Vampire Crawlers from the Vampire Survivor dev is promising but not quite there yet

Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors has a demo out now for Steam Next Fest, and I've given it a run through to see the chaos.

Given that I'm a big fan of Vampire Survivors, I was hoping that the faster-paced card action in the spin-off Vampire Crawlers would instantly hook me. However, it really feels like it's missing a number of things that would actually make it properly fun to play through. Especially with the actual dungeon crawling that feels surprisingly boring, which is a shame.

The battles are at least interesting though, with you being able to constantly throw cards at enemies as long as you have the mana, and then watch the fireworks as all the card effects get activated. It does get pretty over-the-top, especially since you can become completely overpowered like you do in Vampire Survivors. And the way it sprinkles in new features and characters as you explore, that's pretty good too. Feels a bit like a dungeon crawling deck-builder that might have released on early consoles.

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For the dungeon crawling part of it, you get to see the full layout and all the enemies on the map. While that does let you decide how to approach it, the excitement of discovery is completely taken away by it I think.

Vampire Crawlers is very easy to get into and understand at least, feeling like a deck-builder built for people who have incredibly short attention spans with how basic it is overall. But perhaps that's going to be the real hook for it, super-easy to get into and create over-powered combinations exactly like Vampire Survivors. Just seems like this will be one deck-builder that is perhaps just not for me right now. Still, it's early-on in development so I'm hoping by the time it's more ready that my opinion might change on it.

It works perfectly with Proton 10 on Linux.

Game Highlights:

• Snowballing, turn‑based carnage: Play cards in ascending mana order to land combos; each step multiplies the next card’s effect. Use Wilds to extend the stack and keep going to 10, 20, 30… Can you reach infinite?
• Pick your pace: Either take your time and be tactical, or play turns as fast as you humanly can: the outcome is always accurate!
• Deck-Building: Accumulate experience and level up to gain new cards, headbutt chests for customization gems and power‑ups; chase weapon evolutions and summon survivors to trigger cascade of effects and break the game.
• Dungeon Crawling: Explore dungeons packed with something seldom seen in Vampire Survivors: functioning walls. And then all sorts of unique treasures and interactions. Find the shovel to dig into the next floor, that will most likely take place in the clouds!