Vampire Crawlers just got announced during the November 2025 Xbox Partner Preview! Read on to learn more about the game and the announcement.
Vampire Survivors Spin-Off, Vampire Crawlers, is a First-Person Deckbuilder
Sink Your Teeth Into Vampire Crawlers in 2026
The team behind cult hit Vampire Survivors, Italian developers Poncle, has officially announced Vampire Crawlers, a spin-off of the "reverse bullet hell" original, during the November 2025 Xbox Partner Preview. It is set to release in 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2.
Although it shares the Vampire Survivors name and universe, Poncle’s CEO Luca Galante repeatedly clarifies that this is not the next mainline sequel. It is, in his words, "just a spin-off of Vampire Survivors – hopefully the first in a series of spin-offs!" The rationale, he told Xbox Wire, is to apply the "core pillars" that defined Survivors: "accessibility, immediacy, affordability, replayability, and sparkly stuff. Tons of sparkly stuff!"
In practical terms, players will explore dungeons from a first-person perspective and build decks of attack and utility cards while mowing down waves upon waves of monsters. Galante describes it as a game where you can go "slowly or as fast as you prefer." In other words, players can go "turbo" and "play cards as fast as you humanly can," or "take your time and be tactical," the game’s engine supports both.
It’ll have a "mana combo" system. Here, players are expected to chain cards in ascending mana values to trigger strong effects with each step. When cards played follow the correct sequence, the next card in the chain will have a bigger payoff, so its gameplay loop revolves around building and executing these combos.
Poncle began laying the groundwork for Vampire Crawlers shortly after Vampire Survivors blew up. They worked through several prototype ideas before settling on its current form. "It is something that has effectively been in the works for almost 4 years," Galante said.
As for what ties it back to the original, fans won’t feel totally unmoored. Familiar weapons and the irreverent humor of Vampire Survivors appears to still be present. However, there is a shift in presentation, as this is now a first-person dungeon-crawler instead of a 2D auto-shooter.
Unlike Vampire Survivors, which originally launched in Early Access and evolved over time, Vampire Crawlers will release as a full game, though Galante confirmed, "we actually have a lot of ideas to expand the game even further, so we’ll keep supporting the game for several months after launch [...] We’ll leave it to community to tell us if they want even more, and what they actually want from it going forward."
Vampire Crawlers will release in 2026, and "Xbox Game Pass Premium or ultimate" subscribers will be able to get their hands on it on day one at no additional cost. For those, however, who want to sink their teeth into more of the original game, Galante did tease that "with regards to a sequel to Vampire Survivors, we’re working on something, but we’re not talking about that just yet."
Sources:
Xbox | Vampire Crawlers coming day one with Xbox Game Pass in 2026 | Xbox Partner Preview 2025
