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marurun wrote:My first beaten game of 2023 is Vampire Survivors, a game that's been on Steam several months and has been all the rage in certain gaming circles. Apparently the developer wanted to outsource the mobile versions while they were focused on DLC but there were so many knock-offs appearing, including blatant full asset rips, that they decided they needed to shelve the DLC for a little bit and just do the mobile versions themselves. All in all they did a fine job, in part maybe because Vampire Survivors feels like it has some mobile-friendly or even mobile-derived mechanics in the core game.

Vampire Survivors is a game about managing waves of enemies and also managing your weapons and accessories. There's tons of content to unlock and lots of secrets as well. The graphics are fairly rudimentary 2D pixel objects, clearly Castlevania-inspired. You start out with a single character and unlock new characters, weapons, and accessories as you progress. Killing enemies yields a little experience gem which you can collect. Every time you level up you can pick from a selection of 3 or 4 available weapons or accessories, randomly selected. If you pick something you already have equipped it will level up (up to a pre-set maximum level). You have a limited number of weapon and accessory slots. Once these are full you'll stop getting new weapons and accessory options. Each weapon has a distinct attack behavior with strength, speed, area, number/amount, and duration of effect. Leveling up improves one or more of these factors. Accessories can affect this. One accessory, for example, adds 5% strength to attacks. Depending on which character you are using, leveling up may also increase a specific effect. There are also weapon evolutions and unions to unlock.

Getting into the mechanics in greater detail, Vampire Survivors isn't really an action game, at least not in the traditional sense. There is no attack button. Your character auto attacks at the speed of the various weapon you have, and all the weapons you have are always active all the time. Most weapons fire off at either set angles or auto-(or randomly) target. Your job is to move your character so that the specific attack patterns and timings of your weapons hits enemies and keeps you from getting hit by enemies or, rarely, their projectiles. For a small number of weapons you can direct their attacks with your character's facing. Basically, from the moment you start the game your sole role is to steer your little dude around the level so your auto-attacking weapon flurries can kill enemies, who sometimes sprinkle in towards you and sometimes crush in in massive waves. You also collect all the exp gems they drop. As you keep leveling up from exp drops you increase and enhance your always-on arsenal, becoming potentially an agent of chaos and destruction. And if you collect the right complement of weapons and accessories you don't even have to interact with the game except to level-up. Yes, you can put the game on autopilot simply by virtue of having an omni-directional wave of death emitting from you to hold back the hordes swarming you from every direction. Play for 10-15 minutes to get the right weapons powered up enough and then hang our another 10-15 letting your auto-attack do all the work, stepping in only to level up and maybe navigate around a little to nab some out-of-range exp gems.

There are also periodic fires or candelabras you can destroy for money or other special items like short enemy freeze (think Castlevania stopwatch), instant screen-clear, or temporary fire-breathing enhancement. Money can be used to buy access to new characters you unlock or activate enhancements (again, once also unlocked) to the games varied stats, like your speed, health, or armor or weapon speed or amount. Fortunately, not every new unlock has to be purchased. There's a tarot system that lets you pick interesting boosts or effects for the level, for example. Each card has to be separately unlocked but not also purchased. New stages also do not need to be purchased. The varied addons can also be disabled if you don't want to use them for a specific run.

The game doesn't have strictly linear levels. Beating levels or hitting certain goals can unlock new stages, and those new stages will have different enemy selections, a few set weapons or accessories scattered about the level, and different qualities like a shorter or longer level timer, increased enemy strength, or whatever. When you hit the level timer the level ends* and your money is tallied and anything you managed to unlock is revealed.

If you survive the timer length Death flies onto the screen at high speed and wrecks your shit, ending the level pretty much right there. Unless, that is, you're powerful enough to beat death, which is a daunting task.

Now, this is a desktop game crammed into a mobile device, so the graphics are all small and so is the text. If you're old like me have your reading glasses handy to play. But you can play landscape (either orientation) or portrait and you can use touch controls or a controller to move. And the game moves a metric crap-ton of stuff around on the screen once things really get going. My iPhone 13 Pro definitely got warm but never skipped a beat. Then again, the iPhone 13 Pro is also a beast, so YMMV. I did find, however, that when I was completely overpowered and throwing weapon fire and damage out in every direction, getting crowded by massive, screen-filling waves of durable enemies, and the screen was covered in exp gems and items (basically, the screen was an unintelligible wash of colors and moving objects) that the game would temporarily suspend some of the object collision rules and enemies would sometimes collide with me without damaging me and levels with walls suddenly had no power to obstruct me. And yet my deadly attacks kept hitting their targets. I suspect the developers wisely set a cap on certain interactions so that mid-level devices don't just get hosed.

The final detail of note is the soundtrack. It's not up to Castlevania quality (OK, maybe a few tracks actually are) but it is fantastic. The sound effects are certainly functional (if a little monotonous for some things like money pickups). Truth is, I typically play with my phone on silent, but the soundtrack is worth a dedicated listen. There's a variety of tunes in there and they're all pretty fantastic.

The mobile versions of this game are completely free with some ads, though they are surprisingly unintrusive. You never have to watch ads unless you want a little bonus money after a level or a single extra revive per stage attempt. Early on you'll definitely be watching some Unity ads, but later on you probably won't see an ad at all. It's always your choice whether to do so. In this way this odd little game completely won me over, and I will likely be ponying up for the DLC when it drops.

That's not to say the game is perfect. It can be frustrating early on as you stumble around blind, trying to figure out what to do and how the game works (it's not good at tutorializing, but it's also not so obtuse as to be impenetrable). But once you crack that nut it's a blast. There are some time commitments, however. Most levels have a 30 minute timer. That means if you have the skills to survive you can be playing up to 30 minutes***. Fortunately you can pause the game and background the app, and as long as your phone has enough RAM to not have to relaunch the game before you get back to the level you won't be interrupted in your progress.

I listened, bemused, to podcast hosts talk about being addicted to this game and had no idea even what it was. And then it came out on mobile and I tried it and I understood.

So I guess my recommendation is... don't play it unless you're OK with a possible short-term addiction? I mean, it's on your phone, so you can't even really escape it by getting away from the TV or the computer. I imagine for some folks it might actually be more fun on Steam, and if you've got the time, sure, go that route. So maybe don't do mobile because you'll be trapped. IT'S A TRAP!