Like the games I secretly played in the elementary school computer lab before realizing I could just bring Halo’s PC demo on a USB stick.
Feels like a game you would accidentally find in your cool aunt's computer in the 90s.
This is just a pacifier for adults
This is like fine.
Big number go up idle game type beat and there are games I find that do it better but its still got likeable charm, loads of content and is a fun couple of hours. Idk how much longer I'm gonna play it but it's alright.
I don't really see the GOTY praise at all this has been getting from some but it's a fun time killer.
Big number go up idle game type beat and there are games I find that do it better but its still got likeable charm, loads of content and is a fun couple of hours. Idk how much longer I'm gonna play it but it's alright.
I don't really see the GOTY praise at all this has been getting from some but it's a fun time killer.
dopamine feels good and this is one of my STRONGEST dealers
there is a constant sense of progression, it's really well done i ADORE this game
there is a constant sense of progression, it's really well done i ADORE this game
This game is like a clingy romantic partner. At first you're like yeah, sure let's go we can hang out all night; after a couple weeks you're like hey don't you have somewhere to be.
Then sometimes, in shameful nighttime moments, you're like hey baby, come on over, no sorry you can't stay I have work in the morning.
Then sometimes, in shameful nighttime moments, you're like hey baby, come on over, no sorry you can't stay I have work in the morning.
Pasqualina, you have to stop. You smoke too tough. Your swag too different. Your bitch is too bad. They'll kill you
This is it? This is the game that I saw break the website in two for a short bit???
Ok being real I don’t like this game, breaking a game down to its most basic mechanics and just having it be a “watch the numbers go up” stuff is fine for like a time waster games but I saw so much praise and pure vile hatred flung at this game and even after playing it I’m just confused on why people would even get as mad at this game as they did. So I got super bored and decided to just play it for myself to get a better understanding of what people were even talking about.
Is this one of the best games of last year…..eh….that’s really a person by person thing, personally I’d say hell no since this is as basic as a video game can by; it’s pure ADHD filled gunk all the way down with every little for me to chew on besides lore pages which read are fffffine, very gay and I mean that in a good way; but I’m dyslexic as fuck so when it comes to lore I’d much rather you have it implemented into the pre-existing world and have people figure it out along the way like Dark Crystal or Zeno Clash, or just have it slowly unfold itself on to the player as they explore it more and meet more of it’s world like Mass Effect or Lord of the Rings, in compersion to just have some poor underpaid intern just write page after page of lore for a world and characters that look like NFTs. The sprites are fine but too static for my taste, most of the background are also static and super plane; I guess it’s to make it easier when all the enemies just bum rush you but I just think it looks to dull, and the whole upgrading system during the game is actually just pure dopamine rushes and I still don’t know if I like it or not; on the one hand it make my ADD happy and it’s fun to look at the pretty colors, on the other hand half the time I feel like I’m looking at a slot machine and I feel gross and nasty just thinking about the weird manipulative dopamine tactics I can feel oozing out of the look boxes you find.
Overall I can understand why people would play this over and over again and enjoy every second of it. I just couldn’t get into it mostly because I like my games to have substance like a hooking narrative or fun evolving gameplay. I’ll still never understand people who have this weird hatred for this game though.
LIke I get where people are coming from when they say this game is really bad and it’s a pure nothing of a video game once you break it down but like……it’s not like it’s trying to be much else. It’s a time waster game that cost 5 bucks; what else were you expecting? Like is this really the hill you wanna die on? Do you wanna die on the hill calling forth a game that is about on the same level as shit like cookie clicker? While I don’t personally like games like this I’m not gonna get mad over it and more importantly feel as though people or REALLY like the game are wrong in some way, to me these are just junk food games that you play when you don’t wanna think and you just wanna fiddle with you hand while on a call in discord or something I can think of FAR worse game you could do that with (I’ve been doing it with Mafia 3 and I’ve hated every second of it, idk why I keep playing it but I have). I didn’t want to turn this last bit into a gamer rant so I’ll just leave it at let people play what they wanna play, and hate on the game just because the writer of the game is Jim Stephanie Sterling, that’s just poorly masking your transphobia and they get enough shit from gamers already so like please just leave them alone and stop stalking them on twitter thinking you owned them by calling them a man; you didn’t do jack shit that just makes you very cringe and gay.
Ok being real I don’t like this game, breaking a game down to its most basic mechanics and just having it be a “watch the numbers go up” stuff is fine for like a time waster games but I saw so much praise and pure vile hatred flung at this game and even after playing it I’m just confused on why people would even get as mad at this game as they did. So I got super bored and decided to just play it for myself to get a better understanding of what people were even talking about.
Is this one of the best games of last year…..eh….that’s really a person by person thing, personally I’d say hell no since this is as basic as a video game can by; it’s pure ADHD filled gunk all the way down with every little for me to chew on besides lore pages which read are fffffine, very gay and I mean that in a good way; but I’m dyslexic as fuck so when it comes to lore I’d much rather you have it implemented into the pre-existing world and have people figure it out along the way like Dark Crystal or Zeno Clash, or just have it slowly unfold itself on to the player as they explore it more and meet more of it’s world like Mass Effect or Lord of the Rings, in compersion to just have some poor underpaid intern just write page after page of lore for a world and characters that look like NFTs. The sprites are fine but too static for my taste, most of the background are also static and super plane; I guess it’s to make it easier when all the enemies just bum rush you but I just think it looks to dull, and the whole upgrading system during the game is actually just pure dopamine rushes and I still don’t know if I like it or not; on the one hand it make my ADD happy and it’s fun to look at the pretty colors, on the other hand half the time I feel like I’m looking at a slot machine and I feel gross and nasty just thinking about the weird manipulative dopamine tactics I can feel oozing out of the look boxes you find.
Overall I can understand why people would play this over and over again and enjoy every second of it. I just couldn’t get into it mostly because I like my games to have substance like a hooking narrative or fun evolving gameplay. I’ll still never understand people who have this weird hatred for this game though.
LIke I get where people are coming from when they say this game is really bad and it’s a pure nothing of a video game once you break it down but like……it’s not like it’s trying to be much else. It’s a time waster game that cost 5 bucks; what else were you expecting? Like is this really the hill you wanna die on? Do you wanna die on the hill calling forth a game that is about on the same level as shit like cookie clicker? While I don’t personally like games like this I’m not gonna get mad over it and more importantly feel as though people or REALLY like the game are wrong in some way, to me these are just junk food games that you play when you don’t wanna think and you just wanna fiddle with you hand while on a call in discord or something I can think of FAR worse game you could do that with (I’ve been doing it with Mafia 3 and I’ve hated every second of it, idk why I keep playing it but I have). I didn’t want to turn this last bit into a gamer rant so I’ll just leave it at let people play what they wanna play, and hate on the game just because the writer of the game is Jim Stephanie Sterling, that’s just poorly masking your transphobia and they get enough shit from gamers already so like please just leave them alone and stop stalking them on twitter thinking you owned them by calling them a man; you didn’t do jack shit that just makes you very cringe and gay.
Not really sure of too many other games of this style to feel as if each unlock you get after a point outright worsens the experience but I genuinely feel like after a certain point, the fun of this game just entirely dries out due to having too many ways to essentially be able to "solve" what RNG is present here. The first few hours here are honestly pretty neat, having a lot of different elements of discovery all wrapped up with a game that's fun in a "numbers go up" sort of way, with a selection of upgrades that you need to vaguely strategise about which ones you take to balance between offence and defence while practically constantly unlocking new stuff to mess about with as well.
While basically none of these individual elements really call for you to majorly change how you approach the game, there's still some appeal in both mowing down thousands of enemies while also constantly upgrading in some attempt to last that bit longer, sometimes having to compromise your ideal loadout for what would be convenient at the time. Unfortunately, it really doesn't take long to unlock the vast majority of the weapons and upgrades in the game and once you do you end up realising that there are very few of them to the point where getting your "perfect run" once you've picked up a few permanent upgrades is basically a given, which is made even worse with the way that basically all of the weapons you get in this, especially later on, are things that require minimal player input to actually utilise, turning a lot of lategame scenarios into standing around for 15 minutes watching colours and numbers flashing across the screen while doing literally nothing other than very occasionally walking a few steps so a boss enemy doesn't kill you.
The first couple of times this happens it's pretty cool, since there's a lot of appeal in completely breaking these games wide open, but the magic is lost in this case when basically EVERY run ends up becoming like it as long as you evolve a couple of weapons, which is basically bound to happen. It's made even easier with the amount of different ways you can control the RNG the game has, and while boosting your odds through these sorts of methods can be pretty interesting usually, the amount of these avenues provided to you ends up entirely trivialising one of the main dynamics of the game that was engaging in itself, as now it's very simple to just entirely what you control on any given run without any real thought or skill involved in the process. If provided a loadout you needed to follow to the T, it's something that any average player could do basically every time without fail once you've gotten a few rerolls, banishes and skips, and once this point has been hit, all sense of variety becomes deeply artificial since it ends up wholly relying on the player to engage with it in any sort of way, which doesn't really work when so many weapons don't require the player themselves to do anything particularly different with how they approach it.
In a game that so strongly encourages optimisation of your build to be able to dish out increasingly ridiculous, screen clearing attacks, making said optimisation so simple and effective always feels like a bit of an odd decision, especially since that seems to just further discourage actually using different things once you've found something that seems to just obliterate everything. For a game that tries so hard to make for an experience that just bombards the player nonstop with increasingly flashy effects and the like, actually hitting the stage where this occurs feels exponentially less rewarding with each new tool in your arsenal when it ends up feeling like a totally solved game that's so easy to work out how to solve it, until it really just becomes an exercise in standing 100% still for extended periods of time to unlock the final batch of upgrades that feel entirely meaningless at that point since you've already got everything that lets you win without a reason to ever use anything else. Despite all of this I don't think the game is entirely worthless or anything like that either, as the first part of the game where you're building up to the first couple of fully broken runs is a fun time that kept me fully engaged, it's just that anything past that point starts getting really repetitive and hollow to me, despite the fact that there's still a bunch of content the game wants you to get through at the point this happens.
While basically none of these individual elements really call for you to majorly change how you approach the game, there's still some appeal in both mowing down thousands of enemies while also constantly upgrading in some attempt to last that bit longer, sometimes having to compromise your ideal loadout for what would be convenient at the time. Unfortunately, it really doesn't take long to unlock the vast majority of the weapons and upgrades in the game and once you do you end up realising that there are very few of them to the point where getting your "perfect run" once you've picked up a few permanent upgrades is basically a given, which is made even worse with the way that basically all of the weapons you get in this, especially later on, are things that require minimal player input to actually utilise, turning a lot of lategame scenarios into standing around for 15 minutes watching colours and numbers flashing across the screen while doing literally nothing other than very occasionally walking a few steps so a boss enemy doesn't kill you.
The first couple of times this happens it's pretty cool, since there's a lot of appeal in completely breaking these games wide open, but the magic is lost in this case when basically EVERY run ends up becoming like it as long as you evolve a couple of weapons, which is basically bound to happen. It's made even easier with the amount of different ways you can control the RNG the game has, and while boosting your odds through these sorts of methods can be pretty interesting usually, the amount of these avenues provided to you ends up entirely trivialising one of the main dynamics of the game that was engaging in itself, as now it's very simple to just entirely what you control on any given run without any real thought or skill involved in the process. If provided a loadout you needed to follow to the T, it's something that any average player could do basically every time without fail once you've gotten a few rerolls, banishes and skips, and once this point has been hit, all sense of variety becomes deeply artificial since it ends up wholly relying on the player to engage with it in any sort of way, which doesn't really work when so many weapons don't require the player themselves to do anything particularly different with how they approach it.
In a game that so strongly encourages optimisation of your build to be able to dish out increasingly ridiculous, screen clearing attacks, making said optimisation so simple and effective always feels like a bit of an odd decision, especially since that seems to just further discourage actually using different things once you've found something that seems to just obliterate everything. For a game that tries so hard to make for an experience that just bombards the player nonstop with increasingly flashy effects and the like, actually hitting the stage where this occurs feels exponentially less rewarding with each new tool in your arsenal when it ends up feeling like a totally solved game that's so easy to work out how to solve it, until it really just becomes an exercise in standing 100% still for extended periods of time to unlock the final batch of upgrades that feel entirely meaningless at that point since you've already got everything that lets you win without a reason to ever use anything else. Despite all of this I don't think the game is entirely worthless or anything like that either, as the first part of the game where you're building up to the first couple of fully broken runs is a fun time that kept me fully engaged, it's just that anything past that point starts getting really repetitive and hollow to me, despite the fact that there's still a bunch of content the game wants you to get through at the point this happens.
I'm not gonna lie, I both really want to like and hate this game due to it's design. The idea for a roguelike with item synergies that deals directly with damage numbers on a 2D plane with a fitting progression curve sounds great. Gathering only 2 items for most synergies and becoming broken quickly, the flashy lights and sound effects ripped from an arcade machine at Vegas, and the overreliance on luck for synergy makes this game a slog and a pain. Every time I think "that's it, this game has gone too far and I've made a decision on it", I then begrudgingly play another 40+ minute game. 2 stars for a failed vision, because all of these qualities fundamentally work to serve the base idea for the gameplay, which unfortunately boils down to walk in a circle for 30 minutes and wait during animations.
worth playing, but only to gain true appreciation for how good games can be when they're not shameless garbage. there's something very life-affirming in sitting down and experiencing something that values your time and attention this little and realizing, wow, this really isn't actually what most games are like; most developers at least have a modicum of respect for their audience and a genuine desire to engage players and provide them with something of actual substance, regardless of how successfully they ultimately manage to pull that off. it takes something this nakedly exploitative, devoid of effort and borderline dystopian to really jolt your brain into realizing how good you normally have it. thank you, video games, for usually not being this shit.
同类型的鼻祖也是金字塔尖。
近年来最令人沉迷、上瘾的作品。仅需30分钟就能得到从无到有，从0到♾️的极致体验。加上作者不断的更新和超高的性价比，都毫无疑问的让Vampire Survivors成为2022年最棒的游戏之一。
近年来最令人沉迷、上瘾的作品。仅需30分钟就能得到从无到有，从0到♾️的极致体验。加上作者不断的更新和超高的性价比，都毫无疑问的让Vampire Survivors成为2022年最棒的游戏之一。
so ive been thinking about time a lot recently, about how many games i have in the backlog and wishlist and how im gonna beat them all before i die. that was part of the reason i made a huge high priority list to see what i actually fucking care about lol, because to be honest about 250 of the games on the backlog i dont really give a shit about, they just fall between mid and low priority titles. and when accounting for replays, thats around 200 total games i wanna play before i die. lol fucking looking at my wishlist, whats on there that i really really wanna buy? the rest of trails? wolverine? baldur's gate? p3r which is already pre-ordered? that's not much...
the point im trying to make is the majority of games ive added over the nearly 3 years ive been on this website are little more than a "that looks cool, i dont wanna forget it". but i forget anyway. i dont forget trails or xenoblade or persona 2 but i forget why i wanna play fucking... elder scrolls or stephens sausage roll(????) so maybe they arent that wonderful of an experience im imagining if i have little care to whether i buy them for more than ticking down the boxes of "182 games" on my wishlist. i could spend 108 dollars on the steam store for shit i wouldnt play for years. maybe id boot it up but then be like "nahhh" like i was for fear and hunger, or blood, or duke nukem?
today was christmas (duh) and i got a lot of stuff id consider high priority, metroid, p5t, ff16. i got a few other things on steam, one of them being this game. and while it's a perfectly fun game, with nice music and a nice loop, there was an emptiness i felt whilst playing. i could be p-ranking violence or something. its like that game "arrow a row"
you feel so empty after it ends but then get back in thinking itll be better the next round, but you die and die and die and keep playing and keep playing and keep playing. and unlike something like cybergrind, or fortnite thats based on skill or playing with friends its mostly based on rng and such, and just keeps you coming back but like social media you dont really wanna be scrolling, i could be playing something epicsauce instead, yknow. something from those 200 games. and thats not to say this is unfun or anything, it just feels.. empty.
i feel like id be a bad candidate for trying out hoyoverse games for the same addictive tendencies, but even then those have fantastic art and a story behind them, which this does not
im refunding it
the point im trying to make is the majority of games ive added over the nearly 3 years ive been on this website are little more than a "that looks cool, i dont wanna forget it". but i forget anyway. i dont forget trails or xenoblade or persona 2 but i forget why i wanna play fucking... elder scrolls or stephens sausage roll(????) so maybe they arent that wonderful of an experience im imagining if i have little care to whether i buy them for more than ticking down the boxes of "182 games" on my wishlist. i could spend 108 dollars on the steam store for shit i wouldnt play for years. maybe id boot it up but then be like "nahhh" like i was for fear and hunger, or blood, or duke nukem?
today was christmas (duh) and i got a lot of stuff id consider high priority, metroid, p5t, ff16. i got a few other things on steam, one of them being this game. and while it's a perfectly fun game, with nice music and a nice loop, there was an emptiness i felt whilst playing. i could be p-ranking violence or something. its like that game "arrow a row"
you feel so empty after it ends but then get back in thinking itll be better the next round, but you die and die and die and keep playing and keep playing and keep playing. and unlike something like cybergrind, or fortnite thats based on skill or playing with friends its mostly based on rng and such, and just keeps you coming back but like social media you dont really wanna be scrolling, i could be playing something epicsauce instead, yknow. something from those 200 games. and thats not to say this is unfun or anything, it just feels.. empty.
i feel like id be a bad candidate for trying out hoyoverse games for the same addictive tendencies, but even then those have fantastic art and a story behind them, which this does not
im refunding it
I had a longer review planned out, but honestly man?
This game just isn't that much different from a clicker/idle game. If you like those games then wire in, but to me they're just meritless time blackholes that're little more than Cocomelon for adults with untreated ADHD.
This game just isn't that much different from a clicker/idle game. If you like those games then wire in, but to me they're just meritless time blackholes that're little more than Cocomelon for adults with untreated ADHD.
in many ways, this is the platonic ideal of a videogame. you're a little guy and you have to not get hit by draculas. if anyone who's never played a game before asked me to show them one, i'd show them this.
the castlevania nostalgia trip is lost on me but the lofi retro late dos/early win95 aesthetic is rock solid. i like it.
hope they don't fuck it down the line by trying to add "lore" or "plot".
the castlevania nostalgia trip is lost on me but the lofi retro late dos/early win95 aesthetic is rock solid. i like it.
hope they don't fuck it down the line by trying to add "lore" or "plot".
Collect All Pets on Roblox is more engaging than whatever the hell this game is
I don't understand why this is so immensely popular. It's cheap-looking and very unengaging. If I wanted to walk around in circles while unfitting music played, I could just put on headphones and go outside. Playing this makes me feel like I'm thinking about playing a video game.
This game transformed me into a hamster on a wheel for like 5 straight hours and I came out of it with a headache and I'm terrified of ever opening it again
I appreciate NSO's week-long trials. They're liked being lowered into hell and then hoisted out before it consumes me completely. I don't respect Vampire Survivors. I get it, though. It's a simulacrum of a game. It's satisfying to move the analogue stick in a circle for thirty minutes and watch the upgrades come flooding in. As an unabashed timewaster, it's pretty effective, but that's not the nature of this, is it? I will never play it again in my life. I know it's what awaits me afterwards.
Even actual gacha games aren't as blatant with the psychological manipulation as the treasure chest opening animation in this game
Numbers Go Up: A Gothic Horror Tale.
Much more of a Cookie Clicker-style idle game than the screenshots imply, Vampire Survivors boils down the current state of the roguelite genre to it's bare, naked essentials, to such a degree that I'm surprised it even bothered to roll with the 'Castlevania asset pack' look It's got going right now. If your idea of fun is to slowly but surely watch bars fill up and tick boxes to make that process more automated, hours passing by without the stimulus of an ongoing narrative or varying presentation, boy, do I got the game for you! It didn't really do much for me, unfortunately, but I can see why it's gotten so popular as a 'chillout podcast unwind' sort of thing, it's extremely evocative of the flash based things we'd play during a class in the computer lab years ago...
A truly dangerous type of game, especially if you haven't got much time to spare for entertainment!
Much more of a Cookie Clicker-style idle game than the screenshots imply, Vampire Survivors boils down the current state of the roguelite genre to it's bare, naked essentials, to such a degree that I'm surprised it even bothered to roll with the 'Castlevania asset pack' look It's got going right now. If your idea of fun is to slowly but surely watch bars fill up and tick boxes to make that process more automated, hours passing by without the stimulus of an ongoing narrative or varying presentation, boy, do I got the game for you! It didn't really do much for me, unfortunately, but I can see why it's gotten so popular as a 'chillout podcast unwind' sort of thing, it's extremely evocative of the flash based things we'd play during a class in the computer lab years ago...
A truly dangerous type of game, especially if you haven't got much time to spare for entertainment!
This game hit steam like crack hit low income neighborhoods
When can I log a Survivors-like as "Completed"? Because I definitely haven't done everything, but I think I've done enough now? I have like 40 hours in the game and I feel like I've seen basically all it has to offer. I decided to finish off the Garlic Paradise Adventure before logging it here.
The game is very best at the start. I was completely hooked and it was so fun to play and level up and get stronger! In the beginning when you're low level, Vampire Survivors actually takes a bit of attention and skill to play. But once you figure out how the game works, it becomes incredibly trivial.
Nowadays, by minute 20 out of 30, I've maxed out my weapons and can stand idly while a bunch of flashing lights kill everything for me. It was best in the first few hours where I couldn't even get to the end of the first level! After that it was a slow descent into monotony.
And now I'm at a point where there's not really much content left except "Get Each Character to Level X and You Unlock Y". Which is pretty lame and the type of content that I would usually just ignore. But honestly I probably will play this game a bit more, it's the game I play in the background while I watch One Piece. (Just got to episode 800). But I'm not sure how much more gameplay I can squeeze out of this game.
Edit: I originally gave this a 3/5, but after reflecting on it some more, this game is a lame-ass video game equivalent to tiktok sludge content. The same thing as scrolling endlessly on your phone for no reason. Just nothing of any value.
The game is very best at the start. I was completely hooked and it was so fun to play and level up and get stronger! In the beginning when you're low level, Vampire Survivors actually takes a bit of attention and skill to play. But once you figure out how the game works, it becomes incredibly trivial.
Nowadays, by minute 20 out of 30, I've maxed out my weapons and can stand idly while a bunch of flashing lights kill everything for me. It was best in the first few hours where I couldn't even get to the end of the first level! After that it was a slow descent into monotony.
And now I'm at a point where there's not really much content left except "Get Each Character to Level X and You Unlock Y". Which is pretty lame and the type of content that I would usually just ignore. But honestly I probably will play this game a bit more, it's the game I play in the background while I watch One Piece. (Just got to episode 800). But I'm not sure how much more gameplay I can squeeze out of this game.
Edit: I originally gave this a 3/5, but after reflecting on it some more, this game is a lame-ass video game equivalent to tiktok sludge content. The same thing as scrolling endlessly on your phone for no reason. Just nothing of any value.
A 2000s-era flash game that's addicting and better than it has any right to be, but ultimately feels like video game junk food.
Not sure if y'all remember that Bloons TD game from like 2007 but Vampire Survivors kind of reminded me of that addicting old flash game. It looks a bit like an old browser game that co-opts a legally questionable amount of Castlevania's enemies, weapons, characters, and art. The gameplay initially feels too simple as all you control is the direction your character moves. Yet despite all that, it somehow all comes together in a package that works quite well and is highly addicting.
The simple controls make it incredibly accessible and it refocuses gameplay on developing a good build rather than how fast your reflexes are or how well you can master combat. It simplifies all of that and streamlines the road to making you feel like a god as you steamroll hordes of enemies.
Getting a good build going that lets you quickly turn into a walking wrecking ball is incredibly satisfying, but like in many rogue-lites, a lot of that depends on RNG. Toward the beginning of the game, there's not a lot you can do to combat the randomness, but that ends up not holding you back too much. As you get deeper into the game, there are plenty of ways to control your build during a run.
The game is pretty good about constantly rewarding you for the runs as you earn gold to buy permanent upgrades and unlock weapons, characters and stages as you hit milestones. There are 157 total things to unlock in this game so there’s no shortage of carrots on sticks to keep you chasing after the next thing. Between the constant goal chasing and how satisfying it is to mow down thousands of enemies, Vampire Survivors is like a constant shot of dopamine. But with that constant shot of pure unfiltered dopamine, that high didn't last long. It's like eating a bunch of junk food - yeah it'll give you some energy for like 15 minutes but then you'll crash hard afterward.
If you're looking for mindless fun that scratches the itches of one part "I like to see numbers go up and get big" and one part power trip, Vampire Survivors is great and highly addicting. But don't expect a lot of depth beyond that.
+ Satisfying to put a build together that makes you feel like a god
+ Extremely addicting
+ Good gameplay loop that constantly rewards you for your runs
- Video game junk food that lacks long-term satisfaction
- Questionable amount of repurposed art from Castlevania
Not sure if y'all remember that Bloons TD game from like 2007 but Vampire Survivors kind of reminded me of that addicting old flash game. It looks a bit like an old browser game that co-opts a legally questionable amount of Castlevania's enemies, weapons, characters, and art. The gameplay initially feels too simple as all you control is the direction your character moves. Yet despite all that, it somehow all comes together in a package that works quite well and is highly addicting.
The simple controls make it incredibly accessible and it refocuses gameplay on developing a good build rather than how fast your reflexes are or how well you can master combat. It simplifies all of that and streamlines the road to making you feel like a god as you steamroll hordes of enemies.
Getting a good build going that lets you quickly turn into a walking wrecking ball is incredibly satisfying, but like in many rogue-lites, a lot of that depends on RNG. Toward the beginning of the game, there's not a lot you can do to combat the randomness, but that ends up not holding you back too much. As you get deeper into the game, there are plenty of ways to control your build during a run.
The game is pretty good about constantly rewarding you for the runs as you earn gold to buy permanent upgrades and unlock weapons, characters and stages as you hit milestones. There are 157 total things to unlock in this game so there’s no shortage of carrots on sticks to keep you chasing after the next thing. Between the constant goal chasing and how satisfying it is to mow down thousands of enemies, Vampire Survivors is like a constant shot of dopamine. But with that constant shot of pure unfiltered dopamine, that high didn't last long. It's like eating a bunch of junk food - yeah it'll give you some energy for like 15 minutes but then you'll crash hard afterward.
If you're looking for mindless fun that scratches the itches of one part "I like to see numbers go up and get big" and one part power trip, Vampire Survivors is great and highly addicting. But don't expect a lot of depth beyond that.
+ Satisfying to put a build together that makes you feel like a god
+ Extremely addicting
+ Good gameplay loop that constantly rewards you for your runs
- Video game junk food that lacks long-term satisfaction
- Questionable amount of repurposed art from Castlevania
Best mobile game in the year
So damn addictive! Just a damn fun game that perfectly encapsulates the idea of "one more run".
Finally completed this games content (at least pre-DLC). Everyone who plays this follows the same path:
- Play a few runs, probably die in most, don't quite understand the appeal.
- Play again, finally finish your first run
- Unlock new stuff, and from there the brain worm sets in
I'll be back to play the DLC at a later date, fantastic game.
- Play a few runs, probably die in most, don't quite understand the appeal.
- Play again, finally finish your first run
- Unlock new stuff, and from there the brain worm sets in
I'll be back to play the DLC at a later date, fantastic game.
among my backloggd friends, this game has the most pronounced spread of like, 0.5 stars to 4.0 stars. i like this game, but the more i play it the more i kind of cool on it. it's fun in short bursts, but i can't really sink hours into it anymore. all my runs end up looking pretty similar, regardless of starting character. i can tell 5 minutes in whether or not i'm making it through the full 30. i know which powerups work better than others, etc. etc. like, learning the game made it less fun. it's still a nice little timewaster - something to do with my hands while i zone out with a podcast on, something to play in bed on my steam deck until i fall asleep and wake up to a game over screen. but i can't really play it "actively" as much anymore
you know what it is? when you've figured out "ah, this is an unstoppable build. i've already won," you then still have to play the other 20 minutes of a run. and that can feel really good in games like binding of isaac or whatever! it even feels good in this game the first 50 times it happens. but after that, it just gets so predictable and tedious
maybe this is another plateau before i find some other level of enjoyment and progression, but for now it's just a "i can't think of anything else to play" diversion
edit: man, i've flip-flopped on this game so many times. every time i start getting bored, it adds some wild secret level and a bunch of items and a whole other progression thing to do. and then i'm enthralled yet again, this being my "steam deck in bed right before passing out" game of choice. and then it plateaus, gets boring, and then boom- another layer gets added. this game is either 2 stars or 4 stars depending on when in the cycle you ask me
you know what it is? when you've figured out "ah, this is an unstoppable build. i've already won," you then still have to play the other 20 minutes of a run. and that can feel really good in games like binding of isaac or whatever! it even feels good in this game the first 50 times it happens. but after that, it just gets so predictable and tedious
maybe this is another plateau before i find some other level of enjoyment and progression, but for now it's just a "i can't think of anything else to play" diversion
edit: man, i've flip-flopped on this game so many times. every time i start getting bored, it adds some wild secret level and a bunch of items and a whole other progression thing to do. and then i'm enthralled yet again, this being my "steam deck in bed right before passing out" game of choice. and then it plateaus, gets boring, and then boom- another layer gets added. this game is either 2 stars or 4 stars depending on when in the cycle you ask me
One of the best games to watch youtube from the side
Vampire Survivors is the Power Wash Simulator of Bullet Hells.
Vampire Survivors is Cookie Clicker: the Roguelite.
Vampire Survivors is Flappy Bird meets Dynasty Warriors.
Vampire Survivors is the gamification of popping bubble wrap with your mind and winning drugs that let you pop more bubble wrap with your mind even faster.
Vampire Survivors is pretty good. It’s also pixel barf, the equivalent of a Unity Asset Flip on a Mega Drive, emulated on an Android, emulated on a PC.
Vampire Survivors is the pioneer of a new genre without a name. Most developers gesture towards it by including “Survivors” in the title of their game. It’s probably easier than attempting to legitimize the unwieldy “Survivors-like” as a new genre, anyways.
Vampire Survivors is not a reinvention of the wheel. By all accounts, it’s more of a throwback title, more Galaga than Binding of Isaac.
Vampire Survivors is Smash TV: the Action RPG.
Vampire Survivors is not a purely idle experience, as some would have you believe; it’s certainly not a brainless game, either. It is extremely basic and, in some cases, you may owe your success (or your failure) to RNG more than any particular skill level. Calling it a game that plays itself would be hyperbolically reductive. Calling it mechanically shallow would be almost irrefutable.
Vampire Survivors is an inoffensive F2P mobile game which only gives you one (1) advertisement per run (if you wish to revive once after death). It’s a far cry from the miscellaneous shovelware titles practically built around funneling users to its next unskippable ad.
Vampire Survivors is $5 USD on Steam and sits at “Overwhelmingly Positive” with nearly 200K reviews.
…
(CW from here on out: Eating Disorder, Alcoholism)
When I lived in Portland from mid-2017 to early 2020, I lived a very frugal lifestyle. I never found stable employment. I earned my income through temp work; dishwashing, manual labor, etc. Between classes at University, I would usually eat at a Mediterranean food cart right outside the Engineering Building. Almost every day, I’d buy this special $5 lamb and chicken over rice. Sometimes the owner would give me fresh baklava or tea, but he’d never charge me extra for anything. In a place I felt otherwise unaccustomed to, there was somewhere I felt warm and welcome.
I struggled when I lived in Portland. Some days I only ate a snack or two. Anything to not live above my means. I lost a lot of weight. I wasn’t healthy. I was starving.
In 2017 I would’ve killed for the life I have now.
There are days I’m nostalgic for Portland. I met a lot of cool people there, had some unforgettable experiences. I wish that I’d’ve taken care of myself more; then again, I would’ve never been able to take care of myself the way I needed to begin with.
$5 got me to school and back on a bus. $5 got me a 3-pack of Steel Reserve, 24 fluid ounces each, enough to erase some nights completely. $5 got me lamb and chicken over rice almost every day for over two years.
…
Vampire Survivors has been universally recognized as a good game by default. It probably takes more out of a person to denounce Vampire Survivors for its sins than to extol it for its chic roguelite sensibilities. It won a BAFTA for crying out loud! In a year where Elden Ring was a game, a group of people sat down and decided that a mobile game should be the Best Game That Year.
Vampire Survivors is the de facto choice for Gaming At Home or On-The-Go. For the low price of Five US Dollars (or Free if you’re on Mobile!) you too can experience the drip-feed roguelite arcade experience that people have described as “addicting,” “like taking drugs,” or even, “crack cocaine”. Brother, the only thing gamers love more than comparing games to food is comparing games to drugs!
Vampire Survivors is the Drugs of Games People Won’t Shut Up About.
Vampire Survivors is the Food of Drugs People Like to Use in Analogies.
Vampire Survivors did NOT ruin my life. I started playing Vampire Survivors December 22nd, 2022 and I “finished” Vampire Survivors on August 25th, 2023 (“finished” as in completed “the Collection” which, to my understanding, is the truest win condition outside of the final stage/boss). I took frequent breaks for weeks or months at a time so my journey through the game was a leisurely one.
Vampire Survivors is definitely a crapshoot more often than not. You’ll likely have enough upgrades to make any build feasible late game. The only thing that tips the scale in (or against) your favor is the RNG, and even that can eventually be manipulated using the “Seal” upgrade which allows players to remove certain weapons/items from rotation, controlling the parameters before a new run even starts. However, the Seal upgrades cost a fortune – much more than any regular upgrade, anyways. If you’ve unlocked all the regular upgrades though, chances are you can turn just about any character into an AFK Gold Farm on Endless Mode and let it idle in the background until you’re satisfied. I guess in that way, it really does become an idle game at some point. It would be interesting to see a game that begins as Vampire Survivors turn into a Cookie Clicker late game (I know I called it Cookie Clicker earlier (additionally, I will write a Cookie Clicker review one day, and it will be nowhere as kind as this)), but at that point, I think we’d have to collectively agree that video games as a medium can no longer be considered art (this is a joke (unless hypothetically this video game becomes real, or maybe already exists, in which case I fear we’ve doomed ourselves to a fate much worse than death as is (this is another joke; this “game” would probably not be that good anyways, and just because one game highlights distressing market trends, does not mean they’re all Going To Be Like That. Not every game is Call of Duty. Not every game is the Last of Us. Not every game is Vampire Survivors. etc.))).
Vampire Survivors does NOT have any vampires in it.
…
Worked as a janitor at a sports club once. Real weird place. Had the musk of half a century and none of the charm. Trophy cases hadn’t been touched in generations. The attendees were pallid, shambling creatures, all of them probably sitting on a pretty six or seven figures. Bet I looked like an insect to them.
My memory’s fuzzy. Don’t remember who it was showing me the ropes. Just remember the empty rooms, infinite corridor locker rooms and dead mess halls. Spraying down various surfaces. Mirrors. Windows. Nowhere spaces. When people passed through, I ducked out of sight. Not because I’m agoraphobic or antisocial – just wasn’t dying to be perceived back then.
Worked a full eight hour shift without a break. Whoever was supposed to be checking in on me didn’t. I slipped through the cracks. When it was time to leave, I walked into the food court as it was about to close and asked one of the workers if they still had anything left to eat. I explained I hadn’t taken a break, and one of them gave me a box of rice and chili. I remember he told me that, sometimes, “it ain’t about the taste, it’s about the space”.
Words to live by, man.
I was starving.
I hardly played any games while I was living in Portland. Didn’t have the time. Didn’t have the money. I played Super Mario All-Stars and Demon’s Souls while I was living with my buddy Ian. I played Persona 3 FES for a bit. By the time I’d moved into my second apartment, I hardly played anything. I watched my roommates play Death Stranding and Final Fantasy IX. I always wanted to play more. I never did.
It’s about the space. I think about long, sprawling open world games with a hundred objectives and points of interest; a million collectibles; enemy strongholds; side quests; secrets; the last of these I played, after I'd left Portland, was Ghost of Tsushima. At a zombie’s pace I trudged through the game in a little under two years. I thought it was good. I probably won’t play it again.
I made friends with a coworker named Dan. He’s a big PlayStation guy. He has a PlayStation sticker on his tumbler. We started talking about games one day and I brought up Ghost of Tsushima. He said he’d never played it, but his friend played it – he told me that his friend would play exclusively with the black-and-white filter on, and only while listening to hip-hop mixtapes. I told him, “That sounds rad”.
Ian and I used to play Dark Souls while listening to Agalloch, drinking like sailors. There was never enough time to finish a full playthrough.
My best friend Garrett plays Destiny 2 religiously. Sometimes he’ll listen to a podcast or pull up something else to watch on his second monitor. Sometimes he’ll talk to me while he’s playing.
The point is, everyone plays games differently, and for different reasons. Where some people might find a story compelling, another player might intend to steamroll a game’s main quest – skipping each line of dialogue, every cutscene, every nonessential encounter, all in service of cutting to the chase.
People love to point to Subway Surfers as the Ur Example of brainless gaming (seriously, read some of these reviews), allowing players to split attention between one primary activity (the game) and another secondary activity (movie, television, YouTube, etc.).
I don’t want to speculate what the long term effects of this behavior could be in a broader context here, so I won’t!
…
Vampire Survivors is the Terraria of Subway Surfers. A game focused on incremental growth. Arcadelike and continuous. Formulaic and never-ending.
Vampire Survivors is the essence of the last decade of roguelike/lite experiences, condensed into 30 minutes of undiluted mayhem sans apotheosis. A monomythic Sparknotes page with a bullet point list of the stages of the Hero’s Journey.
Vampire Survivors is a symptom of our gaming climate, not the sickness itself.
Vampire Survivors is a dopamine hit in slow motion.
Vampire Survivors is an ugly mirror. A skinner box numbers-go-up slot machine nightmare monster with gnarled teeth and sharp claws and never-ending jackpots.
…
I’ve only been to Vegas twice. The first time, I was a kid; the second time, I could gamble… so I gambled. I won some money, then I lost some money, then I found the arcade cabinets. I found Bubble Bobble at the casino, man (I don’t remember if it was called Bubble Bobble, but you know what I mean). You could pay real, hard-earned cash to play arcade games in a casino instead of paying real, hard-earned cash to gamble for a chance to win more real, hard-earned cash. Would it be surprising to learn I spent most of my time playing the arcade cabinets?
Arcades are sort of like casinos for kids, if you think about it. I’m sure that’s not an original thought at all, but – is not the sole purpose of the arcade to entice children to spend their parents’ money? Even like a Chuck E. Cheese or Dave and Buster’s or whatever, they have machines where you can win prizes! The main difference really is that parents are less inclined to let a six year-old put them ten thousand in the hole or something.
Time is money. Ever seen that movie “In Time” starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried? I haven’t, but I remember seeing the trailer forever ago and thinking, “Whoa! What a clever and novel idea for a movie,” and honestly? I never want to watch it because of that. Because regardless of what that movie actually is, it’ll never run the gamut of that grand idea – it’s too much, too monumental of a world, of a setting, to be effectively communicated in 120 minutes or less.
It’s weird being alive nowadays. $5 isn’t even $5 anymore. It’s like ten, fifteen minutes maybe, you know what I mean? Every time I buy a coffee or a burger that feels like ten or fifteen minutes. The inverse is true: an hour spent working on pet projects feels like twenty-five dollars. Can’t stop thinking like this anymore.
Gamers continue to demand longer, more expensive, more technologically groundbreaking experiences at the same price – they complain when new releases don’t consume their lives, don’t become their all-in-one entertainment hub, don’t compel them to binge and splurge, don’t give them meaning.
Meanwhile, if I play a game for 20 hours and still haven’t seen 50% of it, I feel like I don't really need to see the other 50% of it. I've got better things to do.
…
Vampire Survivors is $5 and endlessly replayable. Every run is unique. Every run is the same.
Vampire Survivors is criminally underpriced. I clocked in for every achievement at 91 hours – so, if every run is 30 minutes long (barring incomplete/failed runs or special stages that clock in at 15 minutes or less), that means I’ve likely done around 182 runs. If this were an arcade game – and let’s be generous and assume it’s 25 cents a run – it would’ve cost me around $45 and 50 cents to “complete” Vampire Survivors.
Vampire Survivors is at once an empty sandbox, where oceans of enemies seem only to inhabit an infinitely looping Hanna-Barbera background and they aren’t allowed to exist outside of your screen. Nothing exists outside of your screen. You’re unable to outrun the monsters. The space between is a wasteland of tilesets and sprites. The only noteworthy events and special items are usually located on the periphery of each stage. The wild thing is that 30 minutes is usually more than enough time to collect everything.
Vampire Survivors ain’t about the taste.
…
Honestly I picked this game up because I saw Jerma playing it. I was drunk and I had five bucks to spare and I thought, y’know, fuck it. Might as well have another game in rotation. Took a few runs before it started to click.
I used to drink and game often. Definitely played Vampire Survivors drunk a lot. Last year was probably the worst of it. But now I’m 3 months sober and what’s most surprising is how playing it feels the same. It’s definitely more of a warmup or cooldown game, if I had to categorize it; the kind of game you play when you’re waking up, or about to fall asleep.
It’s not bad to be honest.
I’m not going to lie to you and say that this game doesn’t manipulate players psychologically, but also most games manipulate players psychologically? At least to some extent, some games more than others (but not nearly as bad as some have described this game as being imo).
If you were to surgically remove or alter the elements of Vampire Survivors, or reverse-engineer a proper “roguelike/lite” experience out of it, would it really be a better game for it? I don’t know. Is the Binding of Isaac a better game because its RNG elements become more of a determining factor in your success overall? I don’t know. Do I just want some roguelike games to tell me exactly what its items do instead of sinking countless hours into one and praying that its RNG decides to not fuck me for a single run? Absolutely.
Still, I did “finish” this game after 91 hours and I feel comfortable putting it down. I can’t say that I necessarily enjoyed each and every hour of Vampire Survivors (especially towards the end, where completionism was the main goal instead of just playing for additional content / unlocks (and I’m also not going to finish every map with every character, because you don’t really get anything for having done so)) but it was nothing if not one of the games I’ve ever played.
Erato_Heti’s review is a great counterpoint to this. I think it’s a great review. I don’t 100% agree with the conclusions but it’s not like critique of the game itself is a personal attack on people that enjoy the game. Vampire Survivors is not a high maintenance, cerebral game. It’s junk food.
It’s not super mentally stimulating, it won’t enrich your soul in any meaningful way, and it likely won’t dramatically alter the trajectory of your life – but it doesn’t need to.
Junk food’s not terrible in moderation, but you can’t subsist on a diet of snacks.
It’s definitely no lamb and chicken over rice.
Vampire Survivors is Cookie Clicker: the Roguelite.
Vampire Survivors is Flappy Bird meets Dynasty Warriors.
Vampire Survivors is the gamification of popping bubble wrap with your mind and winning drugs that let you pop more bubble wrap with your mind even faster.
Vampire Survivors is pretty good. It’s also pixel barf, the equivalent of a Unity Asset Flip on a Mega Drive, emulated on an Android, emulated on a PC.
Vampire Survivors is the pioneer of a new genre without a name. Most developers gesture towards it by including “Survivors” in the title of their game. It’s probably easier than attempting to legitimize the unwieldy “Survivors-like” as a new genre, anyways.
Vampire Survivors is not a reinvention of the wheel. By all accounts, it’s more of a throwback title, more Galaga than Binding of Isaac.
Vampire Survivors is Smash TV: the Action RPG.
Vampire Survivors is not a purely idle experience, as some would have you believe; it’s certainly not a brainless game, either. It is extremely basic and, in some cases, you may owe your success (or your failure) to RNG more than any particular skill level. Calling it a game that plays itself would be hyperbolically reductive. Calling it mechanically shallow would be almost irrefutable.
Vampire Survivors is an inoffensive F2P mobile game which only gives you one (1) advertisement per run (if you wish to revive once after death). It’s a far cry from the miscellaneous shovelware titles practically built around funneling users to its next unskippable ad.
Vampire Survivors is $5 USD on Steam and sits at “Overwhelmingly Positive” with nearly 200K reviews.
…
(CW from here on out: Eating Disorder, Alcoholism)
When I lived in Portland from mid-2017 to early 2020, I lived a very frugal lifestyle. I never found stable employment. I earned my income through temp work; dishwashing, manual labor, etc. Between classes at University, I would usually eat at a Mediterranean food cart right outside the Engineering Building. Almost every day, I’d buy this special $5 lamb and chicken over rice. Sometimes the owner would give me fresh baklava or tea, but he’d never charge me extra for anything. In a place I felt otherwise unaccustomed to, there was somewhere I felt warm and welcome.
I struggled when I lived in Portland. Some days I only ate a snack or two. Anything to not live above my means. I lost a lot of weight. I wasn’t healthy. I was starving.
In 2017 I would’ve killed for the life I have now.
There are days I’m nostalgic for Portland. I met a lot of cool people there, had some unforgettable experiences. I wish that I’d’ve taken care of myself more; then again, I would’ve never been able to take care of myself the way I needed to begin with.
$5 got me to school and back on a bus. $5 got me a 3-pack of Steel Reserve, 24 fluid ounces each, enough to erase some nights completely. $5 got me lamb and chicken over rice almost every day for over two years.
…
Vampire Survivors has been universally recognized as a good game by default. It probably takes more out of a person to denounce Vampire Survivors for its sins than to extol it for its chic roguelite sensibilities. It won a BAFTA for crying out loud! In a year where Elden Ring was a game, a group of people sat down and decided that a mobile game should be the Best Game That Year.
Vampire Survivors is the de facto choice for Gaming At Home or On-The-Go. For the low price of Five US Dollars (or Free if you’re on Mobile!) you too can experience the drip-feed roguelite arcade experience that people have described as “addicting,” “like taking drugs,” or even, “crack cocaine”. Brother, the only thing gamers love more than comparing games to food is comparing games to drugs!
Vampire Survivors is the Drugs of Games People Won’t Shut Up About.
Vampire Survivors is the Food of Drugs People Like to Use in Analogies.
Vampire Survivors did NOT ruin my life. I started playing Vampire Survivors December 22nd, 2022 and I “finished” Vampire Survivors on August 25th, 2023 (“finished” as in completed “the Collection” which, to my understanding, is the truest win condition outside of the final stage/boss). I took frequent breaks for weeks or months at a time so my journey through the game was a leisurely one.
Vampire Survivors is definitely a crapshoot more often than not. You’ll likely have enough upgrades to make any build feasible late game. The only thing that tips the scale in (or against) your favor is the RNG, and even that can eventually be manipulated using the “Seal” upgrade which allows players to remove certain weapons/items from rotation, controlling the parameters before a new run even starts. However, the Seal upgrades cost a fortune – much more than any regular upgrade, anyways. If you’ve unlocked all the regular upgrades though, chances are you can turn just about any character into an AFK Gold Farm on Endless Mode and let it idle in the background until you’re satisfied. I guess in that way, it really does become an idle game at some point. It would be interesting to see a game that begins as Vampire Survivors turn into a Cookie Clicker late game (I know I called it Cookie Clicker earlier (additionally, I will write a Cookie Clicker review one day, and it will be nowhere as kind as this)), but at that point, I think we’d have to collectively agree that video games as a medium can no longer be considered art (this is a joke (unless hypothetically this video game becomes real, or maybe already exists, in which case I fear we’ve doomed ourselves to a fate much worse than death as is (this is another joke; this “game” would probably not be that good anyways, and just because one game highlights distressing market trends, does not mean they’re all Going To Be Like That. Not every game is Call of Duty. Not every game is the Last of Us. Not every game is Vampire Survivors. etc.))).
Vampire Survivors does NOT have any vampires in it.
…
Worked as a janitor at a sports club once. Real weird place. Had the musk of half a century and none of the charm. Trophy cases hadn’t been touched in generations. The attendees were pallid, shambling creatures, all of them probably sitting on a pretty six or seven figures. Bet I looked like an insect to them.
My memory’s fuzzy. Don’t remember who it was showing me the ropes. Just remember the empty rooms, infinite corridor locker rooms and dead mess halls. Spraying down various surfaces. Mirrors. Windows. Nowhere spaces. When people passed through, I ducked out of sight. Not because I’m agoraphobic or antisocial – just wasn’t dying to be perceived back then.
Worked a full eight hour shift without a break. Whoever was supposed to be checking in on me didn’t. I slipped through the cracks. When it was time to leave, I walked into the food court as it was about to close and asked one of the workers if they still had anything left to eat. I explained I hadn’t taken a break, and one of them gave me a box of rice and chili. I remember he told me that, sometimes, “it ain’t about the taste, it’s about the space”.
Words to live by, man.
I was starving.
I hardly played any games while I was living in Portland. Didn’t have the time. Didn’t have the money. I played Super Mario All-Stars and Demon’s Souls while I was living with my buddy Ian. I played Persona 3 FES for a bit. By the time I’d moved into my second apartment, I hardly played anything. I watched my roommates play Death Stranding and Final Fantasy IX. I always wanted to play more. I never did.
It’s about the space. I think about long, sprawling open world games with a hundred objectives and points of interest; a million collectibles; enemy strongholds; side quests; secrets; the last of these I played, after I'd left Portland, was Ghost of Tsushima. At a zombie’s pace I trudged through the game in a little under two years. I thought it was good. I probably won’t play it again.
I made friends with a coworker named Dan. He’s a big PlayStation guy. He has a PlayStation sticker on his tumbler. We started talking about games one day and I brought up Ghost of Tsushima. He said he’d never played it, but his friend played it – he told me that his friend would play exclusively with the black-and-white filter on, and only while listening to hip-hop mixtapes. I told him, “That sounds rad”.
Ian and I used to play Dark Souls while listening to Agalloch, drinking like sailors. There was never enough time to finish a full playthrough.
My best friend Garrett plays Destiny 2 religiously. Sometimes he’ll listen to a podcast or pull up something else to watch on his second monitor. Sometimes he’ll talk to me while he’s playing.
The point is, everyone plays games differently, and for different reasons. Where some people might find a story compelling, another player might intend to steamroll a game’s main quest – skipping each line of dialogue, every cutscene, every nonessential encounter, all in service of cutting to the chase.
People love to point to Subway Surfers as the Ur Example of brainless gaming (seriously, read some of these reviews), allowing players to split attention between one primary activity (the game) and another secondary activity (movie, television, YouTube, etc.).
I don’t want to speculate what the long term effects of this behavior could be in a broader context here, so I won’t!
…
Vampire Survivors is the Terraria of Subway Surfers. A game focused on incremental growth. Arcadelike and continuous. Formulaic and never-ending.
Vampire Survivors is the essence of the last decade of roguelike/lite experiences, condensed into 30 minutes of undiluted mayhem sans apotheosis. A monomythic Sparknotes page with a bullet point list of the stages of the Hero’s Journey.
Vampire Survivors is a symptom of our gaming climate, not the sickness itself.
Vampire Survivors is a dopamine hit in slow motion.
Vampire Survivors is an ugly mirror. A skinner box numbers-go-up slot machine nightmare monster with gnarled teeth and sharp claws and never-ending jackpots.
…
I’ve only been to Vegas twice. The first time, I was a kid; the second time, I could gamble… so I gambled. I won some money, then I lost some money, then I found the arcade cabinets. I found Bubble Bobble at the casino, man (I don’t remember if it was called Bubble Bobble, but you know what I mean). You could pay real, hard-earned cash to play arcade games in a casino instead of paying real, hard-earned cash to gamble for a chance to win more real, hard-earned cash. Would it be surprising to learn I spent most of my time playing the arcade cabinets?
Arcades are sort of like casinos for kids, if you think about it. I’m sure that’s not an original thought at all, but – is not the sole purpose of the arcade to entice children to spend their parents’ money? Even like a Chuck E. Cheese or Dave and Buster’s or whatever, they have machines where you can win prizes! The main difference really is that parents are less inclined to let a six year-old put them ten thousand in the hole or something.
Time is money. Ever seen that movie “In Time” starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried? I haven’t, but I remember seeing the trailer forever ago and thinking, “Whoa! What a clever and novel idea for a movie,” and honestly? I never want to watch it because of that. Because regardless of what that movie actually is, it’ll never run the gamut of that grand idea – it’s too much, too monumental of a world, of a setting, to be effectively communicated in 120 minutes or less.
It’s weird being alive nowadays. $5 isn’t even $5 anymore. It’s like ten, fifteen minutes maybe, you know what I mean? Every time I buy a coffee or a burger that feels like ten or fifteen minutes. The inverse is true: an hour spent working on pet projects feels like twenty-five dollars. Can’t stop thinking like this anymore.
Gamers continue to demand longer, more expensive, more technologically groundbreaking experiences at the same price – they complain when new releases don’t consume their lives, don’t become their all-in-one entertainment hub, don’t compel them to binge and splurge, don’t give them meaning.
Meanwhile, if I play a game for 20 hours and still haven’t seen 50% of it, I feel like I don't really need to see the other 50% of it. I've got better things to do.
…
Vampire Survivors is $5 and endlessly replayable. Every run is unique. Every run is the same.
Vampire Survivors is criminally underpriced. I clocked in for every achievement at 91 hours – so, if every run is 30 minutes long (barring incomplete/failed runs or special stages that clock in at 15 minutes or less), that means I’ve likely done around 182 runs. If this were an arcade game – and let’s be generous and assume it’s 25 cents a run – it would’ve cost me around $45 and 50 cents to “complete” Vampire Survivors.
Vampire Survivors is at once an empty sandbox, where oceans of enemies seem only to inhabit an infinitely looping Hanna-Barbera background and they aren’t allowed to exist outside of your screen. Nothing exists outside of your screen. You’re unable to outrun the monsters. The space between is a wasteland of tilesets and sprites. The only noteworthy events and special items are usually located on the periphery of each stage. The wild thing is that 30 minutes is usually more than enough time to collect everything.
Vampire Survivors ain’t about the taste.
…
Honestly I picked this game up because I saw Jerma playing it. I was drunk and I had five bucks to spare and I thought, y’know, fuck it. Might as well have another game in rotation. Took a few runs before it started to click.
I used to drink and game often. Definitely played Vampire Survivors drunk a lot. Last year was probably the worst of it. But now I’m 3 months sober and what’s most surprising is how playing it feels the same. It’s definitely more of a warmup or cooldown game, if I had to categorize it; the kind of game you play when you’re waking up, or about to fall asleep.
It’s not bad to be honest.
I’m not going to lie to you and say that this game doesn’t manipulate players psychologically, but also most games manipulate players psychologically? At least to some extent, some games more than others (but not nearly as bad as some have described this game as being imo).
If you were to surgically remove or alter the elements of Vampire Survivors, or reverse-engineer a proper “roguelike/lite” experience out of it, would it really be a better game for it? I don’t know. Is the Binding of Isaac a better game because its RNG elements become more of a determining factor in your success overall? I don’t know. Do I just want some roguelike games to tell me exactly what its items do instead of sinking countless hours into one and praying that its RNG decides to not fuck me for a single run? Absolutely.
Still, I did “finish” this game after 91 hours and I feel comfortable putting it down. I can’t say that I necessarily enjoyed each and every hour of Vampire Survivors (especially towards the end, where completionism was the main goal instead of just playing for additional content / unlocks (and I’m also not going to finish every map with every character, because you don’t really get anything for having done so)) but it was nothing if not one of the games I’ve ever played.
Erato_Heti’s review is a great counterpoint to this. I think it’s a great review. I don’t 100% agree with the conclusions but it’s not like critique of the game itself is a personal attack on people that enjoy the game. Vampire Survivors is not a high maintenance, cerebral game. It’s junk food.
It’s not super mentally stimulating, it won’t enrich your soul in any meaningful way, and it likely won’t dramatically alter the trajectory of your life – but it doesn’t need to.
Junk food’s not terrible in moderation, but you can’t subsist on a diet of snacks.
It’s definitely no lamb and chicken over rice.