The new Vampire Survivors spinoff switches genres but keeps the good vibes

when Vampire survivors I first exploded onto the scene, and that was pretty much all I could think about. The formula of jumping around running, taking on thousands of enemies, and getting ridiculously overpowered kept me playing over and over again – Steam says I played it for over 60 hours. Over time, despite the game’s many updates and expansions, the formula became stale, and I haven’t played it in over a year. But I became obsessed with… Vampire survivors universe once again thanks to the new show Vampire reptiles.

Vampire reptiles – Technically, Vampire Reptiles: The turbo wildcard of the vampire survivors – Translates successfully Vampire survivors Experience a whole new style of game. This time, instead of a roguelike shoot ’em up, it’s a dungeon crawler mixed with a roguelike deck builder. You’ll still play as different characters, take on waves of enemies, and create ridiculously powerful builds, but instead of fighting bad guys in real time, you chase them down by walking through… Old style dungeon crawler maps and duel in turn-based deck-building card battles. The maps still have a charming pixelated style – with many enemies looking like blown-up versions of enemy creatures SurvivorsWhich is really ridiculous.

The key to battles is to play cards in increasing order of mana cost. You’ll start each turn with a certain amount of mana, and at the top of each card, you’ll see how much each card costs to play. Even high-cost weapon cards rarely affect your opponents. But if you combine your cards in order of increasing cost, they can scale to become ridiculously powerful.

It is a relatively simple course. I usually count from zero to three over and over again. But it’s a lot of fun to create a build that lets you constantly move between combos to get super hits. You’ll also have to manage cards that can give you more mana, improve your stats, add armor or healing, and can also be enhanced through combos to devastating effect. And like with SurvivorsCreating powerful evolution cards by combining the right weapons and items is essential to victory.

There’s not a lot of dungeon crawling, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. While it is new to explore the areas coming back from Survivors Which I experienced in that game only from a top-down perspective, in Reptiles You have a map that shows the entire floor plan, and you’ll quickly unlock items that reveal enemies and points of interest. However, having all this information is very useful; It’s nice to be able to plan your way to enemies and treasure chests so you’re well prepared for the floor boss.

Also similar to SurvivorsYou will earn coins as you play, and after running, you can spend these coins on upgrades for permanent progress. These include new characters (with different starting formations and abilities that you can trigger during your run), stat improvements (such as more health, attack power, or even the ability to bring additional characters into a creep), and potentially game-breaking Arcana cards. Even if you don’t get a lot of coins in your run, you will likely still make progress on various achievements such as using a certain weapon a set number of times, and those come with rewards as well.

More than 10 hours later, I feel the same way Reptiles Which I did at first Survivors; Every moment I can, I try to sneak out a run. Given the similarities, I know this feeling may eventually go away. But right now, there’s nowhere I’d rather crawl.

^{Vampire reptiles It will launch on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series It will launch on Android and iOS later in 2026.}