Not even Vampire Survivors’ creator knows why it’s so good

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one

Marco Wutz | Jan 2, 2023

Not even Vampire Survivors’ creator knows why it’s so good /

One of the best indie games of 2022, Vampire Survivors became a hit on Steam last year and was even nominated for best debut indie game at The Game Awards. Featuring Shoot ‘em up gameplay mixed with Roguelike elements, but no vampires, the title quickly gained recognition for its sheer addictiveness and relaxation value. In fact, all you do in Vampire Survivors is move around your character, which does all the shooting ‘em up by itself. We don’t even know why a game like that is fun, just that it is. As it turns out, its creator is just as clueless.

Speaking to IGN, Luca Galante states that he has “no idea” why Vampire Survivors became as successful as it did, which is what makes his creation’s fame “really scary” to him. Personally, he is unsure if his game “is worth all the attention”, but he is very happy with it nonetheless, hoping his story will “encourage more indie developers to keep pushing on their projects.”

Galante was able to found his own studio thanks to his debut hit, releasing a DLC and a mobile version to follow up on it. While he dislikes the idea of selling DLC, being now responsible for the livelihood of his employees he “couldn’t just keep adding stuff for fun”. “As a player, I absolutely am into the idea of being able to keep getting content for the games I love, but very often nowadays I feel like DLC is designed around monetisation rather than around a good service to the players. [...] My greatest hope is that we managed to make it a fair deal for the players and they’ll like it”.

Talking about the other elephant in the room, Galante keeps his lips shut about the possibility of actually adding vampires to the game, instead asking what a vampire even is. Wikipedia says it’s a “a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living”, which basically is exactly what the game does minus the blood – though we have considered the possibility of blood sacrifice to conjure up better item drops while playing.

Wait a second. Were we the Vampire Survivors all along?

Published Jan 2, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg