Everyone knows Mario is cool as fuck. But who knows what he's thinking? Who knows why he touches flowers? And why do we think about him as fondly as we think of the mystical (nonexistent?) Dr Pepper? Perchance.

I believe it was Kant who said "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." Mario exhibits experience by tushing flowes all day, but he exhibits theory by stating "Lets-a go!" Keep it up, baby!

When Mario leaves his place of safety to grab a flowey, he knows that he may Die. And yet, for a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value. A tax that can be paid for, much as a rich man feels any law with a fine is a price. We think of Mario as a hero, but he is simply a one percenter of a more privileged variety. The lifekind. Perchance.

incredible narrative on games as art, difficulty, the digital medium of language and creation, authorship, and finding comfort in trash and frustration.

the anti-Celeste: a game about climbing a mountain with no way to adjust the difficulty, no special abilities, no one around to help you, stripped down to only the game, your hand, and your will.

i understand if the gameplay is not for you, but it's also an incredible speedgame, look it up.

A platformer that invents itself from its foundation in a stale genre, reaching back to the essence. An essence that understands that everything at its root is about platforms and moving around them, not about enemies, nor levels, nor obstacles, nor lives, nor deaths, not even jumping or running. A game that doesn’t care how you reach the top, it will treat you the same either if you were lucky or you worked hard, that if you fall it will just suggest you go back up. A mountain made to piss you off, but a static platform above all, the same mountain for all, the journey only yours.

Bennett Foddy kept reinventing movement, searching for the opposite of convenience, to understand and explore that rare bodies are capable bodies too, much more interesting than any standard one. In 2017, Getting Over It was released demonstrating that you could learn to climb with a hammer the same as you learnt to walk, then run, then jump, as we already did more than 40 years ago, and all the merits and failures were yours. If you want to capture the frustration of getting used to a new body, you must avoid any standard. In 2018, just 3 months later, Celeste released and insisted, over a search of the most comfortable body to ever be put under control, that you had it hard, but that if you made it to the top, the merit was yours, you overcame yourself. About every year, hundreds of precision platformers demonstrate that there is no friction going that way, that a small touch on what is already over-explored is the opposite of self-discovery. About every year, it becomes more clear that the Getting Over It journey was truly unique and personal, that trying to replicate it already misses the point. It conquered its own top.

I hate playing this, but I respect what it's going for a lot.

I got filtered by the upward tunnel section with the lamps, but up until that point (it was only a couple of minutes) I found it to be a genuinely enjoyable experience. I looked up a playthrough and found one with Tim Rogers and Bennett Foddy himself, where Rogers describes it as, for the most part, a meditative experience. I get it.

Foddy's commentary is insightful and important, interspersed throughout slowly learning the physics of this physics-based game. I genuinely believe that if I were to get past this "casual-filter" tunnel part that I would like the rest of the game. That said, unlike the Shin Megami Tensei casual-filters I've dealt with, I'm not interested in this one. If I want to have a meditative experience, I'll meditate. Meditation rules.

More than anything, Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy just reminds me of how little mouse space I have.

Almost knocked over my drink.

I think Bennet Foddy thought that pitfalls in videogames are unfair: there's always something to grab on during a fall. But, at least for this game's rules, it depends on the magnitude of said fall and the direction you're falling.
It's more entertaining to appreciate this the more you understand the cauldron, the man inside it, the lever-hammer he holds and the spacial conception of the architecture around these three "things" to interact with.
Because you cannot die, every state and mean of victory and failure becomes a discovery of its own, and something to contemplate (and move on). That's what this platformer has that makes it stand up for me.

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.