| Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Overview
What is Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard?
Vampire Crawlers, also known as Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard From Vampire Survivors, is a first-person, turn-based strategy deck-building game set in the world of Vampire Survivors. Also made by indie dev poncle and set up as Vampire Survivors’ official spin-off, Vampire Crawlers replaces horde-survival gameplay with fast-paced, combo-centric cardplay against hordes of enemies and ever-evolving bosses.
Vampire Crawlers features:
⚫︎ 20+ unique "crawlers" to unlock and play
⚫︎ Achievement-based progression system
⚫︎ Metagame upgrade system with mid-run deck-building elements
⚫︎ 2.5D pixel graphics
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 Xbox |
 PS |
 Switch |
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| $9.99 | |||||||
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| Coming Soon | |||||||
Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard Review: Worryingly Addictive
Now This is How You Make a Spin-Off
Vampire Survivors was a genre-defining phenomenon back in 2021 when indie dev poncle decided to turn the bullet-hell genre on its head by making the player the center of the bullet hell as enemies swarmed from all sides. Naturally, everyone wanted a piece, and horde survival games came out of the woodwork when devs everywhere realized this formula worked.
Vampire Crawlers is the eventual result of this infant sub-genre’s initial popularity and subsequent saturation, though it is far from just another horde survival game in the same bloodline as its predecessor. As many tried and failed to capture Vampire Survival’s success, Vampire Crawlers opted to spread its bat-like wings in the deckbuilder genre and reinvent it in much the same way the original did for bullet hells.
Did it succeed in its new niche? Yes, and to a worrying degree, might I add. Like a vampire coming to roost, it swooped in, latched on to my fancy, and bled my schedule dry with its lightning-fast card strategy and dungeon crawling, all while costing much less than it has any right to.
Surviving A World of Vampires, Gorgons, and Truck-sized Insects
Before we get to that worryingly addictive gameplay loop, though, let us first discuss the game’s setting. In a word, Vampire Crawlers’ setting and narrative are "familiar". In two, "very familiar". The resemblance to Vampire Survivors’ universe is uncanny because these two games share the very same world.
This world of vampires, roaming medusa, witches, and truck-sized praying mantises remains as off the rails as it once was, but now, instead of roaming fields as enemies come from all sides to assail you, you’re doing a good old dungeon crawl to meet your adversaries. There’s not much else to say about this setting apart from what’s common between its two iterations.
And when I say common, I do mean common. The story is just as unexplained here as it was in Vampire Survivors, except you’re seeing it from a first-person perspective now. It’s mostly theming and background lore that, while efficient in conveying the general idea and tone of the setting and its characters, isn’t a story.
That said, I can’t fault Vampire Crawlers too much for its narrative-light approach, as it’s pretty much designed to be all gameplay. There’s something to pick apart from all the background goings on, for sure, but that’ll be your prerogative.
The Fastest Turn-Based Strategy Loop You’ve Ever Seen
Moving on to the game’s bread and butter now, let us discuss how Vampire Crawlers decided that the basics of deckbuilding weren’t good enough. Vampire Crawlers is a first-person dungeon crawl in the same way the first Wolfenstein games were. You’ve got a set area you can roam using directional buttons, and set distances for each "step" you take in any direction, encountering enemies, interactibles, and power-ups along the way.
This is your primary mode of exploration, and it’s actually quite intuitive in the same way sliding puzzles are. Sometimes, enemy encounters are avoidable, and it’ll be up to you to use the limited space and your directional controls to get to where you want to go without touching them.
Combat is inevitable, though, and once you end your movement in the same square as an enemy, Vampire Crawlers kicks everything into high gear…literally. The pacing of gameplay increases dramatically while in combat, as Vampire Crawlers’ turn-based strategy card gameplay is nothing like other deckbuilders out there.
Vampire Crawlers operates on a combo-centric loop, where playing cards with sequential costs (usually 0, 1, 2, 3, and so on) multiply their effects at each step of the sequence, depending on the order. A 0-cost, 8-damage card, for example, will deal that much damage, but will allow whatever the 1-cost card that follows it to multiply by 2. This will continue and be multiplied again if you play a 2-cost card after that (this time by 3), and so on.
This compounded multiplication applies to all card effects, including buffs, debuffs, and most notably, damage. This results in a cascade effect that makes each turn last no more than a few seconds, as you only have so much mana to play cards with per turn, and so many cards to play. Often is the case, enemies won’t survive for much longer than that anyway. That said, though, break the chain of card costs, and your combo resets to zero.
Winning against enemies earns you EXP, which gains you new cards and modifier gems for your cards whenever you earn enough to level up. These get added to your deck, rinse, repeat for all enemies you choose to encounter until you reach the boss.
Reinventing the Deckbuilder
There’s more to it than that, mostly involving how you modify cards to better suit your deck, like changing their costs or adding new effects. I’ll let you discover what each one does yourself, because what truly matters here is the core concept of multiplying card effects if played in sequence, which flips the turn-based deckbuilder concept on its head.
Rather than taking your time, the one thing turn-based strategy offers above most other strategy games, you’re encouraged to blitz enemies with stacks of multiplied effects in Vampire Crawlers. There’s no time limit per se, as you could still take as long as you want, but each fight was designed to be quick and visceral, the same way vampires are in fiction, with hordes of low-health enemies, and a compounding arsenal of random attacks to meet them.
This creates a feedback loop of simple strategic choices spread over multiple dungeon floors, eventually coalescing into massive, highly synergistic decks containing tens of cards, all of which can be played in 10 seconds flat to great effect.
It’s a combination of efficiency and effectiveness that I’ve never seen to such a degree of mastery. Even Slay the Spire didn’t encourage a sped-up loop of card-playing to this extent, and it pretty much wrote the book for deckbuilder design. It innovated an effective mechanical base into something completely new and, I wager, genre-defining.
The best part about all this is that the positive feedback of risk and reward resolves very quickly, creating what can only be described as a worryingly addictive loop. I mean that in a good way, of course; I just mean to express that each run isn’t a quick jaunt from one dungeon wall to another. The fights are quick, but there are tens per dungeon, of which there are usually five, so there’s a lot of these to go through, and a run usually takes half an hour or so.
If you’re as careless as I was, you’ll find your time slipping away before you even realize. Like a bloodsucker in the night, it’s sucked it away from you, and you couldn’t be happier.
Achievement Hunting is the Only Way Forward
Past the core loop of a dungeon run, Vampire Crawlers also has a strong metagame for players to enjoy. After each set of dungeons, win or lose, players can improve their future runs by spending their gold to upgrade static stats as they would for Vampire Survivors, or by getting entirely new characters, levels, arcana, and gems by completing achievements. Sometimes, as in the case of the blacksmith upgrades and character unlocks, players will have to do both.
I’m usually against achievement-based progression because such a system removes gradual improvement in favor of rewarding milestones, which isn’t always helpful for casual players. Vampire Crawlers executed this well by being lenient with their completion requirements for most achievements, assuring even the worst players that continued gameplay will eventually lead to progress.
They also executed this well by just having a metric ton of unlocks, which gives them room to make achievements milestones across the whole spectrum of difficulty from beginner to veteran. This also contributes to the quick positive feedback loop the core mechanics promote, as every run is almost guaranteed to unlock something if you made it past the first floor.
Simply put, this is a beginner-friendly game that’s easy to understand from the get-go and easy to progress past that. If you’re looking for a fun time or a sweaty time, this game can give you either.
Visuals and Audio Are Too Familiar to the Original’s
Unfortunately, not everything is perfect, and even Vampire Crawlers has a few blemishes to speak of despite its innovations to its deckbuilder formula. For one thing, the game looks and sounds almost exactly like its predecessor. Keyword there being "almost".
See, Vampire Crawlers uses assets from Vampire Survivors, or at least very similar ones. If the game didn’t adopt a 2.5D graphical style—that is, 2D sprites in 3D environments—this would’ve scored much lower for not being original despite its acceptable pixel art. Good thing it did, though, and it’s enough to carry much of the game’s visual weight. The same can’t be said for its audio, though.
Vampire Crawler’s audio is competent and actually pretty okay. From the music to the sound effects and minor voice acting, there’s not much to complain about apart from the fact that none of it sounds new to me. The game’s audioscape is almost exactly the same as Vampire Survivors’, and there’s no style adaptation to save it from that scrutiny. I wouldn’t mute this game just for that, but it certainly could’ve benefited from something more unique for the game’s new medium and genre.
Got Me By the Neck and Won’t Let Go
And thus, the sun rises on our review of Vampire Crawlers. The game is addictive to a concerning degree owing to its fast-paced deckbuilder mechanics, has a metagame strong enough to support old and new players alike, and the visuals to differentiate itself from an otherwise similar source iteration.
Sadly, the game’s audioscape can’t match its visuals in transformative quality, and the story is scattered between the background and the setting itself. The game isn’t perfect by enemy means, but it is very, VERY good.
I feel like it’s got its grip, if not its bite, around my neck, and it’s not planning to let go. I can’t help but crave my next dungeon crawl to see the numbers go up as every card doubles the next, and I have an inkling that many other players will share this fate.
Is Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard Worth It?
Yet Another Absolute Steal from poncle
Vampire Crawlers comes in at an absurdly modest $9.99. For its replayability and gameplay value, that’s an equally worrying price, as it almost feels like theft. With over 20 unlockable characters, over a hundred cards, and countless gems, it’s unlikely for any player to become bored with this game within the first week of getting it. And if they do, Poncle has another game just like it waiting for around the same price.
Get this game. You won’t regret it.
FAQ
How Many Crawlers Are There in Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard?
Vampire Crawlers has 21 unlockable Crawlers, which include: Antonio, Imelda, Pasqualina, Gennaro, Arca, Poe, Dommario, Lama, Bianca, Porta Mortaccio, Pugnala, Yatta, Giovanna, Krochi, Suor, O’Sole, Concetta, Iguana, Christine, and Poppea.
How Do I Unlock the Blacksmith in Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard?
The Blacksmith and its subsequent upgrades can be unlocked by finding the appropriate Relic in the Teeny Bridge level.
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