Vampire Survivors - Doomed Undead Horde Defense Roguelike

what's up guys and gals and welcome back to the nerd castle today in the world of indie games we're gonna be checking out a little title i don't get to check out little titles very much anymore the channel tends to focus on like the aaa indie games but i figured i'd go back to my roots back to the days of ruiners today we're checking out a game that's only like two dollars two dollars three dollars and it's in early access right now and i've actually been quite enamored with it it's tape it's taken me back to my childhood it really sincerely has this one of those games that if it was on the super nintendo i would have dumped hundreds of hours into it as a kid uh vampire survivors if you don't know what this game is it's actually kind of a clever little title i know like in the first couple minutes of this video once we start playing you're gonna be like i don't see the appeal but trust me it's there the vampire survivors is a reverse bullet hell so in the case of most bullet hell games you are a character and you are tasked with precise movement to avoid bullets and avoid getting annihilated this is a roguelike that is a little bit different in this game you are the bullet hell and the enemy is trying to get through your bullets and so anyways the game's in early access there's not a whole lot of content here just yet but there is if the core gameplay loop gets its hooks into you like it has with me i think you're gonna have a really really good time so we're gonna dive on into vampire survivors as of right now it's got three or four different characters it's got a number of different items we have a collection over here this is kind of what exists inside the framework of the game as of right now but there's going to be more added with time that's the nice thing about early access games so let's dive on in and i'll give you some rough idea about how the game functions uh we gotta pick a character at the beginning you can get antonio he's all about melee attacks you can get imelda who i haven't played yet and then you can get pascalina who i've played quite a bit uh who is all about magic and ranged let's go ahead and try out the new character actually imelda i haven't tried her out yet so we'll give her a go your average run in this game is only like five ten minutes long before you get annihilated but it is really really fun and so we get more xp every five levels okay sounds good this is the game uh you move around with w a s d you pretty much have no control over your character except for movement and facing she's auto-casting those magic missiles right now to kill enemies and this game is going to get crazy very very quickly the blue crystals that i picked up off the ground those are xp crystals as you get more of them you level up and you get an opportunity to get randomly selected abilities that are gonna make you stronger for right now i'm gonna go ahead and get her magic wand all nice and suited up so that we can fire two magic wand bullets so as you can see the only downside to the two magic wand bullets is that they tend to fire at the exact same target which is like a good thing in some cases and it's like a bad thing in other cases so we are going to want to diversify our spell roster a little bit with the ui in the top left you can see what abilities we currently have stacked up what relics we've picked up along the way up here you can see with this skull how many enemies we've killed there's so much money you've accumulated over the course of your run your money stays so when you die you keep your money and use it to buy new characters to buy new abilities to buy new items stuff like that to give you a better self a better chance of surviving i'm gonna go ahead and take the king bible that sounds good every now and again there's gonna be a bible that circles around me and then i can walk into the enemy and annihilate them so there it is right there unfortunately it doesn't last very long and it's not very good at level one but the king bible is actually kind of underrated if you put the time in uh those little light sconces right there uh they drop items so you'll see that we got one gold out of that that's not very much considering most things in this game cost like hundreds of gold to unlock but we will get more gold from other sources later on down the line i do think that we're gonna need a spell that's gonna be a little bit more of a heater a little bit more of a hitter before we go too much further on into the game but i'm just going to kind of let these guys group up and creep forward a little bit got a little bit of damage out of the bible right there which is fantastic we'll go ahead and grab a couple more xp crystals right there from along the periphery of the fight the good news is none of your items disappear off the ground they stay there forever which is like good good job devs i hate it in video games when items disappear off the ground and start blinking and stuff uh we've got the pachon i've never seen that item before so i'm gonna take it uh it looks like it actually bombards enemies in differing directions so that should be a lot of fun unfortunately it doesn't like have any you know persistent targeting or anything else like that but once we start ooh there's a red gem over here that's like basically an instant level up at this level yeah i'll risk it for the biscuit to grab that uh let's go ahead and we'll get another king bible that way we have many many more bibles orbiting around us uh we do have a nasty little group of bats right there this game has kind of like modifiers that are gonna randomly trigger oh we barely got away with that one that was almost really really bad and these little bat swarms are one of those modifiers it doesn't particularly tell you what modifier is actively happening at any moment but like there's undead armies that will spawn and they'll march at you from one direction and like an endless wave uh there's plants that encircle you and slowly creep inwards and block your area of movement there's the bat swarms which are obviously gonna force you to gtfo pretty hard there's another level up right there that looks good uh i'll probably get fires one more projectile and the base area is larger i'm gonna get the whip actually so what the whip does is it makes me swing in one direction i don't have a whole lot of stuff that i can target manually right now and so i'd like to have an attack in my repertoire that i've got a little bit of control over so as you can see right there it penetrates enemies too and allows us to clear out walls of enemies a little bit more effectively than anything else we currently have in our repertoire there's a little bit of food over here this game does have weaponized achievements what i mean by weaponized achievements is that you will get unlocks in this game based on things you do during your playthrough so stuff like pick up 200 coins in one playthrough stuff like heal yourself 20 times in one playthrough i will take the wings for a little bit of extra speedy movement that sounds really really good but this is a minimalist game that really draws from kind of the robotron spear of games and if you don't know what robotron is i'm really dating myself right there but robotron was very much a game just like this in arcades when i was a kid but the graphics were simpler back then and i know what you're saying you're like well this game was pretty simple graphics how much simpler could it be robotron was mostly made out of like triangles and squares and stuff but it was the same general idea endless waves of enemies attack you you get different abilities and stuff and you wipe out thousands of enemies let's go ahead and make our magic wand a little bit faster that speeds it up a little bit and i think that might actually be kind of helpful these bibles out here doing work right now man the old king james actually really taken down some undead enemies uh we've got a little bit of a zombie apocalypse army thing happening right now or like a skeletal apocalypse ooh money bag yeah i'll take that give me that money bag right there i like progression progression is fun all right so we're gonna move through the middle right there we got some ghosty boys we got to deal with i do think that the map is a little bit barren and so i would like to see like things on the map like so for example as it stands right now it seems like the map works on a loop you kind of just walk around what i actually think would be a really compelling idea is if the map had cells and each cell had a random chance let's say that we have like 12 by 12 grid of squares for your average playthrough that repeats when you walk too far in one direction and on those squares you could put things like a village and inside the village there's a blacksmith and the blacksmith can upgrade your abilities for some of your currency in order to get things going and then like in another area there's going to be a wizard tower the wizard tower upgrades your magical abilities honestly they don't even really need it to they don't even really need it to refresh i think they could use that idea right there actually fairly successfully as an onus to move the character around if they played around with that idea so let's say every five minutes they refresh and if you go there and you interact with the npc you get a basically permanent buff for the rest of the run uh and like every five minutes the shop opens back up and you've got to get back over there that might actually really encourage kind of risk reward behavior being like okay can i get over there i'm going to try to get over there so that i can get my upgrade you know like little things like that i think would actually really really help out we'll go ahead and continue working on these little dudes over here i think we've actually got a decent build going right now by this point in the game i'm usually moving around a lot more and avoiding dying a lot more another level up right there let's go ahead and get another magic wand projectile sure why not yep turn that thing into a veritable submachine gun if we can all right so we're gonna see you see what i'm getting at here when i said when you start out it's not a very interesting game but like once you get like five ten minutes in you're like oh this is a power fantasy game like this is a game where you're supposed to be hanging out like annihilating stuff uh let's go ahead and we'll take another pichon upgrade that sounds good i'm gonna work on these critters over here and hopefully create a hole so that i can escape that's what i prefer to do anyways come on they got too much hp i don't know if i'm gonna be able to get out of here in time uh if we can magic missile the zombie down oh we took a bunch of damage right there but it looks like they're gone and we got a little bit more money on that side so i'm gonna pick it up i don't know what that is oh it's a freezer i've done a couple of playthroughs and i've never seen that item drop before so i'll take it we'll grab some xp over here use this brief respite that we've got from the enemy in order to grab some of the goodies i actually really really like that item a little bit more money for the cash stack for when we get back to the village let's go ahead and we'll grab a few more gems over here good good good the bibles are great for clearing out those little light sconces because sometimes with certain characters you don't have any abilities that directly target things that you're looking at and so it can be actually really really difficult to like single target though oh this might have been a mistake i might have made a mistake okay we made it through we're all right we're good i'm just gonna hang tight for a minute and let the enemies converge a bit until i have like a rough idea where they're coming from we're not getting a lot of xp right now which is not great i prefer to kind of constantly have xp ticking upwards because as you get fur once we get around 10 minutes you'll see what i mean like you basically need to be op by the time 10 minutes kicks off so we've got about three and a half minutes to make that happen unfortunately we got some the green zombies are really really beefy and they're really really like stacked and hard to kill however if i could get pachon to attack in the right direction there we go petrone did a little bit right there i feel like we might have a little bit of a chance i'm gonna go ahead and clear out some light sconces real fast i don't know what that does either what does that do oh it's a screen wipe hell yeah dude okay uh let's go ahead and our magic wand we've got a lot of points in magic wand so i think it's a good idea to put some more to put a little bit more treasure chest treasure chest frenzy play the music uh that's what i mean is this game has a very simple presentation but with regards to like the music design and like the soundtrack and like the way that it gives you chests and whatnot it becomes abundantly clear really fast that this is kind of a modern game uh that's trying oh i want that other chest right there it's not going to disappear we just got to wait for our moment uh it does give you an arrow that tells you where the chest is gonna be each time so you never lose the chest it reduces weapon cool down by ooh damages nearby enemies yeah i'll take some garlic that sounds good let's get some let's get some let's get the garlic gun going out here i unlocked the garlic on my last run and i haven't had a chance to try it out so i'm sort of of the opinion that i would very much like to try out the garlic i want this chest right here and they're not making it easy like they know i want the chest too so they're like glomping on it man zombies out here actually showing pretty solid tactical reasoning i'm just gonna go for it come on what have we got uh we got another whip upgrade so our whip is actually at level three now so it should start swinging on both sides of us if i remember correctly uh no it's just a damage buff let's go ahead and we will get let's get another let's get another whip attack over here that sounds good i mean we've got a lot of points and whip and it's starting to deal some like serious concurrent damage and like i said we need to be op in the next two to three minutes and so like hopefully i can get op very very soon because we're starting to get the big upgraded bats over there and that's when this starts to get a little bit more hectic because they're fast they deal a lot of damage they soak a lot of damage it can be kind of a nightmare to get rid of the big bats however with the upgraded whip i feel like we're doing a pretty good job right now oh we barely snuck through that bad horde right there very nice come on get that big bat right there we got like a screen wipe or anything around here i'm gonna keep working towards the lanterns the lanterns seem like they may solve problems for me if i can get a few more screen wipes and whatnot lined up because the enemy is starting to get hectic out here we're starting to get into the meat and potatoes that real banger part of the game where your o penis begins to be tested you know what i mean and when people are looking at your opinions you want them to be impressed uh let's see here we want actually we've got them lined up pretty good right now uh fire another projectile yeah not bad actually not bad this is going pretty good if you hear my cat screaming in the background i apologize it's because he's locked in the room with me right now and he desperately feels that now that it's time for me to like earn a living and do my job that he deserves to escape he wanted to be in here so badly until i was paying attention to making an episode and then he has decided that now that all of the attention is not on him he's leaving me forever out of spite and he's never gonna talk to me again i'd like to break this open right here no screen wipe okay i want there to be a screen wipe like i want to have a screen wipe that's just hanging out that i can use when i feel like i'm gonna need it but unfortunately all we're getting is singular pennies for right now um yeah big bats still aren't going down no matter how dope i am it's a little bit unfortunate i'm trying to put some damage on the big bass we did get some food right there though so that's not oh we're trapped obviously not a great situation to be in uh we've got the plant thing happening right now i'll be honest with you this is where i lose 90 of my characters right here is when is when we we get trapped in by the plants luckily i'd like to level up my garlic actually hey there's the exit right there we should probably get out of here before the exit gets inundated by enemies yup just let them taste the garlic out here i put garlic on everything when i cook so i get it let them taste it dude this would be pleasant for me i'd be like oh this wizard lady smells like garlic i love garlic i think this is love but like you know zombies feel differently about it screen wipe nope no screen wipe man i feel like i'm like flipping the cards right now in the deck we made it past 10 minutes though so that's a solid start nothing to complain about nothing to be ashamed about as a new player making it 10 minutes uh we are in the zombie army phase of the game officially so we need to pick a direction and we need to get out of it basically i think i see our opening right there so i'm gonna go for it let me get the garlic upgrade okay we found our opening we got out but they are converging pretty aggressively so i would rather not hang out and get trapped here getting some serious mileage out of pachon right now so that's good but young patron carry me to victory patchon uh we are going to need to continue cutting in a direction here i don't want to spread my damage around too much we got another level up that's good go ahead and give me base spread on my bible real fast that's some good bible in right there i grew up in a religious family that's some damn good babbling right there boy all right so we're gonna go ahead and continue annihilating enemies when and where we can we're almost at the 2000 enemy mark which is really really rad and fantastic glad to see it okay we've got a little bit of a breather right here i'm not gonna go too wild and crazy but i am gonna get a little bit more aggressive oh we've got werewolves in here now and we've got bats we've really got to see if the bats are i think our garlic actually takes out the bats now so we don't need to worry about it the protective shield of garlic is making us strong the downside to this is that i'm not really getting an opportunity to loot any of the xp or anything else the garlic is also getting the ghosts which is fantastic as well okay if i can just find the edge of this horde and just kind of group them up like we can actually start sort of shaving away the edges like a pleasing carve into a fresh pot fresh jar of peanut butter that should be a level up right there let's go ahead and keep reducing weapon cooldowns i'd like to be attacking as fast as possible we've got a whole bunch of xp down here from where we did all that mayhem earlier so i'm going to go ahead and pick that on up and there's another level up let's go ahead and i'm gonna raise the damage inflicted by all abilities by five percent uh this might be it right here though oh just barely carved through to the other side i had to make a i had to make a tough clutch decision right there and not one that i was happy about i think we're gonna have to go this way ghost got a little bit more of my health off come on food i need food here i need food help your man out anything but one coin oh no dude oh no oh god there's so many things happening i'm legitimately terrified for my safety right now oh my god yup just cut through the middle nice and quick and clean we weren't as op as we needed to be i am under open my opinion was gazed upon and was found to be wanting and lacking in many different parameters food i don't even know what i just picked up right there i have no clue oh it sucks in all the xp glorious uh bible yes let's get some better bibling going on dude that's an amazing ability uh all cool downs down and then we'll go with movement speed and that looks like that is the duration of every piece of xp on the map that we had missed i have like zero oh hell thank god dude i needed that so bad and so as you can see this game turns out to be much more than what it promises on the tin for three dollars i've been having a blast with this game over the last couple hours like just getting to this phase of the game and just seeing the mayhem and the chaos that unfolds is such like a reward and like a treasure this is a game that really like encourages you to be overpowered and like in a very very real way sort of indulges that power fantasy aspect of gaming that i think is very very important to secure sales oh they spawned in right there that's a bummer i was gonna go for that sconce over there oh no dude plants oh no and that's the game that's it right there vampire survivors as we get out of here we've unlocked the lightning rings so that's really really cool and then we can go back in we've got 548 dollars right now i don't know if there's actually anything that i can buy here uh we've got a number of different buffs and things that we can pick up and these are going to be just kind of general upgrades so we've got everything from movement speed increases we've got projectile increases although that's very very pricey we can level up our luck which gives us more selections when we level up we've got the magnet which allows us to pick things up from further away i think that's really really cool we get more coins i think that's usually like a pretty good place to start with oh we get regeneration too okay i'm going to take a level of regeneration and i'm going to take a level of greed i also like that in forward thinking they've already allowed you to refund your power-ups if you wanted to move your allocations around that's a very often ignored thing we'll go with antonio on this run oh we unlocked a new stage too let's do the library yeah that sounds like fun oh it's got a different soundtrack too love that uh let's see so we can get a knife that we can fire we've got damage zones with the santa water i'll go ahead and do that and also it's got new enemies oh yeah i was expecting that there would kind of be like three colors or something going on but we've actually got different enemy sets inside this new map i'm gonna see where i can deal some damage right here there we go there we go a little bit more we took some damage right there it's okay we've got regeneration now holy water made a little fire zone right there so that's good holy water landed really good on that side very very funky soundtrack i'm digging it it's definitely like everything about this game really encapsulates the simplicity in style and form of games from like 1995 with like a modern veneer and that's what i love about it let's go ahead and we will get an extra whip so now we swing on both sides of ourselves i'm a big fan of the whip i feel like the whip underrated whip is pretty whip is pretty dope because now i can just kind of move in like a figure eight or almost in like a circle i'm gonna go with some movement speed that sounds good come on i want to see what enemies exist like later on in this stage there we go kill them kill them all dead yo get them cleared out there we go a couple more kills on that side looking good and we are getting a little bit pinched right now and so this is kind of like a a cylinder basically which actually changes things around a little bit with regards to what you'd want to focus on uh the map design actually dictating the proper course to take when it comes to leveling up your character is something that i'm a fan of as well a little bit of money a little bit of xp out of that sconce right there so yeah this one's a bit more of a side scroller right here so you're going to want to prioritize attacks that allow you to attack directionally rather than things that are omnidirectional so like we we lucked out here in that like our whip is like the king of directional attacks i think i'm gonna spin around and see if there's any way i can work my way back to this xp over here even if it costs me hp i'm okay and going for it so you've got better projectile speed i think we probably want to go with let's get a knife i guess the knife is just going to throw in kind of like uh eight directions depending on which way you're facing you've got some kind of rotten thing right there i don't know what it is but it just bit me so i'm going to assume that it's not benevolent those are little medusa heads right there where's that cut up to it doesn't cut up to like anywhere okay xp acquisition is going to be tough on this level yeah just keep wiping them out a little bit all right all right all right uh we're gonna want to flip a on this one in just a second and turn around and go back the other direction for like maybe the opportunity to grab some of this xp that's around because like passing on xp is a terrible idea in this game let me get another santa water that sounds good a little bit of that extra santa fire it just creates those little dead zones that the enemies can't cross and i find that it's good for kind of like whittling away at waves it is unfortunate that the santa water can land outside the field of play that's something that i'd like to see changed it should stay inside the confines of like the walkable area where the player can traverse i'll take extra 10 damage right there sounds good but it's a very rapid fire very entertaining very cool game and like for three dollars dude the fact that i've already gotten like four or five hours out of this game and i want to play like way way more just due to like i get roped in on power fantasy games i really sincerely do stuff like this wizard of legend games that allow you to really really fundamentally lean into the rule of cool and become like overpowered and kill like hundreds of enemies at a time that tends to be my bread and butter that tends to be like my jam that's the stuff that i enjoy the most and we got our first big enemy starting to spawn in right here so we'll go ahead and kind of walk in a direction right here we'll keep it kind of tight i'm gonna dip in and grab some of the goodies right there i haven't seen my santa water deploy in a while santa water why you slacking there you are in some ways this is actually simply or randomly strikes enemies in the lower half of the screen okay so that's actually like a positional ability that we've got to pay attention to oh i was hoping it was going to chain around alas no chaining but i do like that they have abilities that force you to think about where you want to keep the camera focused like little fourth wall breaking little fourth wall breaking abilities like that are actually kind of cool like i dig that it actually seems to be doing a pretty good job i'm gonna have to lose some hp right there i didn't want to but i made mistakes with my movement and so a little bit more xp right there love to see it i could have snuck down and through right there but i have an opportunity on this side to kind of clear in one direction so that's what i'm gonna do oh yeah this is vampire survivors i hope you guys dug it like i'm really really really enjoying this game uh this is a game that in my mind has really tapped into something simple and has really tapped into something addictive simultaneously and it's really a shame that it's sitting on steam right now with like three reviews so i figured you know what i'm gonna toss my hat into the ring i'm gonna help this game out i'm gonna i'm gonna help this one oh we got a big assembly of candelabras down here unfortunately grabbing them has gotten me into trouble yeah vampire survivors if you're into retro styled robotron games with a little bit of like a roguelite bent to them you could do a whole lot worse i am very very excited to see where this game goes because it seems to me that the developers have a solid grasp of gaming fundamentals and like what makes a game fun to play so despite the fact that the game is not like crazy pretty to look at and the game on the visual respect is not much to write home about with regards to the gameplay i think they've really really latched on to something here that speaks to me as a gamer like this is the kind of game boiled down that i personally like to play a few observations i would like to see a full screen mode you've no doubt noticed that i letterboxed this video that's because the game plays in a window and does not have a full screen mode available and so anyways that's something that i would get on sooner rather than later adding like a full screen kind of 720p even if it's stretched or like a 1080p display i would definitely work on that and then honestly it's a lot of meta progression stuff like i would love for there to be kind of like an animated village in between runs so instead of buying upgrades from just like that sterile menu that they have like you go back to kind of like a headquarters or you go back to kind of like a witch hunters base and you upgrade little buildings to get those same luck upgrades and hp upgrades and stuff like that and incrementally the buildings get more impressive and things of that nature as you kind of level up your character i would like to see sort of a gauntlet legends type deal going on uh where as you hit like so for example i don't we're at level 14 right now like it'd be cool if every 14 levels your character's model got a little bit cooler so you start out basically just like a guy with a shirt and some pants and a whip and then like you know at level 10 he's now got like a pauldron at level 15. he's now got like a helmet on level 20. he's now got like a breastplate it doesn't actually like affect the gameplay but like it sort of allows the visual i find that as an end user i like it when there's some kind of visual progression to my character's model that's just me but the game is three dollars right now on steam and honestly for three dollars i feel like you could buy a whole lot more crappier games that's that's my honest opinion this is a cool title that really sort of blindsided me and surprised me and like i like being surprised i don't get surprised a ton anymore doing this job like it turns out like one of the things is you kind of turn through like a thousand games a year and sometimes the magic can wear off a little bit i know you're not supposed to say stuff like that out loud but i feel like it's important to address because like when you do what i do it's really easy to slide into a mindset where you're like i've seen everything but like i'm really really glad to report that vampire survivors is not that case i don't have much to complain about here i'd love to see a 1080p full screen support added i'd love to see more immersive things added rather than just simple menus for the upgrades and things like that but like at the end of the day the game really corners the entire point of a video game which is to be fun and to provide escapism like the whole thing drips with kind of a style and love that the simple sprites and art don't really initially inspire when you first take a look at the screenshots like this is that hallmark sort of game where you have to play it for yourself because the screenshots are not going to do it justice like i put about four hours into the game and like i'm honestly super excited to jump back in for more runs and in fact i've been squeezing in a run here and there wherever i can because like i play other games but they usually have me doing busy work or waiting for a timer to take down before i can do like a thing and so this game fits in perfectly inside of that bracket uh it's super appealing coming in weak and vulnerable to the enemy and getting to a level where you're mowing down dozens of enemies per attack while dancing to kind of the super chest loot music did i mention super chests i didn't know about super chests when i recorded this video they're super chests and they are super super super fun as the name super might imply but like it's that whole thing that makes the game an absolute riot to play i can't recommend it highly enough i loved it i'll be watching the early access very eagerly for more content items gear additions enemies that kind of stuff but for right now it's time for me to go my name is splattercat i sit through the file to find what's worthwhile in the world of indie games every single day so you don't have to today up on the chopping block we had the vampire survivors it's like three bucks i promise you're gonna have a good time i'll see you later thanks for stopping on in and i'll be back tomorrow with something hot fresh off the indie skillet bye everybody

Channel: Splattercatgaming

Views: 245,520

Keywords: vampire survivors gameplay, vampire survivors walkthrough, vampire survivors playthrough, lets play vampire survivors, vampire survivors guide, vampire survivors review, vampire survivors preview, vampire survivors impressions, vampire survivors trailer, vampire survivors soundtrack, vampire survivors music, vampire survivors ending, vampire survivors steam, vampire survivors early access

Id: trc7iuyydmo

Length: 30min 50sec (1850 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022