What was meant to be a “little game” for developer poncle has exploded into a major project. Vampire Survivors, the bullet hell rogue-lite with supernatural flare, is still in Early Access. The game released with a handful of characters and only a single stage to slay on. However, due to its immense popularity, the game has grown. New maps, characters, and weapons have been added, but poncle is far from done. Vampire Survivors will have nine more characters before its launch, as well as 16 additional weapons and new maps. Beyond that, the game is getting a new mechanic in April.
The developer released the game’s launch roadmap onto Steam late last week. In it, poncle revealed that a mess of new content is getting readied. By the time Vampire Survivors hits launch, the creator plans on having 24 characters, 48 weapons and evolutions, 20 power ups, five regular stages, and five special stages in the game. It’s a lot, especially since just a couple months ago I was wondering when more characters and levels would show up. More have since my musing, and poncle has many other players to thank for the game’s success.
“Thanks to the overwhelming success and support from the players, new content has started to come out at a much faster pace than anticipated and the roadmap has also been expanded significantly,” poncle writes in the blog update. “The amount of playable characters planned for version 1.0 of the game has been doubled and so has the number of stages with the introduction of bonus/challenge ones. A dozen new weapons have been designed and a handful of new power-ups thrown into the mix.”
The future is looking bright, and full of bats
Vampire Survivors is getting two mechanics that’ll change up the gameplay, and the first is coming as early as April. Next month sees the release of Arcanas, which will “unlock a whole new level of viable builds and power creep.” The developer doesn’t go too deep into detail on Arcanas, unfortunately. However, poncle confirms that the story mode is now on the backburner. Instead, it’s focusing on another mechanic, which “is yet to be decided, with some kind of Endless mode being the main candidate.”
The game itself will get technical updates as time passes. Vampire Survivors will have a new engine by summer, which should offer quality of life improvements and better performance. Be sure to check out the rest of the update for more.
