Vampire Crawlers: yet another deck builder, and somehow this one actually earns it

Yet another deck builder. Slay the Spire opened the box, Balatro slammed it on our fingers, and since then barely a week passes without new card mechanics to master. The genre is saturated. Which makes it all the more surprising that Vampire Crawlers manages to exist in this space without feeling like filler.

The reason is its starting point: it's a Vampire Survivors spin-off. And that changes everything about how you approach it.

The idea that justifies everything

Vampire Survivors is pure chaos. Hundreds of enemies on screen, a progression that explodes in every direction, a sense of power that escalates until it becomes absurd. Translating that into a turn-based deck builder should have been a catastrophic idea. It probably should have been.

It isn't. Because poncle and Nosebleed Interactive didn't try to reproduce the chaos, they tried to capture its logic. Vampire Crawlers is played in first-person, through dungeons explored tile by tile, and each turn gives you three cards with a limited mana budget. Combos cascade: playing a low-mana card boosts the next, and so on. The fever of the original is present, transposed into a different register.

What's genuinely different

First-person in a deck builder is rare. It's not a cosmetic detail, it's a real design decision. Exploration carries weight. Enemy anticipation does too, since the game shows you their intentions in advance: you know what's coming, you decide how to respond. An asymmetry of information that fundamentally changes the nature of decisions.

Between runs, a village hub lets you spend accumulated gold to unlock characters, stat buffs, and gem slots. Permanent progression is well-paced, providing direction without short-circuiting replayability.

The honest limitations

Balance wobbles in places. Early game lacks meaningful decisions, standard enemies go down too easily, and bosses create a brutal difficulty spike that can force grinding permanent upgrades before you can progress properly. It's not a dealbreaker, but it shows.

The strategic depth is there, it just takes patience to reveal itself. The first few hours can give the impression of a simpler game than it actually is.

What we take away

Vampire Crawlers doesn't claim to reinvent the deck builder. It takes one strong idea, a familiar universe, and translates them into a format that holds up. The first-person perspective, the mana-cascade combo system, the tension between what you're dealt and what you can make of it: it works.

In a genre that sometimes lacks personality, Vampire Crawlers has one. And at this price (under ten euros, Game Pass day one), it would be hard to hold imperfection against it.

Verdict

Strengths:

• first-person in a deck builder, a rare idea that genuinely pays off
• the mana-cascade combo system, faithful to the spirit of the original
• permanent progression well-paced between runs
• knowing enemy intent in advance, a source of real tactical depth
• price and accessibility that absorb the remaining doubts

Weaknesses:

• early game below the rest, decisions lack substance
• balance gap between standard enemies and bosses
• permanent progression sometimes required to advance, which can frustrate

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Tested on PC.