Surprise early review! I usually spend all night writing these (because I’m a night owl) and then post it first thing in the morning before I go to bed. But I wound up with a free day and nothing to do, so I decided to write a review this afternoon.
Vampire Hunters is essentially Vampire Survivors, except instead of an 8-bit top-down survival game, you’re now in the middle of the action with a 32-bit FPS view! The developers even admitted this game was designed to be a mix between old-school FPS games and the innovative gameplay from Vampire Survivors.
No, they did not make that previous game. Gamecraft Studios made Vampire Hunters; whereas poncle made Vampire Survivors.
Like its predecessor, Vampire Hunters is a survival game, where you fight an infinitely growing number of monsters who are all slowly shambling toward you. Unlike its predecessor though, there is a time limit to pass each level. You need to survive for 30 minutes before you can escape the level.
Technically, you can stay as long as you want and continue fighting enemies indefinitely, but enemies will get significantly harder until you’re overwhelmed. So having an escape is a nice change.
You start by picking your character. There are six characters to play, but only three are unlocked right away. You need to meet certain criteria to unlock the rest. Each character has different stats, so pick something that aligns with your play style. I chose the Paladin because I felt her weakness was easier for me to manage than the other two.
There is only one stage to play starting out - Brotherhood Chateau - so you can jump right in at this point. The game has eight main stages and three bonus stages. As you make progress, you’ll unlock more stages to play.
The gameplay starts out real simple. You have one weapon that your character starts with, and you take out cultists as they spawn from portals within iron maidens scattered around the castle. There is no firing required; like Vampire Survivors, your weapons auto-fire as you point at enemies. When they die, most of them will drop a soul (that blue hovering dot) that you can pick up.
Collect a few of these and you’ll get a full-screen menu pop up with four random options to pick from. Mostly weapons to acquire (or upgrade a current weapon), but sometimes you’ll get a relic that will boost your stats in a specific way.
You can carry up to ten primary weapons, two passive items that will either damage enemies or buff you, and two secondary weapons for close-up combat. Which are a real life-saver when you get into a tight corner with enemies in your face.
And yes, you use all weapons simultaneously. So the bottom of your screen will slowly fill up with weapons as you acquire more. How many hands do you have?!
I don’t know if it’s strictly a Paladin ability (I haven’t played any other characters yet), but I can do a stomp on the ground if I hit Shift while in the air. This blows back enemies and damages them, which is excellent for clearing a space when I’m getting overwhelmed.
There’s also a Blood Skill you can use by pressing F when the red orb in the bottom center of the screen fills up. There’s not much information about it in the game, except that it does some sort of attack or ability for a few seconds, so I keep forgetting it’s there.
Every once in a while, a boss will spawn with a life bar across the top of the screen. They can be a nuisance, but generally aren’t that bad to deal with as long as you keep moving and don’t neglect waves of monsters for them.
They get really annoying when you’re overwhelmed with hundreds of monsters and four bosses spawn all at the same time.
Fortunately, you can see all enemies through walls, so you’re never surprised going around a corner. Bosses show up red when looking at them through walls, so you can quickly identify them from across the map.
When you inevitably die (or finish the stage), you can go back to the main menu and upgrade your character. There’s a Skill Tree, where you can upgrade specific attributes or unlock/upgrade artifacts by spending the Reputation Level points or Boss Tokens that you earned from each stage.
If you’ve unlocked any artifacts, you can equip up to three of them on the main menu.
There are also Permanent Upgrades, which boost your character’s stats in specific categories. You spend Upgrade Coins to boost each of these stats, which you also earn by playing each level.
When you meet certain criteria, you might unlock a constellation, which you can then equip for added benefits. You can only have one constellation equipped at a time, and they give you a positive and a negative effect, so choose them wisely.
Finally, you can select your main weapon to start with. The three main characters’ weapons are unlocked right away, but you can unlock any others you’ve come across in your gameplay by spending Boss Tokens.
Running all over the levels can get you swarmed on all sides if you’re not careful, so I like to plant myself on a ramp or platform with only one entrance, then pick off enemies as they come up to me. I stay until I’m completely overwhelmed, run to the other side of the map to clear the area, then go back to start again. That strategy seems to work pretty well for me when I’m just trying to run out the clock.
There are treasure chests that randomly spawn throughout the level. They’ll appear as a gold chest icon in the world (See lower left corner of last screenshot). They bring up the full-screen menu with four optional weapons/relics/etc. to add or upgrade.
When you take down a boss, they’ll drop a red chest, which will give you a buff to a particular stat for that round. All chests only last for a limited time, so fight your way to them as soon as you see their icon in the world! Or miss out on easy upgrades.
Each stage has different requirements for ending the stage after the 30-minute mark. I’ve beaten three stages so far: the Brotherhood Chateau requires that you approach each iron maiden portal and manually close it. The Corrupted Necropolis (Egyptian tomb-themed stage) requires that you slowly summon two ankh’s on either end of the stage, then place them over the hands of the giant statue in the center of the stage.
In the Village Yard, you just need to get to a hot-air balloon and escape to the skies.
So if you enjoy fighting endless waves of enemies and surviving as long as possible, check out this game! It was a lot of fun. There are leaderboards for each stage, showing global rankings and points earned. My highest rank in any stage was 1,691st place, as seen below:
If I’m brave enough to stick around past the 30-minute mark and keep mowing down monsters, maybe I can get my ranking below the 4-digit mark. I’ve easily spent several entire evenings playing this game; it’s pretty addicting. Now I need to go check out the fourth stage (Yuki Vale) and see what that’s all about. Looks like it’s Japanese-themed.
Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de 22 hours ago
I played this for a bit last year (16h on Steam), and while I don’t think it’s bad, it does get really repetitive. Most of the weapons felt extremely similar, and eventually all my runs would play out the same, where I’d just find a choke point, funnel all enemies through there and mow them down, so it’s just a boring horde shooter. Having a dozen weapons all around your screen is only amusing for so long.