Much like Vampire Survivors' titular vampire, the game's creator, Luca Galante, is often nowhere to be found. When Vampire Survivors won a BAFTA for Game of the Year back in 2023, it was a handful of Galante's colleagues at Poncle who took to the stage to accept it. At convention panels, Galante is known for using screens and decoys rather than addressing the audience himself. In the NoClip documentary chronicling the success of Vampire Survivors, Galante opted to have a Muppets-esque puppet resembling the game's iconic vampire mascot made so he wouldn't have to appear on camera himself. And it is a very cool puppet.
Even after I arrived in the small, walled city of Lucca, Italy to preview Poncle's new game, Vampire Crawlers, the myth-making of Luca Galante continued. Several Poncle devs I spoke to recounted, with sheer amusement, how they loved playing up Galante's mysterious persona. When fans asked if Galante was around, they'd sometimes remark, "He could be. He could be me." Matteo Sapio, the chief strategy officer at Poncle, laughed as he told me, "It's all very funny because honestly, yes, he is brilliant, but he's also a very kind and normal guy. He just really values his privacy."
Imagine my delight then, when an hour after meeting Luca, I found myself sitting beside him on an old couch, both of us chatting animatedly about our love of Final Fantasy while playing Vampire Survivors together on a hulking CRT TV.
Contrary to how he presents himself, Luca Galante is an eager conversationalist. Though he speaks calmly and thoughtfully, it is not without immense passion for his work, the community it has fostered, and video games as a whole. After playing around 30 minutes of Poncle's new game, Vampire Crawlers, I proceeded to spend nearly an hour talking to Galante about his work on the game, what it's been like leaving his solo-dev days behind, and, most importantly, when we'll be able to play Vampire Crawlers from the comfort of our homes.
GameSpot: So, what inspired the decision to set Crawlers in the same universe?
Luca Galante: That was something that we decided very early to do because the success of Vampire Survivors was so big that, among other things, I saw an opportunity in the name Vampire Survivors. It was somewhat of a business decision, to just keep working on that IP and idea. If I wanted to make a game like this, and make a new IP to go with it, it's just going to be one among the other hundreds of deckbuilders out there. The Vampire Survivors name gives us the strength and the ability to tell people, "This is a Vampire Survivors deckbuilder. You will find elements that you're already familiar with in this game, and it will capture the feeling of the original."
There is something of deeper reason as well though, which is that I wanted to keep bringing the core principles, the core ideas of Vampire Survivors, to other genres. I started Vampire Survivors for fun. It was something I was just doing for myself. And to me, what makes Vampire Survivors what it is is the fact that it's easy to play, makes you feel good, and tries to avoid frustration. I wanted to transfer all of that into this game.
It's also a massive relief not to have to come up with new settings, new characters, and new everything to make a new game. Because I don't like to sit down and create new things on purpose. I prefer for things to be intuitive. I like the creative process to be something that comes naturally. For this game, what matters to me most is the game's mechanics. The fact that I can use existing settings and characters gives me the freedom to focus on that.
When you first started working on Survivors, it was essentially just you making that game. What has it been like working with a team?
When I started Vampire Survivors, it was only for fun. It was only for myself. But already at that point, it wasn't only my own stuff that I was using. I had a Castlevania-themed asset pack, basically. Well, medieval gothic, really, but it was very obviously inspired by Castlevania. The music I was listening to was actually Castlevania music. And then when I commissioned musicians to do music, I was using that music to inspire me.
So even if, yeah, I developed the game as a solo developer, I always had the inputs of other people from the beginning. And now I need other people to be able to maintain Vampire Survivors. With so many platforms, it is actually very complex to handle releases and QA. Even just passing ideas with someone who knows the game just as well as me is very important. It's a process I really like.
There are a lot of details on the original characters and weapon icons--all sorts of stuff, that wasn't how I initially thought about it. I simply went to the pixel artist, Glauber Kotaki, who's incredible. I'm so happy working with Glauber; you have no idea. I would just give Glauber some ideas, and he would work on them and make them better; he'd add even more elements to it. We had this ping pong of ideas going back and forth, just trying to make something interesting, and do something that people will be able to appreciate.
It's a lot harder, of course, and it's a much slower process now. But it's a different kind of fun. And honestly, when I want to do something--especially over the weekends when I'm alone--I do not have to worry about actually running the companies or having meetings. I can still sit down with my machine, open the project, and do whatever I want. It's the best of both worlds.
A look at Vampire Crawlers's combat
I'm glad that you brought up Glauber because it leads into my next question. I feel like there's always this natural urge to change so much of the original game with a sequel or spin-off to make it more "modern." But Crawlers still feels so quintessentially Vampire Survivors, especially visually. What was the reasoning for retaining that look?
The idea was practical and technical. I thought, "Let's use the exact same assets. Because if we change them, people are going to complain. If we change them, it is going to increase the cost of this project." And I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a risk-taker. I don't want to end up having crazy budgets for games and putting the company at risk.
Actually, the initial idea was to run the marketing campaign of the game on the fact that it is recycled. Yes, it's super cheap. Yes, we are milking these pixels like there's no tomorrow, or something like that. But then as we actually started to work on the game, you start to fall in love with what you're doing. You start to want to do more.
So long story short, we ended up repurposing the old assets in the 3D settings, but we also got new icons. We got new animations. The only thing I think we're going to keep exactly as it is right now [are] the characters because I think that makes most sense. There isn't a strong reason to change the characters. Everyone has their own idea of what they look like, so I really do not want to change them. Even when we have to do drawings or animation for certain characters, we try to let whoever is drawing them interpret them and do not have very strict rules to adhere to.
Because it was so much fun for me to work with these things in this world, I just want that anyone else who works on this game to have the same experience--to put their own spin on things.
Also, the idea of keeping the same UI, or at least keeping it very close to the original, is that there is no need to reinvent everything. I really want the fog to be on the gameplay in the end. Everything else should be familiar, but at the same time feel fresh.
That makes sense. You don't need to reinvent something that clearly works.
I don't know if it works, honestly! Very often I ask myself if I was successful in spite of certain things being awful. I don't know. But the only thing I can do is just keep going with what I think is good, basically. And then I wait for the player's input, of course. If a lot of players tell me that the confirm button is in an awkward place, I'm going to reconsider the positioning of that button. But until I get that feedback, I'm just going with my gut.
Something I noticed when I first started playing Vampire Crawlers is that, to a certain extent, it's slower and more strategic. Which is interesting when we live in a time when I feel like everybody has a very short attention span--everything is compulsive, everyone just wants to tap on something. Are you nervous working on something a bit slower paced?
As always, I use myself as a judge. When I was talking to the team, I told them that I'm making the game basically for me. I told them, "You're making this game for me. I am player number one. I have to love this game. This is the concept I really want to see executed." I always use myself as a way to decide if the game is going in the right direction or not. So I'm sure that there are other people, like me, that love Vampire Survivors and will love this game.
I have no idea if it's going to be as many players. Probably not. I don't care, honestly. Because if I start thinking about that, if I start thinking about what are players expecting or what will the majority of the players want or need, I just end up doing something average. Something that tries to make everyone happy. I'd rather try to be original and take a little bit of risk. But as long as I'm confident that the game works for me, I know I can push that idea.
So I'm not worried about that. I know that some people will not like it, some people will like it, and some people will love it. Some people will absolutely hate it at first, and then maybe try it later and go, "Hmm, maybe it's not that bad." That happens very often with Vampire Survivors. It's very easy to underestimate it because of the visuals, right?
But there is a bit of compulsion with the "Play All" button. It's very interesting because, often in these kinds of games, you end up being overpowered. And if you're overpowered and you get into a fight with, I don't know, five bats, you know you're going to kill them immediately but you still have to play cards. It gets a bit boring, because you already know the outcome. To fix that, I decided to try and put in a "Play All" button. If you press it, the game will just try and play all your cards immediately.
On top of that, the game accelerates. So you get this rush from completing the fight immediately and then it just moves very quickly after that, which I personally absolutely love. I find myself mashing the "Play All" button even after the fight has clearly finished.
I genuinely appreciate that you center what you enjoy when making games. I feel like you can't make art when you're self-conscious or when you're overly concerned with what everybody else thinks. You're going to make something that's average, because you're considering the average.
After the game is out, I'm definitely going to take into account player feedback in the community. Vampire Survivors is the perfect example of a game that got released in early access because I wanted player feedback. Back then, it was mostly a way to get in touch, somehow, with other fans of Castlevania, joke together, and say, "Yeah, I see this reference" or something like that. But then it became something more.
Then I started to plan the complete version of Vampire Survivors. I would use the community feedback and player feedback to choose what would be the next part of the roadmap to add to the game. I knew the steps, but not the order. So I would let the community dictate what would come next for the early-access version of Vampire Survivors. For this game, it's going to be very different though; this time I want to release a game that is whole to begin with.
That makes this game a bit riskier from the get-go, but the plan is already that, once we release it, we'll listen to player feedback. Once again, we'll use that to decide what should come next for this game--what features people want added or if they want to see DLC, for instance. If they want collaborations, or spin-offs of this game instead.
There are many conversations around player entitlement these days. My perspective is that, to an extent, players are entitled to certain things. They have invested money and time into this game and our studio. They directly contribute to my success and my livelihood. I think that entitles them to polish and responsiveness. I think that entitles players to a good game.
A look at deckbuilding in Vampire Crawlers
Deckbuilders are obviously a popular genre right now, but what inspired the decision to say, "Okay, we're doing a deckbuilder next" when there were so many options for this spin-off?
Honestly, it was not our first choice. We actually started off with a set of five different projects. We worked with several indie teams, experimenting a little bit, and what happened is simply that Vampire Crawlers was the game that immediately jumped out at us. From the initial prototype, the team just nailed it. It was great immediately. They immediately understood the idea, the concept, and so that's the one that progressed. It wasn't some kind of strategic decision; it's just the one that naturally, organically went faster than any other.
What were some of the other ideas?
Oh, they were literally all over the place. Definitely not a soccer game or something like that, but I'm a big fan of RPGs, so there were actually, a couple actually different RPGs in the works. If you play Vampire Survivors, you can find a lot of references to all sorts of other games. So if you think you've seen a reference of a particular game in Vampire Survivor, there's a pretty good chance that I'm working on a spin-off of the genre of that game.
I was wondering, because I think the first thing that I went to was like, "Oh, this would work so well as a metroidvania."
Exactly, that's just a perfect fit. I mean, it just makes so much sense. It makes too much sense. It would almost have to be called Castlevania, right? If we were to do something like that--which I would love to do something like that, by the way--but if I were to do it, I would just go to Konami and ask for permission to use Castlevania at that stage. It just makes too much sense.
That or, honestly, if I were to do a metroidvania, I would probably do one with the Legacy of the Moonspell characters and setting. Or Tides of the Foscari. I would try to move a little bit away from Vampire Survivors.
Another feature that really sets Crawlers apart from Survivors is the inclusion of this sort of hub. Are there plans to expand that more? Are there any other features you're excited for people to see?
There are games that give you a little customizable village, but that, for me, is one step too far. If the core of the game is playing cards, and I also add a little strategy to the village, then I really start branching a bit too much. The village will most likely stay how it [is] right now, which is just this circle of buildings. However, it being a circle means that, once in a while, we can make a new building pop between others. So it is still expandable and any feature we come up with over time, we'll be able to fit it in there.
The combat system is the core experience. Everything else is an accessory; it's an excuse to justify the combat system. So I'm really curious to see how far we can push it and what people want to see from this.
However, I think Crawlers has a lot of potential because, even though the point of this game is not exploration, the fact that there is this exploration opens up a lot of doors. I'm really curious to see what people will think of the exploration. Will they want more? Will they want less? Will they want bigger dungeons?
There are also, of course, endless menus of unlocks and new stuff to try. I think we're putting together all these modular elements so that the game eventually could expand just as much as Vampire Survivors. We do need limits to ship the first version, so early on we said, "Okay, let's bring over X amount of characters." And then, per usual, we doubled that amount. That's a very common theme at Poncle. We start with a very low goal because we know what we're going to do twice as much anyway.
How many characters did you end up bringing over?
I think we are going to end up with 20 or 21 characters. And every character has a different passive ability, a different trigger ability, and a different starting deck. The characters here are a lot more complex than in Vampire Survivors. When Vampire Survivors first launched, characters were merely a way for players to choose their starting weapon. They weren't even supposed to have different stats. But once the game got released, it was a bit too flat, so I added a few bonuses to different characters.
And then the game got so big that it felt like it was cheap to make a new character just to offer a new starting weapon. Now every character has to bring something different to the game. But with Crawlers, from the very beginning we established that every character has to be different and viable. So 21 characters, 21 different starting decks. It's quite a lot.
That's not to mention that in the final version you can actually bring up to three characters with you, allowing you to mix and match their triggers and abilities. You might only play just one card, but because of all the triggers you have enabled, that one card will do 10 different things.
Exploration in Vampire Crawlers
Are there plans to bring Vampire Crawlers to mobile?
Yeah, this game I wanted to release globally on all platforms on the same day. It's super ambitious, it's a lot of stress for everyone, but I feel like we owe it to the community that has been so patient with Vampire Survivors. They've been so helpful and understanding that I feel like we have to try to put this game into everyone's hands immediately. Again, very difficult, but let's see if we can manage to do it.
Do you have a release date planned for the game?
I actually wanted to release it this year, but there was a problem. The game was not exactly what I wanted. Originally, there was not as much of the deckbuilding element. There wasn't a lot of depth. I realized that once people started playing it, they were saying that they couldn't wait to see what's next and how they could customize their deck. But there wasn't that much of that on the roadmap.
I realized that there were expectations. When you're playing a card game, well, by now it's a genre that's so well-established that people have a lot of expectations. They immediately expect to have a deckbuilding element that has a lot of depth. And so that's the element I decided needed to be revamped--that needed to deliver from the get-go. It's something that should be at the core of the experience.
Adding that big feature pushed our release date to next year. I'm not 100% sure when. I'm trying to avoid the Grand Theft Auto VI window. Not because the game is competing with GTA VI, but because the whole world is going to compete against GTA VI.
The above interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Source
Even after I arrived in the small, walled city of Lucca, Italy to preview Poncle's new game, Vampire Crawlers, the myth-making of Luca Galante continued. Several Poncle devs I spoke to recounted, with sheer amusement, how they loved playing up Galante's mysterious persona. When fans asked if Galante was around, they'd sometimes remark, "He could be. He could be me." Matteo Sapio, the chief strategy officer at Poncle, laughed as he told me, "It's all very funny because honestly, yes, he is brilliant, but he's also a very kind and normal guy. He just really values his privacy."
Imagine my delight then, when an hour after meeting Luca, I found myself sitting beside him on an old couch, both of us chatting animatedly about our love of Final Fantasy while playing Vampire Survivors together on a hulking CRT TV.
Contrary to how he presents himself, Luca Galante is an eager conversationalist. Though he speaks calmly and thoughtfully, it is not without immense passion for his work, the community it has fostered, and video games as a whole. After playing around 30 minutes of Poncle's new game, Vampire Crawlers, I proceeded to spend nearly an hour talking to Galante about his work on the game, what it's been like leaving his solo-dev days behind, and, most importantly, when we'll be able to play Vampire Crawlers from the comfort of our homes.
GameSpot: So, what inspired the decision to set Crawlers in the same universe?
Luca Galante: That was something that we decided very early to do because the success of Vampire Survivors was so big that, among other things, I saw an opportunity in the name Vampire Survivors. It was somewhat of a business decision, to just keep working on that IP and idea. If I wanted to make a game like this, and make a new IP to go with it, it's just going to be one among the other hundreds of deckbuilders out there. The Vampire Survivors name gives us the strength and the ability to tell people, "This is a Vampire Survivors deckbuilder. You will find elements that you're already familiar with in this game, and it will capture the feeling of the original."
There is something of deeper reason as well though, which is that I wanted to keep bringing the core principles, the core ideas of Vampire Survivors, to other genres. I started Vampire Survivors for fun. It was something I was just doing for myself. And to me, what makes Vampire Survivors what it is is the fact that it's easy to play, makes you feel good, and tries to avoid frustration. I wanted to transfer all of that into this game.
It's also a massive relief not to have to come up with new settings, new characters, and new everything to make a new game. Because I don't like to sit down and create new things on purpose. I prefer for things to be intuitive. I like the creative process to be something that comes naturally. For this game, what matters to me most is the game's mechanics. The fact that I can use existing settings and characters gives me the freedom to focus on that.
When you first started working on Survivors, it was essentially just you making that game. What has it been like working with a team?
When I started Vampire Survivors, it was only for fun. It was only for myself. But already at that point, it wasn't only my own stuff that I was using. I had a Castlevania-themed asset pack, basically. Well, medieval gothic, really, but it was very obviously inspired by Castlevania. The music I was listening to was actually Castlevania music. And then when I commissioned musicians to do music, I was using that music to inspire me.
So even if, yeah, I developed the game as a solo developer, I always had the inputs of other people from the beginning. And now I need other people to be able to maintain Vampire Survivors. With so many platforms, it is actually very complex to handle releases and QA. Even just passing ideas with someone who knows the game just as well as me is very important. It's a process I really like.
There are a lot of details on the original characters and weapon icons--all sorts of stuff, that wasn't how I initially thought about it. I simply went to the pixel artist, Glauber Kotaki, who's incredible. I'm so happy working with Glauber; you have no idea. I would just give Glauber some ideas, and he would work on them and make them better; he'd add even more elements to it. We had this ping pong of ideas going back and forth, just trying to make something interesting, and do something that people will be able to appreciate.
It's a lot harder, of course, and it's a much slower process now. But it's a different kind of fun. And honestly, when I want to do something--especially over the weekends when I'm alone--I do not have to worry about actually running the companies or having meetings. I can still sit down with my machine, open the project, and do whatever I want. It's the best of both worlds.
A look at Vampire Crawlers's combat
I'm glad that you brought up Glauber because it leads into my next question. I feel like there's always this natural urge to change so much of the original game with a sequel or spin-off to make it more "modern." But Crawlers still feels so quintessentially Vampire Survivors, especially visually. What was the reasoning for retaining that look?
The idea was practical and technical. I thought, "Let's use the exact same assets. Because if we change them, people are going to complain. If we change them, it is going to increase the cost of this project." And I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a risk-taker. I don't want to end up having crazy budgets for games and putting the company at risk.
Actually, the initial idea was to run the marketing campaign of the game on the fact that it is recycled. Yes, it's super cheap. Yes, we are milking these pixels like there's no tomorrow, or something like that. But then as we actually started to work on the game, you start to fall in love with what you're doing. You start to want to do more.
So long story short, we ended up repurposing the old assets in the 3D settings, but we also got new icons. We got new animations. The only thing I think we're going to keep exactly as it is right now [are] the characters because I think that makes most sense. There isn't a strong reason to change the characters. Everyone has their own idea of what they look like, so I really do not want to change them. Even when we have to do drawings or animation for certain characters, we try to let whoever is drawing them interpret them and do not have very strict rules to adhere to.
Because it was so much fun for me to work with these things in this world, I just want that anyone else who works on this game to have the same experience--to put their own spin on things.
Also, the idea of keeping the same UI, or at least keeping it very close to the original, is that there is no need to reinvent everything. I really want the fog to be on the gameplay in the end. Everything else should be familiar, but at the same time feel fresh.
That makes sense. You don't need to reinvent something that clearly works.
I don't know if it works, honestly! Very often I ask myself if I was successful in spite of certain things being awful. I don't know. But the only thing I can do is just keep going with what I think is good, basically. And then I wait for the player's input, of course. If a lot of players tell me that the confirm button is in an awkward place, I'm going to reconsider the positioning of that button. But until I get that feedback, I'm just going with my gut.
Something I noticed when I first started playing Vampire Crawlers is that, to a certain extent, it's slower and more strategic. Which is interesting when we live in a time when I feel like everybody has a very short attention span--everything is compulsive, everyone just wants to tap on something. Are you nervous working on something a bit slower paced?
As always, I use myself as a judge. When I was talking to the team, I told them that I'm making the game basically for me. I told them, "You're making this game for me. I am player number one. I have to love this game. This is the concept I really want to see executed." I always use myself as a way to decide if the game is going in the right direction or not. So I'm sure that there are other people, like me, that love Vampire Survivors and will love this game.
I have no idea if it's going to be as many players. Probably not. I don't care, honestly. Because if I start thinking about that, if I start thinking about what are players expecting or what will the majority of the players want or need, I just end up doing something average. Something that tries to make everyone happy. I'd rather try to be original and take a little bit of risk. But as long as I'm confident that the game works for me, I know I can push that idea.
So I'm not worried about that. I know that some people will not like it, some people will like it, and some people will love it. Some people will absolutely hate it at first, and then maybe try it later and go, "Hmm, maybe it's not that bad." That happens very often with Vampire Survivors. It's very easy to underestimate it because of the visuals, right?
But there is a bit of compulsion with the "Play All" button. It's very interesting because, often in these kinds of games, you end up being overpowered. And if you're overpowered and you get into a fight with, I don't know, five bats, you know you're going to kill them immediately but you still have to play cards. It gets a bit boring, because you already know the outcome. To fix that, I decided to try and put in a "Play All" button. If you press it, the game will just try and play all your cards immediately.
On top of that, the game accelerates. So you get this rush from completing the fight immediately and then it just moves very quickly after that, which I personally absolutely love. I find myself mashing the "Play All" button even after the fight has clearly finished.
I genuinely appreciate that you center what you enjoy when making games. I feel like you can't make art when you're self-conscious or when you're overly concerned with what everybody else thinks. You're going to make something that's average, because you're considering the average.
After the game is out, I'm definitely going to take into account player feedback in the community. Vampire Survivors is the perfect example of a game that got released in early access because I wanted player feedback. Back then, it was mostly a way to get in touch, somehow, with other fans of Castlevania, joke together, and say, "Yeah, I see this reference" or something like that. But then it became something more.
Then I started to plan the complete version of Vampire Survivors. I would use the community feedback and player feedback to choose what would be the next part of the roadmap to add to the game. I knew the steps, but not the order. So I would let the community dictate what would come next for the early-access version of Vampire Survivors. For this game, it's going to be very different though; this time I want to release a game that is whole to begin with.
That makes this game a bit riskier from the get-go, but the plan is already that, once we release it, we'll listen to player feedback. Once again, we'll use that to decide what should come next for this game--what features people want added or if they want to see DLC, for instance. If they want collaborations, or spin-offs of this game instead.
There are many conversations around player entitlement these days. My perspective is that, to an extent, players are entitled to certain things. They have invested money and time into this game and our studio. They directly contribute to my success and my livelihood. I think that entitles them to polish and responsiveness. I think that entitles players to a good game.
A look at deckbuilding in Vampire Crawlers
Deckbuilders are obviously a popular genre right now, but what inspired the decision to say, "Okay, we're doing a deckbuilder next" when there were so many options for this spin-off?
Honestly, it was not our first choice. We actually started off with a set of five different projects. We worked with several indie teams, experimenting a little bit, and what happened is simply that Vampire Crawlers was the game that immediately jumped out at us. From the initial prototype, the team just nailed it. It was great immediately. They immediately understood the idea, the concept, and so that's the one that progressed. It wasn't some kind of strategic decision; it's just the one that naturally, organically went faster than any other.
What were some of the other ideas?
Oh, they were literally all over the place. Definitely not a soccer game or something like that, but I'm a big fan of RPGs, so there were actually, a couple actually different RPGs in the works. If you play Vampire Survivors, you can find a lot of references to all sorts of other games. So if you think you've seen a reference of a particular game in Vampire Survivor, there's a pretty good chance that I'm working on a spin-off of the genre of that game.
I was wondering, because I think the first thing that I went to was like, "Oh, this would work so well as a metroidvania."
Exactly, that's just a perfect fit. I mean, it just makes so much sense. It makes too much sense. It would almost have to be called Castlevania, right? If we were to do something like that--which I would love to do something like that, by the way--but if I were to do it, I would just go to Konami and ask for permission to use Castlevania at that stage. It just makes too much sense.
That or, honestly, if I were to do a metroidvania, I would probably do one with the Legacy of the Moonspell characters and setting. Or Tides of the Foscari. I would try to move a little bit away from Vampire Survivors.
Another feature that really sets Crawlers apart from Survivors is the inclusion of this sort of hub. Are there plans to expand that more? Are there any other features you're excited for people to see?
There are games that give you a little customizable village, but that, for me, is one step too far. If the core of the game is playing cards, and I also add a little strategy to the village, then I really start branching a bit too much. The village will most likely stay how it [is] right now, which is just this circle of buildings. However, it being a circle means that, once in a while, we can make a new building pop between others. So it is still expandable and any feature we come up with over time, we'll be able to fit it in there.
The combat system is the core experience. Everything else is an accessory; it's an excuse to justify the combat system. So I'm really curious to see how far we can push it and what people want to see from this.
However, I think Crawlers has a lot of potential because, even though the point of this game is not exploration, the fact that there is this exploration opens up a lot of doors. I'm really curious to see what people will think of the exploration. Will they want more? Will they want less? Will they want bigger dungeons?
There are also, of course, endless menus of unlocks and new stuff to try. I think we're putting together all these modular elements so that the game eventually could expand just as much as Vampire Survivors. We do need limits to ship the first version, so early on we said, "Okay, let's bring over X amount of characters." And then, per usual, we doubled that amount. That's a very common theme at Poncle. We start with a very low goal because we know what we're going to do twice as much anyway.
How many characters did you end up bringing over?
I think we are going to end up with 20 or 21 characters. And every character has a different passive ability, a different trigger ability, and a different starting deck. The characters here are a lot more complex than in Vampire Survivors. When Vampire Survivors first launched, characters were merely a way for players to choose their starting weapon. They weren't even supposed to have different stats. But once the game got released, it was a bit too flat, so I added a few bonuses to different characters.
And then the game got so big that it felt like it was cheap to make a new character just to offer a new starting weapon. Now every character has to bring something different to the game. But with Crawlers, from the very beginning we established that every character has to be different and viable. So 21 characters, 21 different starting decks. It's quite a lot.
That's not to mention that in the final version you can actually bring up to three characters with you, allowing you to mix and match their triggers and abilities. You might only play just one card, but because of all the triggers you have enabled, that one card will do 10 different things.
Exploration in Vampire Crawlers
Are there plans to bring Vampire Crawlers to mobile?
Yeah, this game I wanted to release globally on all platforms on the same day. It's super ambitious, it's a lot of stress for everyone, but I feel like we owe it to the community that has been so patient with Vampire Survivors. They've been so helpful and understanding that I feel like we have to try to put this game into everyone's hands immediately. Again, very difficult, but let's see if we can manage to do it.
Do you have a release date planned for the game?
I actually wanted to release it this year, but there was a problem. The game was not exactly what I wanted. Originally, there was not as much of the deckbuilding element. There wasn't a lot of depth. I realized that once people started playing it, they were saying that they couldn't wait to see what's next and how they could customize their deck. But there wasn't that much of that on the roadmap.
I realized that there were expectations. When you're playing a card game, well, by now it's a genre that's so well-established that people have a lot of expectations. They immediately expect to have a deckbuilding element that has a lot of depth. And so that's the element I decided needed to be revamped--that needed to deliver from the get-go. It's something that should be at the core of the experience.
Adding that big feature pushed our release date to next year. I'm not 100% sure when. I'm trying to avoid the Grand Theft Auto VI window. Not because the game is competing with GTA VI, but because the whole world is going to compete against GTA VI.
The above interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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