Gaming: Vampire Survivors (PC)

OK, let me start with a culinary metaphor. You do not eat a brick of cheese for dinner. It might be tasty & satisfying, and lord knows I’ve eaten cheese straight from the grater, but its fundamentally bad for you in quantity. Cheese, like many things, works best in moderation, in conjunction with something else. Vampire Survivors isn't a whole brick of cheese, but it is close, like an entire Christmas cheeseboard, plus some crackers, in one go. Assume for the previous that you are not lactose intolerant. Anyways, Vampire Survivors is a game I picked up cheap during a steam sale, and its a bit of an indie darling. Few games for under a tenner get both a BAFTA and Noclip documentary. You might think if it as Castlevania inspired, specifically the 8 bit ones, with elements of tower defence and bullet hell games. You have to survive a mounting horde of undead, your character attacks automatically, so grab power-ups quickly before you are overwhelmed. Its a very simple game, and one well worth the money I paid. But I kinda don't like it...

When you get right down to it, Vampire Survivors can be described as a fruit machine buried beneath retro-graphics and punny names. Its not completely fair to do that, but the comparison is there. To explain why is to invoke a lot of boring technical buzzwords, and better writers than me have already gone that route. But I will try. The key, addicting, mechanism here is RPG style character progression, a concept that originated with Dungeons & Dragons and the like. This is the idea that a player, having gained an arbitrary amount of experience, gains new abilities. The reward for playing the game is to become more powerful in game, gain new abilities, and thus face greater challenges. You see this in a lot of games these days, especially ones based on micro-transactions and subscriptions, as its something that encourages player investment. With Vampire Survivors this process is a touch randomised and ungodly quick. The time from one character level to the next is less than a minute, and what you get is a choice between 3ish random powerups, which stack and interact with eachother. These are lost when you inevitably die, but Vampire Survivors also has a "Rogue-lite" system where in-game gold is used to purchase permanent upgrades as well as new characters to play. The result is a frankly intoxicating gameplay loop, and one that would be utterly evil if it had but one micro-transaction to tempt you with. It does not, thankfully, but this pull is worrying to a neurodivergent person like myself.


Vampire Survivors is a game where you can easily spend 30 minutes in a dopamine trance. You spend the first 10 minutes or so dodging your foes, building your character into something you prefer. You spend the next 10 minutes getting progressively more powerful, as truly apocalyptic levels of death are displayed on screen. If you do things right, your character will be the eye of a storm of particle effects. Then you remember that at the 30 minute mark, the Reaper will appear to claim you. There's nowt you can do about that (yet), but that completes the level. So you then get told about Achievements you got, get to spend your money, and likely unlocked a new map or mechanic to play. Its layers of enticing loops atop of enticing loops atop of enticing loops. Its like Cookie Clicker, but with actual gameplay.

At about the 12 hour mark, I paused playing for a few days as I was questioning my attachment, and didn't feel much of a need to play again after that. I had broke the habit, and I find myself unexpectedly introspective about my relationship with gaming now. Its very tempting to compare Vampire Saviours to gambling software, the creator is upfront about his history in that field after all, but I feel that's a bit reductive. I’ve had a couple of mobile games hit me this way, and well as the occasional open world game; initial obsession followed by burn-out. Its not the first time something like this has got its claws into me, but this is the first one for a while, and with unusual force. As mentioned there are no exploitative micro-transactions, as well as no small amount of whimsy, and scale. Few games escalate so rapidly as Vampire Survivors, and even without its extensive DLC library, there's much to discover. But I can't help but see the mechanics of addiction at play here. Does that make it a bad game? No, but its not a game I really trust myself with either.


There's a reason why you don't eat a brick of cheese by itself for dinner...