Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors (2026)

Vampire Survivors: The Hyperactive Card Game. Somehow. And yes, it works. Vampire Crawlers does require a bit more attention to play than VS, but it has the same vibe of "Breaking The Game" - The Game.

I'm super impressed with the combo mechanic, it very well possible some other game did this before but I don't know about it. It goes like this: playing cards in ascending order of mana cost fuels your combo multiplier, and thus the higher cost cards become super-powered spells. Combo resets each turn, so this forces some deck building decisions: you'll need to consider the mana curve to build into consistent combos each turn. But this combines with being forced to pick cards on every level up, so your perfectly decent consistent deck at level 10 might be skewed at level 20, with you only having limited say in this. Dealing with the randomness, or maybe rather leaning into the chaos, is the name of the game here.

If this sounds like a brainburner, no, no worries. There's a bunch of ways to even out the randomness, or, if you prefer, double down on it. And it's still Vampire Survivors so even if you end up losing a run you will unlock 30 new things (or about 0.01% of the progression) so next time you can go again a bit stronger or just go for a completely new build.

VC can be frustrating, and not only because of the randomness. The first few runs are a bit slow. It doesn't really bother to explain its mechanics, instead letting you find out. It's also super unclear which attacks are modified by which stats, or what some stats actually do. It kinda builds on VS lore and mechanics, so previous knowledge helps, which is a bit weird. Maybe unlocks further in the game give more clarification.

I've played about 8 hours of this game at the time of writing, and I'll probably play a bit more, but I feel like I'm hitting a wall. I feel like I've gotten to the point where there isn't that much variety, but it also might just be that I'm not smart enough to take advantage of the systems the game gives, a similar scenario I've run into with something like Slay the Spire.

Overall, I've thought it's decently fun with what I've played so far. The whole play cards in ascending mana order is a near concept and is very satisfying to do. I think what I'm running into at the point of the game I'm at is that there just isn't enough cards, I feel like there should be more types. I also think the game does a not great job of portraying how much damage an attack is going to do. It's a similar complaint to a lot of the UI decisions in the village of the game, idk why I have to click through the top arrows like 6 times to get to where I want to get.

Overall, I think it's decently fun so far, but I don't see anything crazy special or good about it. Strong 7/10