Vampire Crawlers: the turbo wildcard from Vampire Survivors from poncle and Nosebleed Interactive is a turn-based roguelike deckbuilder take on the beloved series. Check our Vampire Crawlers: the turbo wildcard from Vampire Survivors review!
Vampire Crawlers: the turbo wildcard from Vampire Survivors from poncle and Nosebleed Interactive is a turn-based roguelike deckbuilder take on the beloved series. The game’s opening scene depicts a regular scene from Vampire Survivors… before quickly changing the camera’s angle and panning out of the mansion. You’ll find yourself playing from a first-person perspective, as you would if you were playing a classic dungeon crawler. You’ll be moving through each area by using the left analog stick or the D-Pad to move left or right, forward or backward, and you can turn around by using the right analog stick as needed. There’s also the option of using the L2 and R2 buttons to turn left or right.
You will need to defeat enemies in a turn-based battle instead of the usual auto-attack nature of Vampire Survivors. The cards in your hand can be played by pressing the X button, which will trigger their effect. Each card will have a mana cost associated, starting at zero mana cost and going up as you use more powerful cards. The trick to extending your run and defeating as many enemies as possible is to perform a combo stack. For this, you’ll have to play cards in ascending mana cost to gain a combo multiplier. That means you start the combo by playing a card with no cost, then a card with a single mana cost, then one with a two mana cost, and so on.
Making the most of a combo stack and the corresponding multiplier will be crucial, since enemy groups will only grow larger and stronger as you progress further, and using the combo stack multiplier to boost the effectiveness of the cards you play later in the combo will be the difference between life and death. Your mana total is very limited at first, but you’ll soon be able to improve it so that you can unleash some crazy combos.
Defeating enemies will still yield experience crystals that you’ll automatically collect and add to your experience bar. Once it’s full, you’ll get to level up and will be able to choose a reward from the available options. You could end up adding a King Bible to your arsenal, which deals good damage while also having a chance to add knockback to your attacks. Another option is the axe, which deals damage to multiple enemies but has a mana cost of two.
Yes, there are different Crawlers to play as during your time with
Vampire Crawlers: the turbo wildcard from Vampire Survivors. Yes, you’ll need to complete levels to be able to unlock additional Crawlers. The first one you’ll get to play as is Antonio, who you will rescue during the game’s tutorial. The rest will need to be rescued by completing Mad Forest, Berserk Wood, Library Sanctum, Gallo Tower, and Milk Factory, as well as by completing some other miscellaneous objectives. Yes, unlocking the extra Crawlers is definitely tied to trophies – more on these in a bit.
Each Crawler that you can play as will add something new, thanks to their different decks, which will change how you approach each run. For instance, Antonio Belpaese will add 3 armor when his card is played, and it will increase damage by 10% when a red card is played. On the other hand, Crawler Imelda Belpaese will add 15 XP when her card is played, and you will also gain one point of XP when a yellow card is played!
During your dungeon crawling runs, you’ll manage to locate powerful relics. These will unlock special abilities that change the gameplay loop, thus helping the whole thing feel fresh from start to the never-ending finish line. Take, for example, the Gem Hammer. Finding it will allow you to add gems to cards, which can be used to boost a card. You could, for instance, add a Double Damage gem to a card so that it hits twice as hard.
You can collect gold coins during your dungeon crawling adventures, which you can use when you return to the village to purchase power-ups from the shop. These include boosting the area of effect for attacks, adding some starting armor, increasing how much XP you obtain from the crystals you collect, boosting luck by a bit, increasing your Crawler’s max health, adding a boost to the damage dealt by each attack, adding healing after each encounter, or adding a reroll for when you’re picking from the upgrade options after leveling up.
And now, let’s talk about the trophies! This new game does feature a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy… and it’s a crazy long one! It’s technically a main list with 7 separate DLC lists, but since all of said DLC is rolled up into the main experience, let’s just say it’s a single list. How many trophies are there for you to work on before you can add a new shiny Platinum trophy to your collection? A casual 161 Bronze trophies. Yes, really. What will you need to do to crush this humongous trophy list?
Some of the objectives to complete include collecting 250 gold coins, reaching Level 20 with Imelda Belpaese in Inlaid Library, evolving the knife, destroying 20 light sources, gaining lots of mana in a single turn, evolving the axe, destroying lots of minecarts, defeating a ton of skeletons, reaching Level 15 with Yatta Cavallo, evolving the cross, gaining 2,000 armor, reaching a 12 combo, playing lots of blue cards, healing a ton of HP, playing lots of red cards, reaching 30 deck size, adding a triple damage gem to a card, playing the Stone Mask card 10 times, as well as completing each of the different areas that you’ll be exploring, to name some examples.
Vampire Crawlers: the turbo wildcard from Vampire Survivors is a turn-based roguelike deckbuilder take on the beloved series. The game’s opening scene depicts a regular scene from Vampire Survivors… before quickly changing the camera’s angle and panning out of the mansion. You’ll find yourself playing from a first-person perspective, as you would if you were playing a classic dungeon crawler. It takes the Crawler heroes and the enemies from the beloved game that comes to mind when we say a game is a Survivors-like, and it jumps into a new genre with great success. It offers a highly addictive gameplay loop that will keep you coming back for more nonstop.
Carefully plan your actions so that you can make the most of combo stacks that multiply the power of each subsequent card played in the chain, ideally starting with a card of no mana cost, then a card with one mana cost, then a card with two mana cost, and so on. Or, you know, just press the Square button and play all cards in your hand at once and be done with your turn in a blink! Vampire Crawlers: the turbo wildcard from Vampire Survivors is out on PlayStation 5 with a $9.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This Vampire Crawlers: the turbo wildcard from Vampire Survivors review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by poncle.
