Vampire Survivors developer Poncle just announced a new game, Vampire Crawlers, and it emerged after the studio tinkered around with multiple different ideas.
Poncle's Luca Galante told GameSpot that making Vampire Crawlers, a deckbuilding game, was not the team's first choice for a follow-up to Vampire Survivors. "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," he explained.
"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."
Poncle had numerous other ideas, too. The ideas were "literally all over the place," Galante said. "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," he explained.
He went on to say that people who have played Vampire Survivors may see clues to some of the ideas that Poncle was thinking about. "If you think you've seen a reference [to] a particular game in Vampire Survivors, there's a pretty good chance that I'm working on a spin-off of the genre of that game," he said.
Galante went on to say that a metroidvania game would be a "perfect fit" for the studio, adding that this would "make so much sense" or even "too much sense."
"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," he said. "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."
For more, check out GameSpot's full interview with Galante and our hands-on preview of Vampire Crawlers.
Vampire Crawlers is set to release on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile in 2026. Poncle also confirmed that the game will be coming to Xbox Game Pass day one.
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Poncle's Luca Galante told GameSpot that making Vampire Crawlers, a deckbuilding game, was not the team's first choice for a follow-up to Vampire Survivors. "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," he explained.
"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."
Poncle had numerous other ideas, too. The ideas were "literally all over the place," Galante said. "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," he explained.
He went on to say that people who have played Vampire Survivors may see clues to some of the ideas that Poncle was thinking about. "If you think you've seen a reference [to] a particular game in Vampire Survivors, there's a pretty good chance that I'm working on a spin-off of the genre of that game," he said.
Galante went on to say that a metroidvania game would be a "perfect fit" for the studio, adding that this would "make so much sense" or even "too much sense."
"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," he said. "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."
For more, check out GameSpot's full interview with Galante and our hands-on preview of Vampire Crawlers.
Vampire Crawlers is set to release on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile in 2026. Poncle also confirmed that the game will be coming to Xbox Game Pass day one.
Source