When Vampire Survivors debuted back in 2022, it is no exaggeration to say it spawned its own genre in a way that’s hard to remember another game doing in quite some time. SNES-style pixel RPG graphics, dozens of collectables in the form of weapons, items and characters, a cheap price and a killer gameplay loop – it’s no surprise so many others wanted a piece of the pie.
Now in 2026, the indie team at Poncle has branched out into a whole new dimension, taking their world and characters and transporting them into a Might and Magic-style dungeon crawler fused with card battler. They might not have revolutionised card games the way they did the survival genre, but this development team is determined to sink their teeth into this area of the industry too, as Vampire Crawlers – or to use its full name The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors – comes to all console platforms and PC.
Sometimes a great game experience takes time to burn, at times only revealing its depths, characters and fun a dozen hours in. Vampire Crawlers goes for the jugular straight away as the introductory cutscene transitions from the familiar Vampire Survivors view into this new first-person 3D perspective. While that view might have changed, the atmosphere hasn’t.
The charm of the retro graphics is immediate, as all the familiar characters and monsters make an appearance. Remember the whip or the knife from Survivors? They are both here as playable cards that are played during battles to wipe out rows of enemies. Instead of moving around a huge map from above, things are a bit more condensed, with packaged dungeons containing battles, coins to unlock characters and permanent power-ups, and new cards and buffs.
As simple as Survivors was to just pick up and play, don’t let the fact this game features cards feel daunting. Getting into the momentum of moving through each stage of the dungeon before facing off against the final boss hits its stride quickly. This is a turn-based card battler, with each of the many cards – and many more unlocked as the adventure unfolds – having a mana cost. While it’s entirely possible in the early game to brute force just playing every card in the deck to complete battles, getting to the latter stages of the dungeons on the expanding world map often requires more than just spamming attacks.
Each card has a mana cost and playing cards in the order of their mana cost adds up combo multipliers. The result is a delightful gameplay loop that rewards good deck planning, adept use of buff cards, and a keen sense of strategic planning when going into battle. The satisfaction of racking up 10, 20 or 30 card combos is a real treat.
There were a few times, in fact, that the sheer amount of cards being played, damage being dealt, and gems being collected made the Switch 2 chug for a second, but this was rare. Added on to the combo system, as the game expands, there is also the addition of the different character cards and their abilities and starting decks, which will give enthusiasts plenty of time to spend crafting the perfect combination of cards and characters.
Going back to the visuals, it is clear there is a lot of love put into Crawlers. Anyone who once spent hours of their weekends playing any RPG and dungeon crawlers from the 90s will immediately feel right at home, and exploring the library, for example, from Survivors in this new 3D space is ridiculously fun. There are 16 of these stages in total, with difficulty variants of the base stages unlocked after beating the boss in each, leaving plenty of things to see and do.
Will it have the same longevity that Survivors had just due to how much simpler the former was at pick up and play? It’s hard to say, but Vampire Crawlers is an excellent reinvention for this series that will reward in many more fans.
