Fixed Sanguine star flickering with low amount of enemies
Fixed Splasher weapon hitbox
Fixed error selecting Beginning arcana with Mr S
Fixed collecting a vacuum as Genevieve dies on first stage of Foscari Adventure causes them to stop gaining XP
Added DLC loading translations, general Loc improvements
Fixed Falcon Fire firing rapidly if it started firing while no enemies were in range of primary fire
Fixed error selecting Beginning Arcana with Shanoa
Fixed missing Nathan description
Blocking speed toggle button when Alt is being pressed so people don't speed up when they Alt+Tab
Translation fixes
Fixed third evolution Emerald DLC weapons not effected by Arcana X - Beginning
Fixed Adventure Foscari : Arcana XX not working (level : tides of the foscari)
Set up navigation between OK button and button to help link on accounts error pop-up
Fixed Hyperion Bazooka Chinese loc issue
Fixed inconsistent name for Report! in French
Fixed uncapitalized Tiny Bridge in Portuguese (BR) and Turkish
Fixed when unlocking Tech during gameplay, its name does not fit the screen in portrait orientation
Fixed closing the pause menu with hidden pickup icons resets the setting to 'Show Pickups'
Fixed Megalo Dracula not receiving stats on levelup
Fixed clovers and frozen souls never being picked up by main character followers if sent to them or vacuumed by them
Fixed John Morris selection screen sprites
Fixed chests with dual characters at some points only awards chests to the secondary character
Fixed Emerald Diorama secrets icons
Fixed missing text on unlocks menu
Added attack animations to all versions of Jonathan
Fixed Maruto can get Eskiziburr again after evolving it
Fixed Gekkabijin translation issues
Added EME weapons to Super Candybox Turbo II
Fixed enemy speed scaling on Ice Age Adventure
Fixed Imakoo gains bonus recovery instead of bonus might when triggering showstopper
A big thank you to our Release, QA and Community teams
If you appreciate all the updates we're making for Vampire Survivors and would like to somewhat "pay" for the free updates, please just consider sending a thank you note specifically to our Release, QA and marketing teams.
We usually just want to deliver fun stuff to you and don't want to bother you with technical stuff or the bumps in the road we hit to get there, but I feel like there is this invisible but fundamental part of making a game that deserves to be mentioned and praised more often.
We're still a very small team, a lot of us still at our first experience with this level of success and game distribution. But while we have great support from the account managers and support staff from the different platforms, we have to deal with the same systems and release pipelines that are usually meant for much bigger publishers.
When making any release, even for a small hotfix patch like this one, our release team actually has to test the game across 15 different platforms, prepare a grand total of 78 Release packages (every DLC counts as a separate package), deal with different policies on every platform and ever-changing requirements about game engines and platforms SDKs.
And so, while everyone at poncle is doing outstanding work, I wanted to take the opportunity to put the spotlight on Izzi, Guru, Hazel, Kerri and Lucy for their continued hard work behind the scenes. Without Izzi, Guru and Hazel ensuring our updates are to a high standard and roll out smoothly, and Kerri and Lucy making sure our community feels listened to and have the latest info, we wouldn't have been able to keep Vampire Survivors alive for so long.
Vampire Survivors: Emerald Diorama is free and out now
Free Vampire Survivors expansion 'Emerald Diorama' is out now
A DLC based on the Square Enix fantasy RPG franchise SaGa
Featuring 12+ characters, 16+ weapons, and 9 new music tracks
A New World-Weaving Stage
Character parties, because no JRPG is complete without a squad!
Free Vampire Survivors update 'The Coop' is out now, plus 2 new adventures
A chicken-themed update called The Coop
New relic that lets you speed up the game!
New stage, character, weapon, darkana
8 new Achievements
2 new Adventures with 6 chapters each:
“To End an Ice Age” for the base game
“Tides of the Foscari” for the Tides of the Foscari DLC
Quick content guide
- To unlock the content of Emerald Diorama: find the new merchant in Moongolow and buy the Emerald Disk for 50k gold coins. Proceed with the chain of unlocks that starts in the new stage, Emerald Diorama.
- Banish/seal 80 items to unlock the final Seal power-up
- Complete once the adventure To End An Ice Age to unlock the new skin for She-Moon
- Collect a lifetime total of 500 Floor Chickens to unlock The Coop - Find a Parm Aegis and the new relic on the right end of The Coop - Don't kill enemies at the start of The Coop, for one minute in real time, to unlock the Gaze of Gaea - Evolve the Gaze of Gaea with Parm Aegis to unlock Gazebo - Pickup A LOT of food items with Gazebo, until there are no more bonuses appearing, to unlock Darkana III
Cross-save
Now available on PC, Xbox, Android, and iOS, please check out the Accounts & Cross-Platform Saves page for info and instructions! Nintendo Switch will follow asap. For PlayStation instead please see below.
An update on PlayStation cross-save
We're sorry to say won't be able to bring the Vampire Survivors Cross-Save feature to PlayStation 4/5 alongside this update
Last month, we told everyone that Cross-Save would be available on PlayStation 4/5, PC, Xbox, Android and iOS alongside our next free VS update in April. But at last minute, we've run into a legal issue on PlayStation we weren't aware of that requires us to share info on our partners that we're unable to
The chances of Cross-Save coming to PlayStation consoles are now very slim, but not impossible, so we're going to keep working alongside PlayStation to resolve these problems. We're so sorry to build up any anticipation for this feature on PlayStation only to change plans at the last minute
Cross-Save will still be available on PC, Xbox, Android and iOS in the next few weeks, with Nintendo Switch following at a later date (plus Apple Arcade if we can do so without breaching any privacy commitments)
PS: for anyone wanting Cross-Save just to unlock trophies, it's worth noting that PS Trophies are automatically disabled on a platform level for all games when using a save file from another platform, or at least that's the policy we've been given to agree to if we ever manage to bring the feature on PS in the first place.
We just won Evolving Game at the BAFTA Games Awards 2025
Last year we've put everything we had and then some in updating and bringing more content to VS, and we're not planning to stop anytime soon! A huge thank you to all our players for continuing to support us, our partners, and to BAFTA for the award!
Poe is now available in Rusty's Retirement
Vampire Survivors and Rusty's Retirement couldn't be any more different, but we're big fans of Mister Morris Games' idle-farming sim and thought it would be fun to have Poe 'retire' and join the game alongside a bunch of other VS characters. There's even waves of bats that swarm the screen (you can turn them off if they start making farm life too stressful) The update is free and out now in Rusty's Retirement on Steam. For double the fun, you could play Rusty's Retirement and Vampire Survivors at the same time to be both relaxed AND anxious! [TAG-50] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2666510/Rustys_Retirement/
Vampire Survivors Wiki
Completely free of advertisement, banners, and all that sort of crap that gets in the way; just information, a user friendly website, and it's also fully functional on mobile. Once again a huge thank you to all of our Wiki helpers on Discord our partners Weird Gloop for putting this wiki together, for their support, and for their guidance! Visit now at http://vampire.survivors.wiki
Official Vampire Survivors lore book coming soon
The year is approximately MMXXI in Rural Italy…
Vampire survivors are on a relentless quest. Stumbling through the Mad Forest, climbing the calamitous Gallo Tower, searching the far reaches of the Inlaid Library. The Belpaese family, the Ladonnas, assorted clerics and supernatural folk all join the search. Why is there roast chicken everywhere? How is that dog making flowers bloom? And who – or what – is Poe Ratcho?
And where are the vampires?
That’s where I come in. I am the Merchant, and I can be your guide. If you have gold of course. Always gold. If you seek coffins, I may know where to find them… for a price. Though I cannot guarantee you’ll find the vampires you seek…
We've now localised our Steam Achievements, so should you play in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese-Brazilian or Ukrainian, whenever you unlock a Steam achievement, this will now display in your language. If however you see a French achievement appear and you're playing in Polish (note this has to be a system level language, not in-game!), please let us know and we'll do our best to fix them.
Chaos Roadmap
Version 1.13 brought both The Coop and Emeralds, and there's a big chance that also the next update will deliver more than one entry from the roadmap. More than 1 Darkanas are also very likely. And who knows how much stuff are we still keeping completely hidden?
FAQs
Ha ha. When is real co-op coming?
Real co-op has been in the game since last year. We don't have an exact date yet, but Online co-op instead is on the roadmap for the second half of 2025.
Why SaGa Emerald Beyond?
SaGa fans that played Vampire Survivors already know: I love SaGa. The base game already pays a lot of homages to the SaGa series, the first and most recognised one probably being NO FUTURE, the Runetracer evolution. VS and the SaGa series couldn't be anymore different, and yet from my point of view they actually have a lot in common; - Freedom to experiment with tight gameplay mechanics - Straight to the point - Quirky unpredictable world - Spectacular attacks - Over the top attacks - A huge cast of characters - Though to start - steamroll everything after you learn how to play - A soundtrack that demands attention instead of fading in the background SaGa has been hugely influential for me, so, while the game genres are so different, the base idea to me really sounds the same: "here's an unusual world, have fun!" While SaGa Emerald Beyond revisits some of the points mentioned above, being the most recent brand new entry I thought it would be the most appropriate to explore in a collab. I swear I didn't do this just to be given confidential access to SaGa Emerald Beyond three months ahead of its official release ːdireyesː
Do I need to know SaGa to play the expansion?
I'm pretty sure you don't even need to know anything about Vampire Survivors to play Vampire Survivors! There's no need to know anything about SaGa. If you've already seen any of the Extra or post-ending stages in VS, then you'll probably barely notice the thematic differences. Even if you're not into JRPGs, this collab adds a lot of characters with special abilities and weapons with the new Glimmer mechanics; so since it's free I'd just recommend to download it and give it a try! (It does cost 50k in-game coins, just to prevent new players to start it by accident and be overwhelmed by the extra gameplay mechanics)
Why is it free?
Paperwork. It took a very long time to sort out the paperwork for this collab, and it would have been twice as hard to get the licence if there had been any money exchange involved. That's simply how it works for big companies; even when the creatives on both sides just want to do it, like it has been the case for this and all other Collabs, there are a lot of hoops to go through because IP is serious business and a lot of different departments have to get involved when talking about money. So we just did it the easy way, and in a way everyone wins: I got to have fun with SaGa, SaGa gets some more visibility, you get free content :)
Why didn't you get [insert other SQEX IP here] instead?
As much as I love a lot of other SQEX titles, it's not like some magic SQEX genie came to us with a menu of IPs to choose from (not that it would have been any different, my first pick would still have been SaGa, sorry 😂 ). We simply spoke directly with the SaGa team and everything clicked from there! If the magic genie is reading this though, please know I'll gladly have one of each from the menu, thanks!
What's your favourite SaGa? Which one should I try first?
Every entry in the series is either different than the others, or wildly different that the others :) The best way to pick one is probably to just go with your gut and, more importantly, have absolutely no expectations about how the game is going to play, because they'll be wrong: these are games that ditch a lot of the common tropes seen in other RPGs and invite you to discover and learn game mechanics on your own. While I won't favor any entry over another, I just want any other fan out there to know that I also absolutely love Unlimited SaGa
I hope everyone will find something they like in this update, see you again not-so-soon with a Content and QOL patch (mostly to better organise all the content) later in the year! - Luca
Bug fixes and improvements - Improved visiblity of merchant and pickup icons - Fixed characters with no cart/bike breaking racing stages - Fixed Sealed/Unsealed status not saving after leaving Collection Screen - Fixed not being able to scroll fully in options with a controller - Fixed getting Candyboxes in chests even when they have been Sealed - Fixed Flames Of Misspell and Ashes of Muspell not working with Heart Of Fire - Fixed spellsomething/spellwhatever/spellwhichever not unlocking their weapons - Fixed options in Adventures resetting after returning to base game or exiting a stage - Fixed Crystal Cries causing savefile size bloat - Fixed Heart of Fire gives Tri-Bracelet a Twilight Requiem effect without Twilight Requiem - Fixed Hide Pickups not changing to Show Pickups in Adventure Mode - Fixed La Borra/Santa Water not always spawning damaging zones - Fixed page selection buttons not working with mouse on recap page - Fixed Quick Start only showing the first 5 stages - Fixed Fixed weapon evolution achievements - Fixed various issues relating to skin unlocks on new characters - Fix for certain achievements triggering even if the required character check failed - Various general localisation and text updates/fixes - Improved resume and quit button navigation - Fixed rare issue where guarded pickups could re-spawn guards - Updated credits - Fixed Xbox failing to enter stage on first boot with no save - Fixed Adventures splash screens aspect ratio on Nintendo Switch
Ode to Castlevania - Fixed typo in unlock code for Charlotte & Jonathan - Fixed Chaos in portrait mode (mobile) - Fixed being unable to purchase weapon from merchant if it is used by a Familiar - Fixed Intermittent flashing light on OTC stage when Flashing VFX are disabled - Fixed Dario unlock not working with weapon selectors - Fixed game breaking when using the Iron Ball weapon with negative projectile speed - Fixed Ebony and Crimson Stones not being able to be Sealed - Fixed Nduja Fritta Tanto breaks Dmitri's cloning skill - Fixed Master Librarian spawning outside of the map in Hectic Highway - Fixed Twilight Requiem not working with Jet Black Whip - Fixed Dragon Water Whip and its evolution not being affected by Jail of Crystal arcana - Fixed Limit Break level ups not accurately displaying current weapon level when both base and evolved Fulger are equipped - Fixed Dominus Anger description - Fixed Master Librarian spawning when Trouser wasn't spawning - Fixed duo characters can get duplicate passive weapons From Arma Dio
Official Vampire Survivors Wiki now live
Other than our 2024 end of year wrap up that we ended up posting in mid January, poncle’s been pretty quiet so far in 2025. But that doesn’t mean we’ve not been busy! There’s lots of Vampire Survivors content on the way, including a free chunky update next month!
Here’s a little update on what we have planned over the next few weeks:
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Vampire Survivors Official Wiki
Vampire Survivors now has its own official Wiki!
Completely free of advertisement, banners, and all that sort of crap that gets in the way; just information, a user friendly website, and it's also fully functional on mobile.
You can expect info on every new VS update to appear here first before anywhere else, thanks to our Wiki helpers. The wiki is open to contributions and we will help confirming and providing technical information, but won't interfere with things like trivia and speculations because that's something for the community to have fun with!
A huge thank you to all of our Wiki helpers on Discord our partners Weird Gloop for putting this together, for their support, and for their guidance!
Our last content update was way back in October last year with Ode to Castlevania. We always knew this would be our biggest expansion ever, but we didn’t predict how obsessed we’d get with adding as many characters, weapons, and references as possible (in hindsight... we totally could have predicted we'd go nuts for Castlevania). This has delayed some of our plans for content this year, but we also want to make sure our next update is worth the extended wait.
The update will be free and available on all platforms next month. It's probably the biggest free update we've ever done, so please stay tuned for more info very soon!
Cross save progress
Cross save will be available on PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Android, and iOS at the same time as update 1.13 next month.
Cross-save is a complex feature for several reasons. We had the technical bits sorted for some time, but, even with a lot of help from the various platforms, things like security, traffic, privacy, and platform policies have taken us a while to get right. The steps for submission are very different on each platform and, as this is the first time we’ve tried something like this, we took our sweet time to get it done properly.
All these very reasonable, preventive excuses are to actually say:
We're sorry to say that cross-save for Nintendo Switch won't be available at the same time as other platforms. We didn't manage to successfully complete the submission on time for patch 1.13, so in order to avoid further delays we have decided to release the new content anyway, and then make a hotfix as soon as possible to add cross-save.
On the bright side, once this submission is done successfully, it should also help speeding-up the future submission for Online mode, that should arrive later this year.
Our investigation into Apple Arcade is ongoing as well. We're working closely with Apple to see if we're able to bring cross save to this platform one day in future without breaching any privacy commitments.
Thank you so much for all your patience while we figure things out. We'll share an update on the missing platforms as soon as we can 🙏
Bonus stage digital album out now
Back in November last year, 1minus1 arranged a live charity performance of songs from iconic game soundtracks. Vampire Survivors composers Daniele Zandara and Filippo Vicarelli performed some classic VS tracks alongside the Bonus Stage orchestra in aid of games charity, SpecialEffect.
Through the use of the latest technology, SpecialEffect help to bring fun and inclusion back into the lives of physically disabled people by helping them to play video games.
You can now buy the seven track album (including 2 Vampire Survivors tracks) for £10 GBP - and all proceeds will go to SpecialEffect.
That's all for now, the cutscene is finally over and can go back working on my Hunter Rank time to finish everything above! See you soon!
2024 wrap up
Yes, hello, welcome to yet another yearly and vaguely formulaic recap of all the wonderful things that have happened around Vampire Survivors in the past year! Plus, of course, information and teases for what we have planned for 2025.
Sorry we didn't share this earlier, Nintendo added a 2 onto something and we were busy watching the video on loop.
Thank you from everyone at poncle!
As usual we have to start with a thank you. This single player game (yeah yeah there's local co-op, alright) has been around for more than 2 years now, and thanks to your support is still going strong and its reception keeps being absolutely mindblowing. Poncle has grown to 35 people now, so we are finally able to keep taking care of VS, while also working on new projects!
We have a lot going on behind the scenes, but this update will still be focused on Vampire Survivors.
I'm not sure how much stuff we forgot to put on the list, probably a bit. Like the stunning, and free standing, Mask of the Red Death plush (sold out)
Cross-save
We're finally ready to roll out the feature to everyone, on all platforms. We're aiming for Cross-save to arrive with the next content patch, 1.13
Online co-op
We're sorting out the last few problems and scratching our heads a lot about user interface. We've been working closely with multiplayer experts coherence to get things right and there's hope we'll be able to launch it this year.
TV Show and other media
We're still working with Story Kitchen on a live-action film, respecting all the strikes and taking our time to get things right.
As mentioned last year, rather than jumping the gun and make stuff for the sake of making it, we have preferred to wait to find partners that felt right, especially because to make anything that isn't a videogame out of VS requires good ideas, creativity, and that quirky knowledge of the game, that is a very difficult triplet to get 100% right. Please remember the game has no plot (it doesn't? :eyes:), so nobody can really anticipate how a film about it is going to be, that is part of what makes it exciting.
This year we should also be able to reveal a few other "cross-media" things we've been working on. I'm just going to leave this sentence here.
What's next for VS content?
If the Chaos Roadmap™ is giving you a headache, don't worry, you're not the only one, it's just doing its job! In 2025 we're focusing on free standard updates, that will be a bit chunkier than usual. A lot of time is needed to QA and release patches now, since we're on so many different platforms, so the best way to optimise time is to reduce the amount of patches, but increase the amount of content in them.
If anyone's worried about for how long we're going to make patches, please know that we have accidentally started 3 different update cycles that we have to complete. - The first cycle, started in 2022 with Tiny Bridge, was the "Stage Recycling™" one. The idea was to see if I could make new content quickly by recycling the graphics of existing stages. It worked, but guess what? Just as usual, "quickly" started to feel "cheaply", and it didn't feel right to just re-use the exact same graphics again and again. So now "Recycling" a stage just means "making a stage that has a vague reference to one of the original 5 stages and that is unlocked by playing the Inverse version of that stage" 🤷♂️ - The second cycle is about "Pickups™". It involves making a special stage for each of the pickups available in VS. These will include the most stupid stages ever, and I believe some of the future ones will easily top Space 54 or Bat Country. For example, patch 1.13 will be an accurate representation of how the average Tuesday feels at poncle. Don't worry, there's some serious stuff too. - The third cycle is of course about the Darkanas™. There's 17 more to make, which means at least 17 more ways to break the game.
More Adventures are on the way too, including one for Tides of the Foscari. We are also considering an Adventure for Ode to Castlevania since we got some ideas to make it feel different than the standard expansion.
In terms of paid DLC or expansions, we're very well aware that there's high demand, but there's the problem that anything new will have to be able to somewhat be comparable to the latest expansion: Ode to Castlevania. If you have played it enough, then you probably know is a tiny bit bigger than all other ones, and that is a tiny bit difficult to produce that much content again, for the same or lower price, and in a reasonable amount of time. That doesn't mean it's the end for large paid DLC packs; there's still a few shenanigans we can pull to provide good value for money, but we're surely going to slow down on that front. Collabs in particular are especially tricky to make due to admin times and licensing costs. Anyway, I'd love to make at the very least one more original expansion for Vampire Survivors.
Collabs Soundtracks
We know there's high demand for the collab soundtracks, especially Ode to Castlevania, to be available on more platforms and in more ways, but music licensing is very complex to navigate and so we're currently not able to provide anything outside of the playlists on our Youtube channel. We're working with the various departments of KONAMI to see what we can do to better distribute the tracks online, including streaming services etc. but it's definitely going to take a long time; there's a lot of parties to talk to and a probably a long trail of paperwork to sort out. Rest assured we're working on it, and we'll provide updates when we start getting close to some results.
It's time. This year we'll finally be able to show some results! These experiments are a team-up between poncle and other indie devs to work on some VS-adjacent things. Of the 6 original experiments, 2 have been greenlit, 2 have been replaced, and 2 are still ongoing. Take a look at banner!
Other poncle stuff
We have a few not-Vampire-Survivors-but-totally-poncle things to talk about this year, but all I can say now is: please stay tuned. We're still cooking, but 2025 is shaping up to be our biggest, chaotic-est, surprising-est, and other made up word-est year yet!
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That's all for now, going back to work, bye! Thank you all once again and see you in the next run!
- Luca & poncle (including the marketing team)
Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania is out now!
Our dreams have come true and Castlevania is now officially part of Vampire Survivors. Thank you so much to KONAMI, the team at poncle, our partners, and all the fans for making this a reality at last!
Reach Level 20 in the first stage to unlock Inlaid Library and therefore Stage Selection.
At the bottom of Stage Selection, choose "Ode to Castlevania".
Problems after getting Ode to Castlevania
Right Click the Steam icon -> Exit Steam
Wait a few seconds.
Restart Steam.
Go to Downloads, see that VS is getting updated to the latest version (1.12)
Gameplay in Ode to Castlevania
All characters from Ode to Castlevania have the ability to find special pick-ups, in any stage. Initially this is limited to Wall Chicken (that is the big brother of Floor chicken of course) but 3 more types of pickups will be unlocked while progressing through the Ode to Castlevania stage.
All characters have at least 1 unlockable Weapon Selector, that can be chosen from Character Selection by clicking/pressing a button on the character's icon at the bottom of the screen. All Weapon Selectors have to be unlocked; to do that, every weapon in a specific Weapon Selector has to be unlocked first 🙃
There are a lot of bosses in the Ode to Castlevania stage, but you'll have to actively seek most of them instead of waiting for the right minute for them to appear. You'll find new icons on the map to help you navigate the stage.
Evolutions are straightforward and work just like in the base game: find the right passive to pair with an active weapon (some might require the passive to be at Max Level).
The music of Ode to Castlevania
There are 36 new covers and a more than 50 original Castlevania music tracks to choose from. The covers are all available on the VS playlist on YouTube (minus 2 tracks that will be released on Nov 07 due to... reasons...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDuzoJqQflA
As fans of Castlevania and its music ourselves, we were expecting people to be excited for the covers, but we actually couldn't anticipate all that hype! We had originally planned for 24 covers, but then asked all musicians to do more if they had spare time. That's how we ended up with a total of 36 music covers! Just as for the rest of the contents of the DLC pack, we tried to balance the covers between homages, reinterpretations, experimentations, and plain remixes. The only real rule I've put in place to choose tracks was "tracks that already have an official version that would fit with VS, we can also include that version" (which is purely arbitrary, stylistic choice by me, Luca, sorry!) and so I know we ended up leaving out several tracks that would have been amazing remixed in one the new styles. In hindsight what we could have done is... start earlier to have the time to do even more! I really couldn't trade any of the current tracks for a different selection. We can't make any promises now, but we'd love to cover and add more tracks in the future if we'll get the chance. In the meantime I hope everyone will be able to find a new favourite, maybe among the more niche tracks that got picked for this collab! Thanks so much to Daniele Zandara, Filippo Vicarelly, Evelyn Lark, and KEYGEN CHURCH for this incredible soundtrack!
More FAQs
While most of the contents of the DLCs are straightforward, being a collab there are some differences. For example, there are no Steam achievements and the music covers won't be available in the paid Soundtrack on Steam (but we will publish them on YT as usual), so please read the FAQs here for more info: https://poncle.games/ode-to-castlevania-faq
Patch 1.12
Advanced Music Selection There are so many tracks in the game, especially if you have some DLC packs, that the little menu was really struggling to be functional anymore. And it comes from someone who knows the order of the music tracks by memory... so we have added an advanced menu to easily navigate through different albums and music tracks to chose from
MEGA SEAL After buying any of the Seal Power-ups, you'll also unlock the Mega Seal panel in the Collection menu. This panel lets you easily seal the content of a whole DLC, or even of the whole base game. Who needs weapons anyway?
Pause Menu Map ZOOM You can now zoom in and out on the pause-menu map. 2024 ho!
Pause Menu Arcana Info You can now get a reminder of what your chosen arcana do. Affected weapons are also highlighted. Another big step for humanity.
New Passives in Preview mode In order to complete the evos for Ode to Castlevania, we needed 2 passive weapons from the future to be available today! So, while the patch to properly unlock them will arrive sometime next year, for now it will be possible to access these 2 new passives, Parm Aegis and Karoma's Mana, through the Arma Dio's selection menu.
Memory usage improvements Several optimisations have been made to reduce memory usage, that should help the late-game running better on console and mobile.
Other platforms
In order to launch simultaneously on all platforms, we had to compromise a little on patch versions. This simply means that the game version will be slightly different across different platforms, but we're working to get parity across versions as soon as possible. A special note for the Nintendo Switch version: it is already scheduled to receive a patch in about 2 weeks to address some very late-game issues. The file size of the expansion is around 260MB, which is a lot bigger than our average (all those music tracks add up quickly), so if you're on mobile you might want to download through wifi.
What's next
Due to the massive size of this update, our next patch will take a bit longer than usual to be released, but it will come with free content as always. We'll try to make less updates, but bigger, so that there's less achievements-related stress and a bit more stuff to experiment with. Which content update is next exactly? Just take a peek at the updated Chaos Roadmap to find the answer:
Hope to see you all on our yearly recap post later in the year, where we'll also cover the usual suspects: cross-save, online, and experiments (everything is proceeding but still not ready for full launch atm). (who am I kidding, the next Steam news post will be about hotfixes for this monstrously large expansion)
Thanks everyone for your support and hope you have fun with the absolutely surreal Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania 🙏
Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania DLC is coming to Steam on October 31st!
Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania is our third collab DLC, and our second made in collaboration with with the KONAMI team!
Vampire Survivors would have been a very different game hadn't it been influenced by Castlevania in the first place, so this is straight up the definition of a dream coming true. This is not a standard DLC pack. This is a celebration of this historical game series, an incredible, full-circle moment in which we have invested all the energy we could muster, and then some!
As usual a huge thanks to all the fans for making this possible, and please try not to binge it when it releases: it's big. IT'S BIG.
What heroes from Castlevania will be able to resist the urge to join the Vampire Survivors in their hopeless search for a vampire? None.
As the trailer suggests, we went by a simple rule when picking content this time: everything and everyone.
20+ characters
40+ new weapons between base versions and evolutions.
1 huge stage
30+ music covers
We could tell you the exact numbers, but we don't want to scare you.
What gameplay to expect from the DLC
The DLC will add a new stage in Stage Selection as usual, from where you'll be able to start the chain of unlocks to get the new characters and weapons. Given the amount of content, it's very easy to start this chain of unlocks.
The new stage is our biggest one yet and features a lot of different biomes. You'll notice new special icons on the map that will help you in navigating the stage.
When it comes to the weapons, we have tried to reach a balance between referencing, reinterpreting, remixing, and straight up converting weapons of the Castlevania series. We have also added themed Weapon Selectors that will make all characters very flexible, so that they won't get stuck using their default weapon if you prefer to use something different.
There isn't an Adventure this time because the amount of content is probably already overwhelming (but we might add one in the future if we get the chance).
Patch 1.12
This patch will bring a bunch of QOL improvements to everyone. We'll see the details on release day, but in the meantime here's a summary:
Advanced Music Selection: when even that one weirdo that knows by memory the order of the music tracks in the game (me) has trouble choosing the right one, you know it's time to revamp the UI!
Mega Seal: you are now able to seal a whole "content pack", (including "Base Game", or "Extra".. who needs weapons anyway?) from the Collection menu
ZOOM: you can now zoom in and out on the pause-menu map. 2024 ho!
Arcana effect reminder in pause menu: just when you thought this list had peaked at ZOOM.
New Passives in Preview mode: we needed 2 passives to make the list of new evos feel complete, so we're adding them to the game ahead of time through special means
Memory usage improvements: probably invisible on PC, but on other platforms this should help better sustain some insane end-game runs
FAQs
Will the main game still receive free updates? As usual, yes, we're doing free content updates. There's a lot left on the Chaos Roadmap, especially after adding the Darkanas in the last patch! Going forward we are planning for bigger updates, but at a slower pace.
Why so expensive? This DLC is absolutely massive; I know this might sound as an hyperbole, but I'm sure at some point you'll see why it's not. The idea was that for the amount of content and production costs, it feels fair to price it about 1 less money than VS.
Why so cheap? Despite being so big and definitely being a big step up in production, we still have to price this fairly in the context of the other DLCs and of the base game. Normally something like this would not be sustainable; we could do this only thanks to the massive support we have received and keep receiving from the players, so we also want this to be accessible to as many fans as possible.
Are you lying again about the amount of content in the DLC? What a preposterous question!
More DLC FAQS While most of the contents of the DLCs are straightforward, being a collab there are some differences. For example, there are no Steam achievements and the music covers won't be available in the paid Soundtrack on Steam (but we will publish them on YT as usual), so please read the FAQs here for more info: https://poncle.games/ode-to-castlevania-faq
Patch 1.11: The Darkasso
After the cryptic nonsense from yesterday, it's time for some proper patch notes! It's been a while since we added a new major feature, so we tried not to spoil the contents of this patch immediately. Hope it worked to keep the contents a bit of a surprise ːdireyesː
New Content:
- 9 new EXTRA achievements - 1 new challenge stage - 1 new relic - 2 new special character skins - 5 new Arcanas - 🦇🦇🦇
Just like the original 22 Arcanas, the new ones introduced in this patch are to be considered experimental and subject to change. Please post your feedback and comments on the effects of the new 5 cards so that we can keep improving them over time and also influence the design of the future ones.
There isn't a real "quick walkthrough" this time, most of the unlocks require very specific conditions:
- Go to the "Secrets" menu and type "forbiddenbox" in the text field to unlock the new stage. - Reach the bottom of the new stage to unlock the new relic. - Go to the "Unlocks" menu to see unlock instructions for the new arcanas. - Complete the available base game Adventures to unlock character skins.
Full spoilers:
New Arcana cards There are currently 5 unlockable Darkanas in the game. You can access Darkanas by pressing the new button on the usual Randomazzo screen. The only difference between Arcanas and Darkanas is their theme, functionally they are exactly the same. Due to the increased amount of arcana cards, once you have 23 or more cards, every draft will come with a free Reroll and will allow you to pick between 6 cards instead of 4.
New special skins This is a new game mechanic that allow characters to have special skins that alter them not only visually, but also in terms of stats and weapons. There are currently 2 special skins and they are both rewards for completing the current 2 base game Adventures once. If you have already completed the 2 base game Adventures, just open the Adventure menu to receive the unlocks. These two unlocks requries quite a bit of effort, so if that's not your thing please remember that the Secrets-Cast Spell menu (and some googling) are there to help you ;)
New special skin for Imelda Belpaese: Unblinded Imelda She starts with a level 5 Empty Tome and gets the following bonuses: +40% projectile Speed, +40% MoveSpeed, -10% Cooldown. Complete "World of Light and Dark" Adventure once to unlock.
New special skin for Poe Ratcho: Retired Poe Ratcho He starts with a level 5 Pummarola and gets the following bonuses: +30 MaxHealth, 5hp/s Recovery. Complete "A Garlic Paradise" Adventure once to unlock.
New stage: Room 1665 Unlocked by casting the spells "forbiddenbox" in the Secrets menu. A serious challenge stage that strips you of the power of most relics. Enemies grow stronger as you do. You need to defeat around 100 enemies to clear a room and proceed to the next one. Standard light sources are rare, but they are also rewarded after clearing every room.
Relic: Darkasso Allows to activate Darkanas. It comes with Darkana VI - Moonlight Bolero. Unlocked by reaching the bottom of Room 1665.
Darkana: VI - Moonlight Bolero Unlocked by default when obtaining the Darkasso. It spawns an additional stage boss every minute. These bosses might carry special treasure chests, including Arcana Treasure chests that will let you get extra arcanas even if you have reached the standard limit. There are also Black Treasure chests, that have a chance to hold a new passive weapon that you aren't already carrying.
Darkana: I - Sapphire Mist Unlocked by finishing a run when Space Dude has a cooldown bonus of -85%. Every time any equipped weapon fires, it has a Luck-based chance to activate again. This affects is augmented on certain weapons, that will activate 2-3 times instead of just once.
Darkana: X - Hail From The Future Unlocked by triggering a Weird Souls Purifier with Santa Ladonna. Every time you level up, a Luck-and-Level-based amount of pickups appears on the stage. The possible pickups include Gold Fingers, Gilded Clovers, Candyboxes, and Arma Dios among others.
Darkana: XII - Crystal Cries Unlocked by triggering a Starry Heavens with She-Moon Eeta. When the character's health drops below 20%, an Orologion is triggered. This ability recharges when reaching full Health. Defeating frozen enemies generates Crystallized Souls, that when picked up restore a bit of Health and provide little bonuses to Growth, MaxHealth, and Recovery.
Darkana: XXI - Wandering the Jet Black Unlocked by reaching 665 MaxHealth with Bat Robbert. Losing Health generates exploding projectiles. The amount of Health recovered during the run contributes to the damage inflicted by the explosions. Magnet affects the area and damage of the explosions too.
General FAQs
►When is the game relasing on PlayStation? - August 29. We finally made it ☠️ ►Does the PlayStation version include the Darkasso patch? - Yes, it will launch at version 1.11
►Does the PlayStation version have a Platinum Trophy? - Yes. There are in fact 2 PlayStation versions, one for PS4 and one for PS5, and they have separate trophy lists, with a Platinum Trophy each (you receive both the PS4 and PS5 versions, regardless of which one you buy). All of the achievements available on other platforms will have their trophy counterpart, but due to technical limitations you'll need less trophies than you'd expect to obtain the Platinum. Every new content update patch will come with a new Trophy Group, just like other platform achievements. Collab DLCs will not have Trophies for the usual reasons.
►Cross-save beta - Cross save is available on the beta branches on Steam, Android, and iOS too. We have tested cross-save on all other platforms and it's working fine, but we still have to submit the feature for approval to all of those platforms to be able to fully release it. - FAQ here: https://poncle.games/account-help
►Other projects - Online co-op for Vampire Survivors: the technical work is going well, still too early for more details! - VS-EXPERIMENTS: we have put one on hold, subtituted another one, two are still ongoing, and finally we have greenlit 2 of them! We'll probably have to wait 2025 to reveal more info.
►Where are we on the Extra-content roadmap? Right here: If this makes you think we pick future updates by throwing a dart at the roadmap, you're.. ehm... partially correct 🤡 Other than new content, we are also working on some QOL improvements for the next patch, namely seeing Arcana effects on the pause menu, a new music selection menu, and a MEGA SEAL.
1.11.0 Bugfixes and improvements - Obtaining the Yellow Sign also allows to see if a treasure chest has the potential to contain an evolution (Silver Chests) - Carréllo projectiles won't be destroyed anymore when they hit the top or bottom edge of the screen - GoldFingers are now pulled into Mad Groove, unless spawned directly on the map (e.g. Astral Stair ones are ignored) - Fix for negative coin values (added correction on save data load) - Fixed dodgy price formatting on powerups - Fix for controller navigation on long lists on the recap page - Fix for displaying over 5 arcanas in pause page - Fix inversion of trigger zones in stages with visual inversion not allowed - Fixed bestiary text overflow - Fix for Pentagram scaring the rising water but not the Drowner - Various fixes to Arcana selection and draft screens - Various fixes to cursor navigation when playing co-op - Stacking multiples of the same added weapons in recap screen (eg candy box) - [Moonspell] Nightsword and Muramasa deal bonus damage depending on Greed - [Foscari] Fixed collision shape and stats scaling of SpellStream - [Foscari] Fixed Insatiable by making magnet values match original intended JS version - [Emergency Meeting] Fixed mini-crewmates not being available in Adventures - [Operation Guns] Fixed Inverse stage modifiers being non-standard - [Operation Guns] Fixed issue with infinite Weapon Power-Up on level up in rare cases
Patch 1.11: Bug fixes and improvements
Bug fixes and improvements:
- Bug fixes and improvements.
Bug fixes and improvements.
Bug fixes and improvements:
- Bug fixes and improvements. - Bug fixes and improvements. - Bug fixes and improvements. - Bug fixes and improvements. - Bug fixes and improvements.
Increased frequency of Weapon Power-Up appearing as a level up option
Improvement for Hectic Highway pickups not always looping
Fixed Carlo Cart and Hectic Highway moving too quickly on high-refresh-rate monitors
Fixed a bug with the Firearm weapon not firing for long periods of time
Fix to Proton Beams infinite split causing screen flashes and crashes
Diver Mines fly in the direction faced by the player before falling down (really noticeable only with the weapon from level 3 onwards)
Atmo-Torpedoe and Prism Lass can be spammed a lot more than before with low cooldown
Increased damage of Wave Cannon's charged projectiles
"Zephyr" track fixed with the proper music
Tweaked treasure chests in Neo Galuga
Fixed Lance's bonuses glitchy display
Fix for Ariana's hidden Cooldown bonus not working properly
Fix to hide floating Morphed Mortaccio head when entering a boss battle
Main Game
Fixed shared evolutions when using "Shared Passives" option in co-op
Fix for arcana re-roll button displaying even if there were not enough arcanas left
Fixed Laborratory doors being incorrectly ventable
Fixed stage completion scroll bar navigation bug
Fixed word wrapping in stage selection
Fix for level up being empty/going straight to limit break in cases where everything else that would be available is sealed
Fix for missing translations showing in some treasure chests
Vampire Survivors: Operation Guns is out now!
Vampire Survivors: Operation Guns is our second collab DLC, made in collaboration with the KONAMI's Contra team, and is now available on all platforms! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2887680
Content: - 1 large stage and 1 bonus stage - 11 new characters - 22 new weapons between base versions and evolutions - 6 new music tracks - 13 music tracks directly from the Contra series and 6 brand new covers - A new 6-chapters Adventure
How to start the DLC After installing the DLC, the new stage "Neo Galuga" will appear at the bottom of the Stage Selection screen. Play the stage to start the new chain of unlocks. Alternatively, go to Adventures and play the chapters of Operation Guns to have a strongly guns-themed experience using almost exclusively the new characters and weapons from the Contra series!
There is no DLC when I start the game Please make sure you're on game version 1.10, as older versions won't detect the content pack. Fully closing and reopening Steam to trigger an update should do the trick!
Patch 1.10 We had a free content update last week that, among other things, also adds the Seal III power-up! You can read all about it, and about other VS news in general, here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1794680/view/4104540932629694732
Will the main game still receive free updates? Yep, just like 1.10 mentioned above.
22 new weapons and evolutions?! My level-up pool! We have added one more Seal power-up in the latest content patch, so don't worry, you'll still be able to easily manipulate the level-up pool.
Why only $2.49? As usual we've been receiving kind comments about pricing and giving us more money, some intended just as a compliment, some actually serious. Collab DLCs have a much higher production cost for us, but that doesn't mean their price should skyrocket. You've already given us the luxury to keep working on Vampire Survivors even just for fun (hence the constant free updates), it just seems fair to try keep the cost of major expansions as contained as possible and border-line risky. We'd need something very big to justify a higher price point. And then if we accidentally inflate our own production costs because we decide to add 12 characters for fun instead of the usual 8... well that's our problem innit
More DLC FAQS While most of the contents of the DLCs are straightforward, being a collab there are some differences. For example, there are no Steam achievements and the 6 music covers won't be available in the Soundtrack on Steam, so please read the FAQs here for more info: https://poncle.games/operation-guns
_ Thank you all once again for your continued support and I hope you'll have fun with the hyper-realistic gun fights of Operation Guns!
If this makes you think we pick future updates by throwing a dart at the roadmap, you're.. ehm... partially correct 🤡