.\u00a0 I think the best thing by far is the power fantasy.\u00a0 Remember in\u00a0Half-Life 2<\/em> where the game is of a moderate difficulty until the very end of the game where you get the gravity gun and the game lets you have fun laying waste to all your opponents?\u00a0\u00a0Vampire Survivor<\/em> is like that.\u00a0 When you first play the game you might have a few tense runs and you might not make it to the thirty minute mark straight away.\u00a0 But once your strategies start to click you basically become an unstoppable force of nature, decimating\u00a0swarms of opponents.\u00a0 Sometimes your buffs are so powerful that merely coming into contact with an enemy is enough to wipe them out (thanks evolved garlic and king bible).\u00a0 The final ten minutes of the game throws hoards of enemies at you in the hundreds and even though the game has graphics that look like they’d run on an Amiga 500 and its barely animated, it still feels supremely satisfying in a way that few games can match.\u00a0 What you see on screen during these moments of madness is a spectacle.\u00a0 It looks like the final stage in a bullet hell shmup except\u00a0you’re the boss<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Other stuff that feels good\/satisfying:\u00a0 The pop sound enemies make when they die.\u00a0 It sounds like bubble wrap or popcorn.\u00a0 Whichever way you interpret that sound, its nothing but endorphins for the brain.\u00a0 It’s also great when you level up the magnetism your character has for attracting the XP gems and a whole bunch of them fly towards you at once, causing you to level up in seconds.\u00a0 Finding a roast chicken on the floor to replenish your health when you’re nearly dead is great.\u00a0 The wide array of characters are great.\u00a0 The weird items (including flying bibles, hoards of cats amongst other things) is great.\u00a0 The paucity of exposition is great.\u00a0 There’s a mystique surrounding the game that works for me.\u00a0 Perhaps I haven’t unlocked\/uncovered them yet but I’m not entirely sure if the game even has any vampires?\u00a0 Honestly, if thats the case, that’s great.\u00a0 Another clever bit of design is that Vampire Survivors<\/em>\u00a0can potentially have two hundred enemies on screen and yet I could always tell what was going on, perhaps due to the distinctive colour palette in the enemy design, or the pace of the enemies, or maybe its something else, I’m not sure.\u00a0 All I know is that it works.<\/p>\n

Basically\u00a0Vampire Survivors<\/em> is a masterclass in game design.\u00a0 The central conceit is executed marvelously and then what makes it an S-tier game is a million and one little things that the game does smartly to ensure a pleasant gameplay experience every time.\u00a0 An instant classic that I suspect will inspire many, many imitators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A budget dungeon-crawler game where fantasy heroes battle hoards of other-worldly creatures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3006,13,3008,3009,3007],"class_list":["post-23916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-game-pass","tag-pc","tag-poncle","tag-rogue-like","tag-vampire-survivors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23916"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23924,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23916\/revisions\/23924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}