Vampire Crawlers Brings Vampire Survivors Into the Dungeon — Cards and All

The Genre Hop Nobody Expected

Four years ago, while Vampire Survivors was becoming one of the most played indie games on Steam — over six million copies sold on the platform alone — poncle was already building something completely different in the background. Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors launches April 21 on PC, PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch for $9.99, day one on Game Pass. It shares the Vampire Survivors universe, its characters, and its items. What it doesn't share is the genre. This is a first-person dungeon crawler you play with cards.

Turns Without the Waiting

The core pitch borrows from '80s blobbers — grid-based, first-person dungeon crawlers like Wizardry and Dungeon Master — but filtered through poncle's signature design philosophy: strip out the friction. The result is the Turboturn system, where you don't wait for animations to finish before queuing your next action. The game stacks your inputs and executes them in sequence, letting you play at whatever pace feels right. Want to methodically plan each card? Fine. Want to slam through a deck at the speed of chaos? Also fine. It's the same accessibility-first thinking that made Vampire Survivors feel like a game anyone could pick up in seconds.

Cards are fueled by mana, and playing them in ascending cost order — 0, then 1, then 2 — triggers combos that amplify their effects. A gem system lets you customize cards with damage multipliers, status effects, and full weapon evolutions, the same kind of escalating power rush that made Survivors runs feel like they were always one synergy away from breaking wide open.

"Hopefully the First in a Series"

What's most interesting about Vampire Crawlers isn't the game itself — it's what it represents. In an interview during the Xbox Partner Preview where the game was revealed, poncle founder Luca called it "just a spin-off — hopefully the first in a series." He also confirmed that a proper Vampire Survivors sequel is in development separately. That framing matters. poncle isn't just making a follow-up; it's testing whether the Vampire Survivors brand can stretch across genres the way Luca described his design process: "I tried to take everything I like from the deck builders I've played and cut out all the things I find frustrating."

If that sounds familiar, it should. That's exactly what Vampire Survivors did to the action-survival genre — took the fun parts, stripped the bloat, and sold it for pocket change. In a post-Balatro world where a poker-themed deckbuilder became one of 2024's biggest games, the appetite for card-based roguelites has never been higher. poncle is betting its particular brand of accessible chaos translates.

Ten Dollars and a Dungeon

The demo that hit Steam and Xbox in February drew strong reactions. Preview coverage consistently described the same thing: a game that feels immediately familiar if you've touched Vampire Survivors, but plays nothing like it. The card combos, the gem customization, the escalating difficulty of each dungeon floor — it's a deckbuilder through and through, just one that moves at your speed instead of its own.

The counterpoint is crowding. Deckbuilder roguelites are everywhere right now, and most of them are good. Slay the Spire 2 just had a massive launch. Balatro proved the format can go mainstream. Vampire Crawlers has brand recognition and the $10 price tag working in its favor, but it still needs to prove that the Vampire Survivors magic lives in the design philosophy, not just the bullet heaven format. If it can, poncle won't just have a spin-off — it'll have a franchise. And at $9.99, the barrier to finding out is about as low as it gets.