This years surprise indie hit Vampire Survivors is officially coming to Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on November 10. The game has been available on PC for months as an Early Access title and joined Xbox Games Pass after its 1.0 release in October.
Vampire Survivors is a “reverse bullet hell” upgrade game. Players enter stages with their character, a few passive bonuses, and their starting weapon. These weapons fire off automatically and can generally not be controlled; there are a few exceptions. So rather than dodging bullets like you would in games like the Touhou series or R-Type, instead your character produces the bullets and you smash through walls of enemies to prevent them from getting close.
The game was met with surprising success after being popularized by streamers and VTubers like the members of Hololive; a dedicated fan even made their own Hololive spinoff of Vampire Survivors called HoloCure. What went from a small labor of love became a gaming phenomenon overnight.
In the months since the game’s Early Access release, game developer “poncle” has been steadily supplying the game with updates. These updates have included new weapons, new stages, and new weapon combinations.
The core gameplay loop of Vampire Survivors throws players into arcade stages with a timer at the top. As the time progresses, the enemies will get tougher and tougher, and that’s to say nothing of the bosses that will spawn at regular intervals. These bosses are a blessing in disguise though, as upon defeat they tend to drop a treasure chest. These treasure chests give players a free upgrade and possibly multiple free upgrades if their lucky. Otherwise, upgrades can only be purchased from a random assortment at each level up.
The goal with these upgrades is to choose the weapons that best suit your playstyle, you can also purchase passive upgrades too. The trick to success in this game is to know the game’s weapon combinations. When a weapon reaches max rank and the player also has the correct passive bonus, the weapon can upgrade into an entirely new and drastically more powerful weapon. For example, a player with max rank Santa Water and at least one rank in Attractorb can upgrade their Santa Water to La Borra. La Borra is a more powerful version of Santa Water, which has damaging pools that drift towards the player. Most weapons have similar upgrades.
Xbox makes the most sense for indie games like Vampire Survivors who can take advantage of releasing for PC on the Xbox Games Pass and transferring that audience to console players who also have the pass. Vampire Survivors is available now on PC and will be coming to Xbox on November 10.
