Vampire Survivors 1.0 Launches On October 20

After several months of early access development, roguelike shoot-'em-up Vampire Survivors will launch as a complete game on October 20. The v1.0 edition will introduce minor tweaks in balancing items to try to make them more useful, new achievements will be added, and several existing achievements will receive different unlock conditions for anyone who hasn't acquired them yet.

Anyone who has played the game in its development phase won't lose their save data when Vampire Survivors is ported over to a new engine, which developer Poncle says will add increased performance and compatibility for more machines. Beyond the v1.0 release, post-game support will be focused on fine-tuning the game further, and more details will be revealed through teasers from October 7.

If you haven't tried it yet, Vampire Survivors is an action-packed game that is deceptively simple. A mix of Castlevania visuals and bullet-hell inspirations, you're given a lone hero who has to stand alone against countless hordes of monsters,. You'll only control the movement of your hero, as they'll automatically use their weapon, and you'll need to ensure that they don't get overrun by a horde of vampire bats or werewolves who'll come at you from all directions.

The more monsters you kill, the more skills you'll be able to unlock and enhance. At the same time, the number of monsters will escalate and you'll have to use every power at your disposal to annihilate them. Though death is inevitable most of the time, you can slowly increase the base power and skills of your heroes with any coin earned from your adventures, and in time, you'll become an almost-unstoppable vampire-slaying machine.

Vampire Survivors is currently available on PC and MacOS, and if you have a PC Game Pass subscription, you can grab the early access build through that membership for a very compelling couple of minutes for each fresh run--or days, if the game sinks its hooks into you.