I'm really late to the Vampire Survivors bandwagon

I don’t think I ever had to write one of those, what I did during my winter break essays. This is the slow time here at Gaming Nexus; maybe you’ve seen the end-of-the-year lists? I decided to take a stab at my version of the winter break essay.

The last few weeks at my job have had some slow times to it. Busier than normal for this time of year, but still, after lunch, the three hours creep by much slower than the first five. It must have started in October. That’s when I picked up Paper-io. If you’re not familiar, it’s a simple, straight forward type of game. You play as a square, constantly moving, with whatever color you happen to be trailing behind you. The goal is to turn the map you’re on into your color, a little bit like a king of the hill game mode. You can play solo or in teams, I prefer teams- I love to be the reason a team is winning. I stumbled upon the game, never meaning to find it specifically, give me something mindless to do. The simple mechanics grabbed ahold of me. This is the type of game I expect to see my wife playing and make fun of her for in the next breath.

After nearly two months of playing paper-io I had become bored with the title. I knew the mechanics better than most; I could outsmart the opponent every time. If you find yourself down the same rabbit hole one day remember, just bait the opponent to your side, works every time. I needed something else. That’s when previous conversations about Vampire Survivors came to me.

I have no excuse for sitting this long on Vampire Survivors. A handful of the Gaming Nexus staff have been talking about Vampire Survivors on and off for some time in our Slack channel. I see my brother playing bullet-hell-style games all the time. I slept on the game because of convenience. It’s one of those pickup-and-play, come back to it when you feel like it titles. I was going to get around to it; the timing never felt right. I tried Vampire Survivor on my Xbox at the start of last year. Played a few games, it was fine. I heard it was coming to mobile. Again, I’ll get to it. It now has multiplayer; one day, I’ll need this game and it will be there ready for me.

The last day before my Christmas break I sat in my cubicle with nothing to do. Half the building went down for the Christmas lunch at our corporate location, the other half stayed. The phones were dead, no one was coming by. I sat and played Vampire Survivors for at least six hours that day. The free browser version I was playing was missing a lot of the newest features, but that didn’t matter. The gameplay loop is so addicting and clean that you don’t need to have all the newest add-ons to enjoy this game. I kept trying to survive for 30 minutes and not having any luck.

I thought that there was no way I was going to still be interested in playing more when I got back home that night. I purchased the game for my Switch, it was the least I could do for giving me something to spend the slow work day before the holiday. I decided to start it back up as we watched some Christmas movies. Not only was I still having a great time, I was enjoying the game even more on the Switch.

The rate you unlock new characters and items is perfect. The drip of new is slow enough to keep me playing round after round, but fast enough that I feel like every run is an improvement on the previous. The first time I lasted the entire 30 minutes was one of the better gaming moments of the year for me. I felt real accomplishment. Repeating it was fun for a while, playing with all the power-ups, and then none, and finally trying to play while being cursed. I haven’t stopped since Friday morning, and I now have to go back to work tomorrow, Wednesday morning.

The craziest part is that I know I’ve only touched the surface of this fantastic game. Like everything I have become obsessed with I am taking my interest even further. Watching videos about the best combos, lurking on the game’s subreddit to see what insane builds others have tried. I hope that by reading this, I’ve either begun the itch for you or made you recall your enjoyment of Vampire Survivors. It’s just waiting for you, on whatever device you want. It’s cheap, it’s fun, it kills a half-hour quicker than most games. And I’m sorry for being so late to the Vampire Survivors party.