Poncle’s mega successful Vampire Survivors has inspired an entirely new genre—the “reverse bullet hell.” However, now the company is taking inspiration from a different genre to deliver a brand new experience.
Announced at today’s Xbox Partner Preview, Vampire Crawlers will be a roguelike deckbuilding dungeon crawler set within the Vampire Survivors universe. True to form, players will be able to create unbelievably powerful decks to mow through hordes of enemies as they explore dungeons and collect treasure.
What separates Vampire Crawlers from other roguelike deckbuilders, however, is its unique, “snowballing” combo system—where players play cards in ascending Mana order to land combos, where each step multiplies the next card’s effect. Whether players want to use cards one-by-one or generate mass chaos by playing as quickly as possible, thanks to the “turbo turn-based engine,” players will always get accurate outcomes, regardless of speed.
“I have accumulated more than 3000 hours of playtime on Vampire Survivors over the years, and I’m still counting,” said Company Director at poncle, Luca Galante. “Vampire Crawlers isn’t even released and is already on the same trajectory for me!” In an interview with Xbox Wire, Galante said, “fans of Vampire Survivors will encounter familiar elements like treasure chests, weapon evolutions, unlocking something new after every run, a banger of a soundtrack, and terrible humour.”
Vampire Crawlers is the first in a new series of Vampire Survivors spin-offs in collaboration with other indie studios. The idea is to take some of the core pillars behind the development of Vampire Survivors and to apply them to existing genres: accessibility, immediacy, affordability, replayability, lightheartedness, and tons of sparkly stuff.
Vampire Crawlers will be available on PC, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch “whenever the team feels the game is ready,” but they have a 2026 release window in mind.
