With every earthquake comes aftershocks. At this point, Vampire Survivors hasn’t just made its mark on the world, it’s still a primary point of the gaming culture space, not just unfettered by new releases, but also a point of influence for many a copycat to “improve” the formula. Everything always needs X to improve on, it needs X to provide Y, in the palatable form of Z! Vampire Hunters, if anything else, is one of many such cases.
This is the latest game from Brazilian developers Gamecraft Studios, a team that also dabbles in assisting development with other devs and games, like 2023’s BIT.TRIP ReRunner. Vampire Hunters has toured the circuit as an Early Access title for some time before kicking into gear with a 1.0 release at the end of October. The result is ideas on top of ideas.
It’s a first-person shooter, relying on some boomer shooter-esque inclinations, while never fully going all the way. You’re in an arena, almost perfectly equipped for some old-school, 90s Unreal Tournament action, and set spawn points will release an endless barrage of increasingly difficult monsters to defeat within an allotted time. As time goes on, you’ll also completely fill your screen with up to 12 weapons, each of which is an extension of your God-given power to completely decimate the battlefield.
The structure is more encroaching than your usual Survivors-type shenanigans. The maps are very tight, both in their designs, and their chokepoints, with it teaching you these basic facets almost immediately. Not only that, but every map has different objectives in order to “complete” the map, whether it’s closing off spawn points, collecting items, or destroying bigger bosses and their minions.
“Tight” is probably the only way one can describe it. Tunnel vision is an almost inevitable effect of the game, especially as the screen fills with monsters, bullets, effects, triggers, health bars, warning icons, damage indicators, and so much more. As a result, the game relays more of its influence from Serious Sam – where walking back and never letting go of the fire button is a primary function of its core gameplay loop – and as such, calling it a “boomer shooter” seems almost counter-intuitive to what a boomer shooter actually is.
That isn’t to say Vampire Hunters or indeed, even Serious Sam, fail to exhibit certain qualities of the memetic genre, but in Vampire Hunters’ case, the pacing is there, yet the speed isn’t. You can make the body count rise to the thousands in low-polygon gibbing glory, but it’s never to the same tune of progression. Progression is defined by time here, not by how you execute it, so many cases of victory will be made by playing the game like Snake.
This isn’t new for Vampire Survivors and their ilk however, the constant backpedaling and kiting, so Vampire Hunters rides or dies on how it executes it all at a peak. The result is a mixed bag, where on the one hand, it excels in the chaos, the invigorating colorful steam of bullets, bombs, and bodies being presented wonderfully. On the other hand, the feedback of certain items, and the conveying of information in regards to progression, is obfuscated for no other reason than to seemingly imply complexity that isn’t there.
It’s all so singular in its craft, less about creating a zone for which death is certainly instantaneous for any monster that dares to breach the 12ft gap between you and the enemy. Instead, you’re constantly proactive, removing the privilege of going AFK in favor of making you feel more in control with the damage you deal. As a game following the Survivors-like formula, it easily does the most to make every action an opportunistic one, as you watch damage counters rise, and the timer tick by.
This is best accentuated by its “Classic Mode”, a more innately basic iteration of its FPS gameplay that removes the crafted arenas in favor of a long, seemingly endless hallway. It’s a firing range on an escalator, one which provides endless runner-esque mechanics in the form of a damaging mist that will envelop you if you lag too far behind. It relies a lot more on pacing, yet introduces a lot more confusing elements like manual weapon combination and an engineering stat, neither of which are explained adequately at any point.
Regardless of whether you choose Classic mode or not, Vampire Hunters is a numbers game in its most generic sense, one which it manages to elevate with the mechanic of reloading. Whether it’s manually or automatic, even with 12 weapons strapped to your person, the amount of legitimate tactical intervention that spawns from when and where to reload is honestly staggering. Weapons waver between heavy beasts and quick-fire repellent, although you’d be hard-pressed to figure out which is which based on sight.
While it may be a result of how much more zoomed in the action is, Vampire Hunters’ aesthetic and visual design still leaves a lot to be desired. Its crusty nature, and overall inability to truly commit to a direction that isn’t just “low-poly” leaves a lot of the action undefined in the wake of more focused destruction. You can tell what weapons have brought you to your destination in games like Vampire Survivors, Army of Ruin, and Slime 3K, but here, a revolver looks the same as a rifle, which looks the same as a machine gun, which looks the same as a minigun.
It’s strange because while I can certainly class Vampire Hunters as an addictive experience, one that is proactive, consistently engaging, and rewarding – more so than most other Vampire Survivors clones on the market – I struggle to call it an objectively good experience. So much of it is left to interpretation, or an upcoming Steam guide where stuff is answered for you, despite the fact that so much of it is smoke and mirrors. It’s not that there isn’t depth, but the word is merely an excuse for why the game doesn't explain itself.
Vampire Hunters Review | Final Verdict
Vampire Hunters is a video game, a minimal hardline for what an FPS, a game adjacent to Vampire Survivors and its kin, and a game inheriting certain boomer shooter aesthetics should provide. Its quality isn’t necessarily defined by what it does right or wrong, but by how it exemplifies the averages one must attain before being a part of the discussion for what constitutes being a good game. So many moving parts to contribute to a core that is, ultimately, formless.
As it stands, this is an experience. An experience without cause, but not without merit.
Vampire Hunters was reviewed on PC using a code provided by the developer over the course of 20 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of review.
