Admirable in the aesthetic sense, a modern-day revival of the Newgroundspunk manifesto that aided and abetted the creation of illegal little serotonin dispensers built from the pixellated bones of beloved franchises. It's about time folks were allowed to charge a couple of quid for this sort of thing - lawyers be damned! A miracle that it can walk around in Castlevania's skin and replicate its movements without anyone narcing to Konami; this is the Steam equivalent of that scene from Spider-Man 2 where everyone carries the unmasked Peter Parker down the train carriage without giving him up to Doc Ock.

As far as gameplay goes, though, I think this is somewhat abject and miserable. It gets its gamefeel just right, but locks satisfaction behind rote roguelite tedium and digital dicerolling, forcing you to relive its early-game boredom again and again until you have the means to boost ahead to the good stuff. It feels like a progression model that games just can't move on from, a skinner box that aims to rack up Steam hours punctuated with the fleeting thrills the store page promised you. Another "podcast game" in the pejorative sense, something your friend will recommend to you while frowning or shrugging.

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!

This game is cheap, and looks the part too. What's underneath that veneer, though, is an incredibly engaging loop that blends auto-games like Cookie Clicker and autobattlers with the action-roguelike genre. From this recipe you get a game that technically sports sessions of 10 minutes, but will often have you playing "one more round" for hours.

The game is in early access, but already provides plenty of content for you to enjoy. Much of this added content reveals itself as surprises for completing special achievements, which further adds to the hooky nature of the game loop. Every time, you wonder if you get new toys to play with.

Will I remember this game at the end of this year? I don't know. Maybe. For now, though, I am definitely getting my money's worth.

I guess the question you ask, when you boot up and play vampire survivors, the one that screams at you at full volume, is "is this good?"
And is it? I don't know. Kind of? It's a chaotic ball of nonsense, particles and AoEs, tens to hundreds to thousands of enemies on screen, as if Cave really took the limiters off. It has a magical loop of levelling and upgrades that feels good.
But it's so obviously wonky, right. It's the first thing you see when you boot the game, on the title screen which scales badly to 16:9. Is this deliberate, or just unimportant, a detail that doesn't matter because it is extraneous to the meat of the game? Does it even really matter?
I think I like Vampire Survivors more in just one play session than I like most AAA games after multiple hours. It's rare to find a prestige game that isn't obsessed with presentation, whether it be RTX ON visuals, fancy Birdman camerawork in a Sony game that doesn't even make sense when you consider that you can fast travel, slick menuing, even the sweet and sexy style of a well-formed combo system. All of that is to some extent a veneer, right? That's not to say all of it is bad (I love that combo system flavour of softwood) but it is inherently refreshing to play a game that is so obviously uninterested in it. It knows what you're here for and gives you it. Go nuts.