I really deeply loved Vampire Survivors. The formula was simple which allowed it to give way to a breadth of fun and interesting character build options. VS is the most power fantasy driven game I have ever encountered and is definitely in the “number go up” subgenre of roguelikes/run-based games. So much so that it’s really easy to get the game to just play itself. Literally put the controller down for 45 minutes and take a shower and come back, play itself. And that was pretty fun to me!

Vampire Crawlers takes that away: you cannot get the game to play itself at all, it requires you to be making decisions all the time, but it’s still a power fantasy and number go up kind of game. Instead of being a sort of reverse bullet hell, it’s now a dungeon crawler with deck-based combat. Deck-based games are not my go to. I’ve bouncing pretty hard off of Baten Kaitos because of that. Like, I just wanna play an RPG, not also manage a mini card game as a core mechanic? The only other deck builder game I can handle is Balatro, but let’s be honest that’s really more of a puzzle game if you think about it (and I love puzzle games). Where VC stands out is that it makes deck builders fun. Okay, that’s pretty flippant. To me, where VC stands out is that you’re not limited to what’s in your hand. Once you understand the comboing system and especially the use of wild cards and other cards and modifiers that let you extend your combos and extend how many cards you can hold in any single hand, you can end up reshuffling your discard pile into your deck and pulling from it over and over and over again all in one singular turn. You might play the same card ten times in one turn! Building huge combos feels really natural and exciting once you get the hang of it. Whether you’re into building huge damage, taking advantage of healing and increasing maximum health, or building up armor to tank huge hits, the combo system gives it to you. I’m sure there’s more too, but like, I’m not the best thinker when it come to games like this. I’m not hyper strategic at all (which makes it funny that Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, and the tactics genre itself being one of my favorites), but there’s something in Crawlers that just lets me intuitively see how it all works together.

Like, I can’t explain how quickly I took to this game. Everything about it feels like Survivors but more cerebral, more thinky. Basically every card and system works exactly like it’s Survivors counterpart, to the point that knowledge from the first game gives you a huge leg up at first. But also like Survivors, it’s very easy to learn even if you don’t have a lot of that foreknowledge. And then there’s the card comboing system layered on top of the familiar systems. I’m struggling to explain it, but once you have enough cards, especially wild cards that allow you to extend your combo without going to the card with the next most mana requirement, you can just fucking go. Like, it’s stupid that I can start a run with about 80 max HP and by the end I’ve got well over a 1000 max HP and I heal all of that after every battle. My friend was building her armor nearly to 1000, per turn, last time we gushed about the game together. Her approach was armor-focused and mine was max HP focused. I think it speaks to something about each of us, but I’m no psychologist =P Either way, the power fantasy aspect of the first game has survived (pun not intended) fully intact.

And just like in Survivors, at the end of each run in Crawlers Death, or a Death-like figure, comes in and just fucking murders you. Except in this game you can see exactly how much damage he’s doing: 333. This was invisible in the first game. You just had to hope or know you built up the right stats and effects to survive. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve survived several rounds his attacks, but I haven’t yet killed him. In Survivors so much of the game opened up once you killed Death and pushed past him. I’m really keen to see how that plays out in this one, but I just haven’t upgraded everything enough yet and I still make some pretty bone-headed mistakes with my combos. I’m really keen to see this game’s version of the upside down levels!

Vampire Crawlers also gave me something I haven’t had in a while: starting fresh in a game and comparing discoveries and strategies with a friend as we went. Sure this same friend and I did that in Balatro, but she was already so far ahead of me in that game by the time I even started that she was certainly the professor and I the student. With VC we were starting off days apart on the same footing. (and to brag a little bit, I did roll credits a fair bit before she did, which felt like a pretty big accomplishment to me, especially because she is so good at deck builders :) ) It was really fun to have that experience that I just don’t get much anymore. I think the last real time I had that was with friends in highschool or my sisters growing up. Games like Final Fantasy XI or Phantasy Star Online especially. I like sharing my game experiences and I’m so glad that Vampire Crawlers gave us that.