Though it passes up the opportunity to move the genre into new territory, the game is a tasty, if familiar, piece of gaming junk food.

When I first heard that developers Auroch Digital and Vampire Survivors creator Luca “Poncle” Galante were working together on Warhammer Survivors, I was thrilled. A studio of Warhammer lore fiends collaborating with a solo dev who birthed a genre seemed like a recipe for success. 

But having now played through most of the game’s sci-fi battles and a smattering of fantasy incursions, I think your enjoyment of this game probably hinges entirely on how many modern bullet heaven games you’ve played. If you’re looking for something that meaningfully changes the formula, you won’t find it here.

While Vampire Survivors should be respected and lauded for laying the foundations for an entirely new type of video game, it has been surpassed by newer projects that have fundamentally changed the fledgling bullet heaven genre for the better. Newer games have implemented incredibly robust progression systems, more objective-based gameplay and entirely new camera perspectives. 

There’s no problem with Survivors being knocked off the pedestal it built – every developer should learn from their peers, and the oldest games will never be the most polished games (even if they stand the test of time as cult classics).

The issue is that Warhammer Survivors just feels like a massive, reskinned expansion of Poncle’s original game. Despite a striking visual identity and plenty of Warhammer-themed weapons and items, this game never escapes the shadow of Vampire Survivors, which may diminish the enjoyment of genre enthusiasts.

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