Vampire Survivors

Most modern games are designed to be stressful. First-person shooters, action-adventure games, even sports games have a level of building stress that isn’t necessarily welcome in today’s world. Sometimes, you just want a simple game you can kick back with and zone out. For most people, this is achieved with some variation of manipulative smartphone games that either make you pay to continue to play it, or sit through endless ads. The issue is, these games don’t really have a ton of engaging content, and when you boil down what the gameplay actually is, you're basically just tapping a screen over and over. So what we need then, as gamers who want to relax, is a simple game that is easy enough to play, but also has real content that you can sink your teeth into. This is where Vampire Survivors comes in; an old school game with new school gratification. Before you kick back and relax with Vampire Survivors, here is everything you need to know.

A Classic Setup

Vampire Survivors is presented as an 8-bit, 2D game that wouldn’t look out of place on an Atari or classic Nintendo system. This aesthetic is almost homey for veteran gamers who grew up devouring games on these systems for hours on end.

Gameplay has rogue-lite elements, meaning upon death, you will use the money and experience you have collected to purchase upgrades before being dropped back into the game from the first wave of enemies. These upgrades will then be applied to your next run, allowing you to get further into the game before failing, and then the cycle begins anew. This style of gameplay is popular these days with games like Rogue Legacy, Spelunky, Dead cells, and even Enter the Gungeon, all of which are extremely fun to play, but lack Vampire Survivors laid back aura. The game even requires minimal player input, with it only requiring that you control movement in four directions as well as the direction the character faces while it auto fires spells and other attacks, depending on your character. All of this boils down to a classic setup for a game that will surely become a classic among fans.

Relaxed Gameplay

When you start Vampire Heroes, you will pick from 7 different characters, each with its own attacks and abilities. Simply move your character around the screen and it will auto-attack enemies as they swarm you. Just a few enemies will spawn in the first rounds, but extended rounds can have hundreds of monsters on-screen at the same time.

As you eliminate these monsters, they will drop blue XP crystals, which will fill up a blue bar at the top of the screen when you pick them up. These crystals along with other dropped items don’t disappear, so don’t stress out rushing to pick them up before you lose them.

mark value="8" comment="Filling up this bar results in a new level and a few options for upgrades before you jump back into the game. After a number of upgrades, the game becomes an oddly relaxing “bullet hell” style game where your character is sending out hundreds of projectiles, wiping out screens full of monsters. Do this with the aforementioned 7 different characters, 24 weapons, 14 powerups, 10 pickups, across 2 stages while earning 34 achievements. That’s a lot of content!"]

Pros

• Hours upon hours of fun
• Relaxing
• Many unique characters

Cons

• Graphics might be plain for some