Long time readers will know that I’m a sucker for a bit of Vampire Survivors, and so it is with considerable intrigue that I report on the announcement of Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors, the first official in-house VS spin-off series.
I chose my words with care at the end there because we were also recently treated to the announcement of a spin-off being made by another team: Warhammer Survivors. But I digress…
From what I can see, what we have here is a new deckbuilder from poncle, set in the ever-expanding Vampire Survivors universe.
It sounds like the plan is to bring the original’s blend of anarchy and chaos to deckbuilding, with card-based combos that stack and stack to create huge chain reactions.
Other interesting things that caught my eye included headbutting chests, weapon evolutions, and summoning survivors to trigger effects.
Most interesting of all is the turbo turn-based engine that lets you “enjoy the effects of your cards one by one, or generate unhinged chaos by playing as fast as you can.”
Vampire Crawlers is heading to Steam, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android at some still to be confirmed time in 2026, and as you can imagine, I’m a little bit excited about this one.
Finally, as part of the announcement, it was confirmed that the game will be hitting Xbox Game Pass on day one (Premium and Ultimate, which usually means PC as well, but that’s not mentioned in the presser).
There’s a new trailer, which you can see below, and keep an eye out for more on this one as I have a big soft spot for both deckbuilders and auto-shooters.
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Still with us? Of course you are! If you want to keep reading about great hand-picked rogues, the following articles represent a huge collection of the best roguelike games ever made.
Next, there are genre-specific lists that delve into the best roguelike games of all types. I’ve pulled out the best examples from each category, alongside the links to more in-depth articles!
The best turn-based roguelikes: Caves of Qud | There are some seriously incredible turn-based roguelikes out there. Of all the modern games, these are the closest to the original Rogue.
Awesome first-person rogues: Gunfire Reborn | We almost went with Blue Prince for this spot, but most people checking out first-person rogues probably want to wield a gun, you know?!
Cool roguelike deckbuilders: Balatro | Sorry, Slay the Spire fans, but this poker-solitaire deckbuilder has stolen Mike’s heart and won’t give it back.
Exciting roguelike platformers: Spelunky | Now, don’t get us wrong, Dead Cells is an incredible game, especially with all the DLC switched on. But when it comes to impact, you just can’t beat Spelunky.
Amazing action-roguelites: Hades 2 | And finally, let’s wrap things up with our favourite of them all. There’s no beating the original Hades, although Hades 2 comes pretty close!
