Poncle’s rapid rise from small-time indie developer to working with the likes of Games Workshop and Shonen Jump on spinoffs of their hit bullet heaven Vampire Survivors has been meteoric for the studio. So, it’s not surprising they’re pursuing spinoffs of the game that made them so popular in the first place, like first-person turn-based dungeon crawler Vampire Crawlers! But does it hold up to its predecessor?

Well, in a word, yes. But you probably want to know how exactly it does that. So, let’s go over where you’ll find similarities to Vampire Survivors, and where Vampire Crawlers stands on its own two feet.

Once you’re in, it’s business as usual: journey through each level, find treasure, slay enemies and the final boss before making your escape. Or, in this case, being taken out by The Reaper.

There are a lot of similarities between the two, with Vampire Crawlers featuring the same characters as your companions, alongside returning weapons and stat boosts that offer similar bonuses to damage, area-of-effect, experience and so on. Even the enemy sprites are virtually identical.

Where Vampire Crawlers really stands out is its combat. As the ranks of enemies slowly advance on you, you’ll play cards from your deck, building combos by playing them in ascending order of their mana cost. These range from increasing stats to simple attacks and buffs to armour or health.

At first, Vampire Crawlers feels rather slow, for lack of a better term. But once you get into the rhythm of playing cards automatically, occasionally mixing in a few higher mana cost options rather than using the auto-sorting feature, you’ll find it quite engaging.

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