Vampire Cralwers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors is a dungeon -crawling deckbuilder from indie dev poncle. Read our review of its Steam Next Fest Demo to see if it’s worth checking out!
Everything We Know About Vampire Crawlers
Vampire Crawlers Story
At the time of writing, Vampire Crawlers does not have a story or narrative revealed, but has been confirmed to be set in the same universe as Vampire Survivors. We’ll update this article with more information about the game’s story once it’s available. Stay tuned!
Vampire Crawlers Gameplay
Vampire Crawlers is a first-person RPG deckbuilder with roguelite and dungeon-crawling elements. Described as a "Turbo Wildcard", Vampire Crawlers highlights its fast–paced card battles and enemy encounters, utilizing a unique combo system to double each card’s effects by playing them in sequence.
Players collect various weapons and equipment by exploring a procedurally-generated, retro-style dungeon, and upgrading them with unique gems to change their properties. Combat encounters resolve as players use their cards to take down enemies, earning new loot by levelling up, and proceeding to the next floor to repeat the cycle until they reach the final floor.
Collected gold can be used in the game’s hub world, "The Village", to unlock passive stat improvements, new mechanics, and new crawlers to accompany them on their next expedition.
The demo only includes the first two dungeons and three crawlers for players to unlock. We’ll update this article with more information on the game’s various mechanics once it’s available. Stay tuned.
Releases on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and Mobile in 2026
Although an official release date is yet to be revealed, the game’s official website has confirmed that Vampire Crawlers will be released on Steam, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox Store, the Nintendo eShop, Google Play, and the Apple App Store.
| Digital Storefronts | ||||||||
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 Steam |
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 Xbox |
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| Wishlist Only |  eShop |
 Google Play |
 App Store |
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| Coming Soon | ||||||||
Vampire Crawlers Review [Early Access]
Redefining Limits for Deckbuilders Everywhere
It takes a lot to define a whole genre of video games, but indie dev poncle not only managed to do so once, but may also be in the process of doing so a second time with the release of their demo for Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors. Though quite the mouthful in name, 2021’s Vampire Survivors was iconic enough to warrant being touted by another game in such a way, and Vampire Crawlers itself is looking like it might be just as good.
There’s innovative game design and great potential abound for this game, so let’s see what exactly makes this unexpected follow-up tick.
Crawling Through Dungeons Like Its Zelda
If you’ve ever played a retro-style dungeon crawler, then you’ve pretty much got half of Vampire Crawler’s schtick down already. The game plays like an NES classic, down to the directionally fixed movement and simple point-and-click selection controls for your cards. Movement is grid-based and viewed from a first-person POV, and each run is separated into different levels with a boss monster waiting at the end of each. As I’ve described it, this game sounds like a blast for the nostalgics, but from this point onward, it’s all new and excellent ideas from the genius who brought us the original bullet heaven.
Deckbuilding You’ve Never Seen Before
Let’s talk cards, because that pretty much encompasses the other half of Vampire Crawlers. If the RPG movement and stylings made you think this game was anything like an RPG, you’d be dead wrong, because this game is a deckbuilder through and through. Though you get around a dungeon the same way someone like classic Link would, you fight by using a series of special cards drawn from your deck.
Each card comes with a mana cost, an effect, and some keywords, and playing them is as simple as clicking them. So far, so Slay the Spire. The first thing you’ll notice about the cards, though, is that they’re a bit cheap and simple. That’s par for the course for starting cards in any deckbuilder—a strike here, a defend there, some status effects—but as you keep playing, you’ll realize that things don’t really get much more complex than dealing and preventing damage directly to your opponents.
So what gives? See, the special thing about this game’s card system isn’t in the cards, it’s in how you play them. To be more specific, it’s in what order you play the cards in an encounter. Vampire Crawlers operates on a combo-based card system that cares more about fast, efficient plays over complex effects that encompass a whole fight. This is achieved through a special quirk that each card has, where playing a card of a certain cost multiplies the effect of the next one, if it costs exactly one more than the last.
It’s a daunting system at first, but it plays quickly and is far more intuitive than words could convey without an example, so here’s one. Take the simple Knife card that starts in most starter decks. It costs 0 and deals 40 damage, spread across a whole row of enemies. If you play it, then the next card, the King James Bible, a 1-cost card that normally deals 40 damage, will instead deal 80 damage spread across the row.
If you have the mana, you can follow that up with the 2-cost Axe card that normally deals 45 damage, but should now deal 135 because of the triple multiplier. If somehow you have a card that costs 3 and the mana to cast it, congrats, it’s now quadrupled in damage and/or effect. Play any card with a cost not in that ascending order, though, and it’s goodbye multiplier. This does restart your combo, though, so if there’s another card in your hand that can continue it, it’ll climb back up again.
As you can imagine, this simple yet rewarding system can get pretty ridiculous really quickly. Multipliers rarely get higher than quadruple due to the nature of most cards, but multiple completed and restarted combos can be done from the same hand if you know how to juggle them. A hand of two 0-cost and two 1-cost cards can activate a double combo twice, for example.
And with the simplicity of the cards, you can just go absolutely ham on the speed of your run, slinging cards left and right as your enemies melt into goo. It’s actually incredibly satisfying, and is every bit the horde-killing experience as the original Vampire Survivors was.
It’s a tad bold to declare as such, but I’ve the feeling that we’re seeing a repeat of history here. In the same way the Survivors made bullet heaven from bullet hell, we might see Crawlers redefine what it means to be a deckbuilder pretty soon. There’s no telling what potential this game has on release, but I can tell it’s a lot, and that’s not even with the game’s progression system in mind yet.
Levelling Up to Get That Engine Going
Now, obviously, a few cards, no matter how often multiplied, probably won’t bag you a won run, so you’ve got to level up a few times before you fight the end-of-level boss. Killing monsters rewards you with EXP, and earning enough levels you up, offering you a new card from a selection of 3-4.
And yes, your eyes don’t deceive you. Those cards you’re getting? Those are all items from Vampire Survivors. They don’t operate exactly as they did in that game, obviously, but the adaptation from "things you chuck at mummies" to well-designed cards is rather impressive.
You can also earn Gems from level-ups, which are powerful upgrades that you can attach to a card to improve its effects. These gems offer game-changing buffs to cards that turn their already high scalability into downright nuclear. Some gems double card effects at a baseline, while others offer new effects like burn damage, armor, or even card draw. These are permanent, though, so be careful where you put those things.
Together with the card and dungeon crawl systems, this loop of killing, levelling, improving, and exploring becomes very addictive very fast. The "turbo wildcard" portion of the title may have contributed to its really long name, but it’s a very apt description for the experience Vampire Crawlers provides.
Borrowed Assets from Original
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially since poncle owns Vampire Survivors, but Vampire Crawlers does reuse a lot of that game’s assets for its own. Soem examples include almost all of the pixel art sprites for cards and crawlers, enemies, bosses, and backgrounds. This is just a demo, so some recycling and cutting corners are to be expected—if this isn’t the final vision for Vampire Crawlers, that is—so I’ll give it a pass for the time being.
Most noticeably borrowed from the first game is the Crawler’s metagame progression, which is as simple as buying permanent stat upgrades using the gold you earn from a run. It gets more and more expensive per buff the more you buy, so that’s a natural way to move forward, even if the last run ended in shambles.
I would’ve appreciated something new, even if the adaptation from one game to another was very solid. It feels like a rearranged version of Vampire Survivors at the moment, but, again, early concepts will eventually give way to better things as development continues. I just wish I didn’t have to wait so long.
No Story Yet, Not That You’d Need It
As you may have expected, there isn’t much of a story to be had for this demo, as it’s limited to just the first two maps. Granted, Survivors didn’t have much of a story either, but it did have some lore to read into tucked behind the hordes of medusa. I don’t expect Crawlers to differ in that regard once it does get a story in place. Until then, I’ll just crawl these dungeons for no discernible reason, not that there’s anything wrong with that anyway.
Top Tier, as far as Demos Go
In conclusion, Vampire Crawlers is a top-tier demo of a game that has the potential to redefine yet another genre. Whereas Vampire Survivors redefined bullet hell by turning it on its head, Vampire Crawlers might be the one to give deckbuilders a run for their money when it comes out.
It plays like nothing else, is exhilarating to boot, and has all the novelty you could expect from someone like poncle. It has enough replayability now that it’s just a stub of its full self; imagine what it’ll be like when it arrives.
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Vampire Crawlers Product Information
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| Title | VAMPIRE CRAWLERS: THE TURBO WILDCARD FROM VAMPIRE SURVIVORS |
|---|---|
| Release Date | 2026 |
| Developer | poncle |
| Publisher | poncle |
| Supported Platforms | Steam |
| Genre | RPG, Strategy, Roogulite, Indie |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Vampire Crawlers Official Website |
