- 3 new achievements - 1 new challenge stage - 2 new relics to get a new PowerUp and something special
Quick content walkthrough:
- Reach Level 80 in Inverse Mad Forest: Unlocks Bat Country - Find the Apoplexy relic at minute 09:00 in Bat Country: Unlocks Charm Power Up - Find the Chaos Malachite relic at minute 18:00 in Bat Country: Unlocks morph ability for Mortaccio
Tweaks:
- Items not necessary for the Queen Sigma unlock have a yellowish background color in Collection - If you have at least 1M gold, the Eggman appears in Moongolow - The game should remember the skins you've been using for each character - "spoopyseason" spell should permanently unlock new skins for Mortaccio, Yatta Cavallo, Bianca Ramba, and O'Sole Meeo - Added a team member to the credits (hi everyone!)
Full spoilers:
Bat Country New challenge stage! - trippy - contains the 2 relics needed to unlock the Charm power up and Mortaccio's morph ability - very low XP gain, but high enemy density - not many light sources, but items can be dropped by diamonds - please remember that in stages where the background moves, there in an option to disable such movement - pizzas appear on new runs after getting both relics. They simply allow to change the background and have no other effect
Apoplexy relic: unlocks Charm PowerUp. It increases enemies spawn quantity, for each single wave, by 20 per rank (max +100).
Chaos Malachite Relic When reaching Level 80, Mortaccio morphs into a big bone boy and his Bone weapon evolves into Anima of Mortaccio - He gains +2 Armor, +1 Amount, and +100 MaxHP. He fully recovers HP. - Anima of Mortaccio fires bones just like the base Bone weapon, but the bones accelerate after every bounce. Big spinning arms appear around the player. Sometimes they detach and start flying around, dealing base damage times Amount. It's currently obtainable only by morphing Mortaccio.
2022 wrap up
We're at the start of 2023!
It's certainly been a wild ride, and we have to thank all of you for your comments, quotes, messages, fan art, Steam reviews, and, naturally, attempting to find the supernatural at all given opportunities. We've watched you 100% the game (multiple times, sorry!), create wonderful monster-slaying builds, get us into the Steam Awards, and generally have a slaying good time.
As always, we are incredibly thankful for the community that has built up around Vampire Survivors.
We thought we'd do a longer post here and cover a bunch of topics we'd like to talk about, from the base game all the way through to the future. There's a lot to cover, so we hope you enjoy!
Thank you from everyone at poncle!
It's been a little over one year since VS released in Early Access on Steam, and the reception has been absolutely mindblowing. Thanks to all the players, my 2022 has been incredible, I went from working on VS over the weekends to working on VS 24/7 and starting a company, somehow. This company is poncle of course and I'm very grateful I got the privilege to work with the people I've always wanted to work with. And then there's the marketing team.
It's been surreal to appear on multiple 2022 GOTY lists, topping a few, and getting an actual, physical, very heavy, Golden Joystick Award too! Most people in poncle play games, but have been working in industries only adjacent to gaming before, so everyone is hyped and happy for working on a game liked by so many people on so many platforms. So thank you all once again, and we wish you an incredible new year like the one you gifted us đ
Version 1.0 on all platforms
Initially planned for "whenever, maybe end of next year", then secretly "early March", and then totally "in the summer", after more than doubling the content originally planned for the base game, in October we finally managed to wrap up v1.0 of VS. That was the easy part though, as most of poncle had been working in parallel on an engine port of VS to allow us to reach more platforms ASAP. In Novemeber, we also managed to launch on Xbox and then on mobile in December, not to mention we got a DLC! VS has also been the most played game on Steam Deck for the past 6 months or so, which makes the Deck another very important platform to take into account every time we add something. What about other platforms? We all hear you and I know exactly what you want, but honestly, I don't think that putting VS on Teslas would be a good idea.
Mobile version
Soon after the initial success of VS, I started to look for a business partner to work on a mobile version of the game. Unfortunately, nobody I spoke with was on board with the monetization I had in mind for the platform: non-predatory. Months passed by and a large number of actual clones - not "games like Vampire Survivors", but actual 1:1 copies with stolen code, assets, data, progression - started to appear everywhere. This forced our hand to release the mobile game ASAP, and put a lot of stress on the dev team that wasn't even supposed to worry about mobile in the first place. Because of that we still have several features that we have to implement or polish on mobile, the most important one being Cloud Saves and Save Transfer (potentially Save Merging too!), but since we're still without a backend/full stack engineer, this might end up taking longer than expected.
If you're like me, then if you wanted VS on mobile you'd have beeen happy to just pay a couple of bucks for it and call it a day; but the mobile market doesn't work like that and by making VS a paid app I'd have cut out completely a lot of new players from even trying the game. This is why we ended up with a free-for-real approach, where monetization is minimal and is designed to never interrupt your game, always be optional and in your control trough a couple of "watch ads" buttons, and doesn't have any of that real money sinks that mobile cashgrabs are usually designed around. It's just the full game, playable offline, in landscape or portrait, with touch controls or with a gamepad.
With both iOS and Android versions currently sitting at an average 4.8ârating and a crazy amount of organic downloads got exclusively thanks to word of mouth and a silly trailer we got given the chance to air during the prestigious Game Adverts, I think we're on the right track with monetization, but we still don't know how to distribute the Legacy of the Moonspell DLC on mobile. The problems we're facing are the same mentioned above: how do we make it fair, but also accessible to players who are only into free games. We'll figure something out and publish the DLC asap!
We're still working on bug fixes for mobile, but are having trouble finding some specific devices to recreate some of the niche but worse bugs (like invisible enemies wtf) so I'm sorry it's taking longer than usual to fix them, but we're working on it and have been scouting even the dodgiest possible places to find the devices we need.
Where's the new engine?
On console and mobile! Because of everything I said in the previous paragraph, we didn't have time to offer the new engine also on PC before the end of the year. It's not straightforward as we need to develop a little launcher first, that will allow you to choose what game version to launch and with what options. This might be particularly challenging on Steam Deck and we'll be working on it in early 2023. There's still plenty of things that have to be ported 1:1 (Valkyrie Turner's VFX come ot mind just to make a quick example) but we're planning to keep supporting the current JS version for quite a bit, until at some point next year, when we'll just swap to the new engine altogether, as maintaining both versions of the game will mostly be a waste of time once they're unrecognizable from one another.
Our first version of the new engine was literally 10 times more performing than the current one, but the game physics behaved in a very realistic way compared to the arcade-y nature of the original, so during the summer we started over and focused on fidelity rather than performance. So, while the gain in performance is not as significant as x10 anymore, we're still getting overall better performance, improved hardware compatibility, and more options.
DLC and updates
During the summer we started to talk about DLC internally and I would usually go for "4 characters, 8 weapons, and 1 simple stage", only to end up with our first DLC having double the characters (starting to see a pattern here?), 13 weapons, and 1 stage that is all but simple compared to the others. I was absolutely terrified to launch it since it wass the first completely new thing we put up for sale, but once again reception was mindblowing and we got flooded by positive feedback, so thank you once again for making it a success!
We also had a hype trailer for the DLC where we wanted the animated sequence to be a surprise for the fans, so, to great horror of the marketing team, we put it at the end rather than the start of the footage, hope you've enjoyed it!
If you like this kind of content packs, then there will be more coming. Please remember that DLCs will only ever add more characters/weapons/stages and that the main game will keep getting updated regularly with main game mechanics and content (think Tiny Bridge-style patches) so that no key-feature will ever be gatekept by a paywall.
Since the last few months were mental with v1.0, Xbox, mobile, and the DLC, please expect patches to be released at a slower pace compared to 2022, as we have to swap to a more sustainable release pipeline and also coordinate patches between a lot of platforms, not to say that, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, we now have 2 different versions of the game to maintain.
What's next?
There's a lot of stuff, not exclusively related to Vampire Survivors, getting made behind the scenes in poncle đ There's something weird and big (in terms of pixels) coming soon to the Steam public-beta, and since the Legacy of the Moonspell DLC has been a success, The Directer will soon offer to take the survivors to yet another world in search for the vampire... Do you have any suggestions where to try next? The ride only ends when you decide to get off! Or we find a vampire I guess.
Thank you all once again and see you in the next run!
- Luca & poncle (including the marketing team)
Please vote for Vampire Survivors for best Game on the Go at the Steam Awards!
Fangs to our incredible community
(AKA you!!)
Vampire Survivors has been nominated for Best Game On The Go at the Steam Awards. Everyone here at Survivors HQ would like to send out a huge thank you to those who helped us get the nomination.
It would be a huge honor and also quite funny if we won the top prize, so please consider choosing us â the polls are open now!
Itâs been a real rollercoaster ride since we launched into Early Access, and we reckon a Steam award would be the perfect way to cap off this wild year. If this game has helped you Survive the last 12 months, weâd love to have your vote. Please tell your friends, family and local creatures of the night to vote as well.
Okay, enough from us for now. As always, we thank you đ Team poncle
DLC & Patch 1.2.0
New Content
- 1 new very important skin for Peppino
Tweaks
- added option to toggle maxed power ups - when treasure chests are skippable, coin-only treasure chests will now just play a quick in-game animation - treasure chests containing Arcanas have a different colour - fix for overall kill count breaking on modded/corrupted saves - fixed infinitely bouncing Carrello - minor fixes in bestiary - removed Floor Chicken requirement for Marrabbio - fixed non-looping music tracks: Castle People and I'm Every Reaper - added support for DLC - coffins will now spawn on maps even if you don't have the Milky Way Map - pause menu map is now zoomed-in in Moongolow, The Bone Zone, and Mt.Moonspell
Content: - 1 new large stage, with different enemies spawning in different zones - 8 new characters - 13 new weapons and evolutions - 6 new music tracks
How to start the DLC? If the Inlaid Library is unlocked, then the new stage will appear right away in the Stage Selection menu. You'll see 17 new entries in the Unlocks menu to guide you through the rest of the content.
What if I want everything unlocked from the start? There are Secret Spells you can use to unlock the content quickly.
There is no DLC when I start the game Please make sure you're on game version 1.2, as older versions won't detect the content pack. Closing and reopening Steam to trigger an update should do the trick!
Will the game keep receiving free updates and content? Yes, DLCs will always be purely extra content in terms of Stages, Monsters, Weapons, Characters etc. Items, Power-ups, game mechanics and more will continue to be added to the base game, so if you don't pick up the DLC you don't have to fear missing out. We'll keep having free updates like the Tiny Bridge one for example.
Is there an evolution for 108 Bocce? No, it's supposed to be a very straightforward weapon. Never say never though...
Will the new music tracks be available in the Soundtrack? Yes! Please keep an eye on the devlog in Discord to know when the soundtrack will be updated, otherwise it might take a while before we get the chance to let people know through Steam News.
Does the DLC have achievements? Yes, we keep having in-game unlocks tied to platform achievements. We asked for support and we tried to separate them somehow (even the hacky ways...) but there isn't a reliable way to do it at the moment. If we'll ever get the option to separate achievement lists in the future, rest assured we will!
Is the DLC available on other platforms? Yes, but not on mobile yet, that will be something for ealy next year as we figure out how to make it available in a fair way.
Why only $1.99? The community is as usual very kind and we get a lot of this type of comments, some intended just as a compliment, some are actually serious. While I'm very grateful for the sentiment, just like for the main game, the DLC has a price that "feels right" to me and that reflects the production value of it.
For the past few months and for the DLC, we had amazing artists like Glauber Kotaki and Pitavant for the new graphics, Daniele Zandara and his new bangers with live recordings, that little surprise in the DLC trailer, a whole company to sustain to be able to launch on all current platforms, and yet poncle still needs time (and key people!) to be able to provide a higher production value. For the DLC I still had to fill some gaps by using asset packs for example, so a low price, and frequent discounts, simply seem fair. We'll charge more for new stuff when we'll have something even better to offer, don't worry and thank you once again! đ
Hope you have fun with the DLC, and if not, please send us some feedback, thank you!
Vampire Survivors: Legacy Of The Moonspell DLC comes to Steam on December 15th
Step into the light, Survivor. Prepare to enter a new chapter in the Vampire Survivors story, as youâre thrust into the world of Moonveil in Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell.
The Moonspell clan has fallen, overrun by vicious oni and yokai that have torn through the lands like teeth through skin. In a haven of the living dead, the Survivors have caught wind that a vampire may be in these lands, and with the sun forever set there's never a better time to begin the hunt.
The oni and yokai arenât the only thing that can be vicious however, as a group of new Survivors enters the fray armed to the (pointy?) teeth with new weapons and new evolutions to cut this evil down.
Vampire Survivors: Legacy Of The Moonspell contains:
8 never seen before characters
A Brand new stage. Our biggest yet, filled with several environments which also feature unique monsters
13 powerful new weapons with Evolutions for you to discover
6 brand new music tracks
December 15th - $1.99 / âŹ1.99 / ÂŁ1.59
You can wishlist Vampire Survivors: Legacy Of The Moonspell now by clicking the link below.
Will the main game still receive free updates? Yes!
The reason we're adding DLC's is so that we can theme them around certain settings, as you'll discover in Legacy of the Moonspell. It allows us to explore new settings and create some cohesion between the base game and the DLC's. DLC's will always be purely extra content in terms of Stages, Monsters, Weapons, Characters etc. Items, Power-ups, game mechanics and more will continue to be added to the base game, so if you don't pick up the DLC you don't have to fear missing out.
Does the DLC have achievements? What about my 100%! Yes!
Legacy of the Moonspell comes with a set of achievements. This does however mean that your 100% achievements will be reduced again (we're sorry). At the current time, Steam counts all achievements for DLC's in to the base game 100% unlock, but we're looking at any way to change this so if you don't own the DLC, your 100% unlock will remain.
Only 1 Stage? Yes!
Mt. Moonspell is 25 times bigger than other maps in Vampire Survivors, and that's a whole lot of map to explore! We wanted to add more exploration, reasons to head in every direction, and give you more ways to discover your new favorite XP spots, monster farms and places to hang out for 20 to 30 minutes.
Give me secrets This one's a yes, and a no.
There are no secrets in Legacy of the Moonspell for now, as we don't want to cut people out of the secrets discovery. There are only so many secrets we can put into the base game though, so going forward we might add some unique secrets to the DLC, but it will be very dependant on community feedback!
Patch 1.1.0
New Content
- 2 Extra Achievements - 1 new Power Up - 1 new Challenge Stage - 1 new Secret âĄ
Tiny Bridge Challenge stage: - Obtain by reaching Level 80 in Inverse Gallo Tower
Seal PowerUp: - 10 ranks - base price: 10.000 - Obtain by banishing 10 or more items in a single run. - Allows to Banish an item from level up choices, or a pickup from light sources. Use in COLLECTION menu.
When Sealing a weapon, it will be automatically added to the list of banished weapons at the start of a run. When Sealing an item, the item will not be removed from the loot table, but will turn into a Gold Coin instead, which means this does not affect standard drop rates.
___ Also, sorry for the extra achievements ruining your completion rate, most players seem to be in favor of having them so I took the opportunity to add more. The best I could come up with to make them feel less of a "must have" is to tag them as EXTRA achievements.
Nominate us for the Best Game on the Go Steam Award - make your voice heard now!
Weâre coming to the end of a crazy year here at Vampire Survivors HQ. A huge thank you once again to all the players who turned this little weekend project into an insane success. We owe it all to you, for real.
Today the annual Steam Awards nominations opened up the floor for fans to put their favourite games into the running. We think it would be really funny if we were named in one of the categories with our silly game. If you enjoyed Vampire Survivors and want to help out, please vote for us in the âBest Game on the Goâ category (especially if you enjoyed the game on Steam Deck or your laptop). And if you happen to absolutely LOVE us on your desktop and havenât taken us on an adventure with you, please consider nominating us in the âGame of the Yearâ category.
Please note that each player can only nominate us in one category. If youâre not sure which to pick, please go for âBest Game on the Goâ as we think thatâs where weâve got the best shot!
Thank you so much. Keep on Vampire Surviving!
1.0.114 - Bugfixes & tweaks
1.0.105 - fix for black screen in event stage 1.0.106 - fix for item descriptions on multiple lines, text update 1.0.107 - fix for the extra screen in the inverse library appearing too often 1.0.108 - lowered volume of Side B music tracks 1.0.109 - tentative fix for black screen in new event stage (please try to swap to your main graphic card if it still happens) , text update, Mirror/Trumpet achievement fix on starting up the game 1.0.110 - Steam data migration process updated 1.0.111 - fix for BGM selection getting locked when entering special menus, fix for Drowner not appearing in the bestiary, hidden some unlocks until they're actually obtainable 1.0.112 - Tweaked Twitch events - Twitch level up countdown timer starts when the first messsage is received - Fixed stage modifiers to work with the new system - Fixed bounding box of a couple of characters - Improved loading times of the pause menu (still WIP) - Fixed double egg removal in final stage 1.0.113 - fixed fonts for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages - fixed controller input in Stage Selection - removed Orologions from certain boss fights - fix for game crashing with certain modded or corrupted saves - added Sketamari in Bestiary - tentative fix to Golden Eggs memory leak 1.0.114 - added some silly spell codes including spoopyseason : activates alternative skins for Mortaccio, Yatta Cavallo, Bianca Ramba, O'Sole Meeo, and their starting weapons until the game is rebooted.
Patch 1.0
New Content
- 3 achievements to fix existing unlocks: Complete any 30 minutes stage with Gallo or Divano. [Unlocks: Bracelet] Discover every standard evolution and union. [Unlocks: Candybox] Evolve the Bracelet and then the Bi-Bracelet. [Unlocks: 500 gold]
- 4 new achievements: Find all the relics from all stages. [Unlocks stage: Eudaimonia M.] Obtain Gracia's Mirror. [Unlocks: Inverse Mode] Obtain the Seventh Trumpet. [Unlocks: Endless Mode] See the final fireworks. [Unlocks: Greatest Jubilee]
- 1 new event stage
- 1 new weapon
- New skins for: Pugnala, Giovanna, Poppea, Concetta, and Mask of the Red Death.
- New "Side B" soundtrack. Every Side B track unlocks together with the stage it belongs to.
- New option for "blast processed" sound effects.
- Added missing music tracks for Il Molise (and Boss Rash in 0.11.400)
- Added Twitch integration: the chat makes decisions for you and triggers special events. Enable in Options by typing in the chat's name, no need to login or doing anything weird.
INVERSE MODE - Stages layout is upside down (can be disabled in Options) plus minor visual changes depending on stage. - Gold gains are increased by 200%. Luck bonus of 20%. - Enemies start with +200% Max Health. - Enemies gain 5% Max Health every minute and and 1% movement speed every 2 minutes (cumulative with the Bone Zone enemy bonuses). - The merchant also sells: Skip, Banish, and Reroll (can carry up to 20) and 1 extra Arcana.
ENDLESS MODE - The Reaper won't spawn at the final minute. - Reaching the final minute of a stage will make the enemy waves to restart from minute 0, completing a "cycle". - Enemies gain 100% of their base Max Health per cycle. - Enemies spawn frequency and amount is increased by 50% per cycle. - Enemies deal 25% more damage per cycle. The player's max damage cap is diminished by 1 per cycle. - The merchant respawns on every cycle and sells "+1 Revival" instead of Golden Eggs.
Achievement Tweaks: - Reduced level requirements for character achievements (reach LV 100 is now LV80, reach LV99 is now reach LV50) - Mindbender now unlocks at 50 COLLECTION items instead of 100
Tweaks: - New UI to show what relics are available in each stage - New UI to show what stages have been cleared for each character (plus option to turn it off) - New UI option to lock the selection of a music track so it persists between runs - Each rank in Banish and Reroll now grants 2 of them instead of 1. - Picking up an Orologion also slows down Gold Fever decay by 50% - Lightning Ring and Thunderloop are now affected by Arcana II - Twilight Requiem - Bracelet is now affected by arcana XIV - Jail of Crystal. Bi-Bracelet is also affected by Arcana II - Twilight Requiem. Tri-Bracelet is also affected by Arcana XIX - Heart of Fire - Reduced Sketamari's HP recovery when absorbing other skeletons. - Increased XP gain in the early minutes of the Dairy Plant. - Increased base gold amount in treasure chests. - "Recovery" stat now also affects the potency of health recovery pickups. - Arcana II - Twilight Requiem's explosions damage is now affected by Curse. - "quick start" now becomes available after unlocking the 5 main stages. - Capped all Limit break bonuses other than Might (this in particular is very open to suggestions in case it makes sense to increase some caps)
Quick walkthrough for players who already have everything from 0.11 and want all the new v1.0 content asap
1)On opening the game, you should automatically get the new Achievement "The Eudaimonia Machine". If not, make sure you're not missing any relic from 0.11, then enter and exit a run. The achievement will unlock a new event stage. 2)Enter the new stage "Eudaimonia M." and do stuff. 3)Enter and exit any stage while using the option you have unlocked in step 2. 4)Go back to "Eudaimonia M." and do stuff. 5)Enter and exit any stage while using the option you have unlocked in step 4. 6)Go back to "Eudaimonia M." and do stuff.
Twitch Mode Details
Currently requires a physical keyboard to be set up.
To enable Twitch mode, go to Options from the main menu, type your Twitch channel name in the text box and click the Twitch connect button.
From now on, level up decisions will be made by the Twitch chat by typing a number from 1 to 7, depending on the options available on the level up screen. Viewers will also be able to choose special commands like Reroll and Banish:
In the second half of every minute, the chat will also be able to vote on what special event will happen at the start of the next minute by typing a,b, or c. This vote is secret and the results are revealed only when the next minute ticks:
Playing in Hurry mode also allows the chat to trigger events every 30 seconds instead than every minute. (It is not possible to change position of the Twitch Selection panel at this time, but suggestions are welcome)
No beta?
To avoid spoilers, the new content of v1.0 hasn't been through the usual public-beta process, so please feel free to highlight any problems, frustrations, or balancing issues about the new mechanics in the Discord or in the Steam forum so we can improve on those :)
What's next
Vampire Survivors started as a "simple gameplay base that I could use to have fun making content for over the weekends", and despite all the changes that happened over the past year, that original vision of a simple canvas at which to throw everything including the kitchen sink has never really changed. Well, that "over the weekends" turned into "in any waking hour", but the rest is still valid :) For that reason we'll be done with VS for real only once I - or you - get tired of it.
We'll probably start developing something new in poncle, but support for VS will also carry on. As anticipated in the v1.0 announcement, weâll need to do some QOL improvements on niche mechanics like Eggs and Limit Break, plus finishing the engine port. But brand new features are also in the works⌠đ
A huge thank you once again to all the players who turned this little weekend project into an insane success! đ
Road to v1.0: Day 13
We're almost there! One last small update before v1.0 release day, with the new skin for Concetta Caciotta!
We have changed the Save Data system several times during development: VS seems to be very portable so people have been playing it on multiple devices, which is a situation that my initial naive approach to save data wasn't ready to handle. If you want to be ready for v1.0, I'd suggest to launch the game right now, as it will already take care of migrating your save data to the latest version. If there are problems, please use Lucy's guide to save data recovery: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2847140637 If that's not enough, please drop us an email at support@poncle.net and we'll do our best.
I know the importance of preserving save data: my 100 hours Pokemon Blue save file has been overwritten by a friend 24 years ago. As you can see, I'm totally over it.
Yes, yes, there's another music track as usual, Side B of the Boss Rash!
