Poncle, the studio that kicked off the "reverse bullet hell" craze with Vampire Survivors, is taking aim at revamping another genre. Announced at the Xbox Partner Preview event today, Vampire Crawlers is a spin-off set in the same universe as Vampire Survivors, but it"s a dungeon-crawler roguelike with deckbuilding.
The title has players picking a Crawler, which will feature returning characters from Vampire Survivors, and exploring dungeons while building and customizing their deck for using attacks and power-ups. As expected from the studio, chaos is a primary feature in this title too. Check out the gameplay trailer below for a preview.
"It’s about mowing down hordes of enemies using cards, while you explore dungeons, playing as slowly or as fast as you prefer," says Poncle founder and CEO, Luca. "You can take your time and be tactical, or play cards as fast as you humanly can, because the game is built to always provide accurate logical outcomes, regardless of the visual chaos that your abilities might cause."
Luca also said that he wants to bring "accessibility, immediacy, affordability, replayability, and sparkly stuff" to even more genres, hopefully as other spin-offs. "With regards to a sequel to Vampire Survivors, we’re working on something, but we’re not talking about that just yet," teased the developer.
While Vampire Crawlers will arrive as a full release instead of Early Access like the original game, the studio plans to expand on the title with post-launch updates. The title has already been in development for almost four years.
Vampire Crawlers is in development for PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch. The studio says it"s aiming for a 2026 launch. The game will also be a day-one drop into Xbox Game Pass Premium and Ultimate subscriptions.