Vampire Survivors is a non-turn-based rework of at least one much older turn-based game that's otherwise exactly the same, so you've actually taken it back to its roots! ;)
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find that old game yet; I found this page while hunting for it. I had it almost three decades ago on Mac in the Performa days.
An abnormal situation has occurred: the PlayerLoop internal function has been called recursively. Please contact Customer Support with a sample project so that we can reproduce the problem and troubleshoot it.
This is a unity bug, but it seems to have appeared more frequently after the last release. I will have to analyze the changes and see whether anything pops up. Thank you for the report.
Some really nice updates to the game recently. I last played like 2 weeks ago, I came back to try it again and was very pleasantly surprised. Well done again
6 days later I try it again and go from 900 something turns per run to a 3200 turn win. I think you need to up the difficulty a bit, the new upgrades just make you too good :) I also think you decreased the speed at which new waves arrive? Not sure I like it, it creates some longer gaps without action.
Yeah, with this many changes a lot of the balance was going out the window. I'm working on finding back to a good pacing!
I agree that it's a bit too easy to stay on top of the power curve now and deal with monsters faster than new spawn phases trigger. I'll massage it some more for the next release Friday!
This was really fun. I thought I’d found a winning strategy when I was in a room with only one entrance…and then enemies destroyed the walls. What a glorious moment!
I never understood the VS hype but if it's half as addictive as this was then maybe I need to reconsider. I do say it could benefit from a randomly generated map rather than a static one.
I completely agree on the randomly generated map, I might do it for 1.6! Haha, I'm happy to hear you like it! The sound of dropping gems will start to haunt your dreams!
I spoke with the composer btw, and he said to dispute the claim with YT, that way the composer can clear it on his end. A bit cumbersome for sure, but it sounds like it's our only option with this music.
Yeah, it's too hard, can't win. Monsters are always faster than the player and you can't kill enough of them fast enough to win. Chests giving random power ups instead of an improvement to an existing one ruins builds.
I love the concept and gameplay, but I think you've strayed too far from the core strategies of vampire survivor.
Thanks a lot for your feedback! The game as is was made in seven days with some evening work this second week, so it will need some time to mature, grow and "set" itself. There are still too few items I think, to narrow down the weapon choices.
But correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't VS pick items randomly up until you've filled all slots, and then will upgrade those you have? And that's kind of the risk of a chest in the early game before you've leveled up enough to carefully pick your build? That's how I've read the mechanic while playing it, but I'm by far no VS master.
This game needs more items before I want to add any such restrictions, as there are only 7 items in the game right now. I suppose that I could add a higher chance for already owned items to get picked from the item pool on chest opening, but its also supposed to be more random than a level up and not a guaranteed boost to your current items. That said, I'm sure it can be tweaked to feel better.
All monsters shouldn't be faster, but some certainly are, maybe too many. I'll put this into my monster tuning notes for 1.5.
Thanks again for the feedback, it's much needed at this early stage!
That's a great game! I found it to be quite addictive (I even managed to win the v1.1 with all the characters). I wanted to return to this page to give a few remarks and a list of things that could be improved (in my opinion!), and I found there's the v1.3, so I had to give it a try. I did that, and I have even more comments now :—). Hopefully you don't mind a wall of text — I wrote far more than I initially intended.
Comments for v1.1:
It seems like the best strategy is to form "conga lines" of monsters. You move ever away from them, they follow and you hit them using the magical attacks. Because of that, the magical attacks seem to be much needed in order to win.
I really liked the differentiation between the weapons. I found them all to be useful in one way or another, except the hammer. Here are some random observations:
Bow: great for bosses. With a couple of upgrades you can easily kill the dragon face-to-face (you need to make sure that it is hit by most of the arrows).
Fireball: very good for kiting a mass of monsters, because it shoves you forward when it explodes and you make a head start. Probably an unintended use, but I like it, and it's a good payoff for its randomness.
Slash: quite nice from the get go. The upgrade that makes it slash backwards is far more useful than any other.
Hammer: maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to be the essence of uselessness. It has a very short reach, a huge cooldown, and pitiful damage (only 10 or 15, it seems), and an unintuitive swing (I haven't figured out how it works, and with multiple hammers, I can't ever tell how many times will any given monster be hit). I would propose having each hammer go full 360°, improving the damage and cooldown by a lot (it's really for close quarters and you never want to be close to the monsters, so it needs to pay off well), and perhaps adding a knockback or stun effect so that you don't need to pay precious HP for each attack.
I like the fact that the monsters stop when they hit a wall. It makes the game more manageable and you have more "strategic choice".
After the dragon comes, perhaps it would be good to show an arrow that would point in his direction. Occasionally, he would get stuck on a wall and I would be searching for him like mad. (Sometimes I even got killed by the swarms before I could find the stuck dragon and kill it!)
The automatic use of attacks every n-th turn is great. I think it would be cool if the cooldowns were relatively prime. Now they seem to be 2, 4 or 6, and so the pattern of attacks repeats often. Using 2, 3, 5 and 7 would give more variety.
The "special places" with boss fights and rewards are a nice touch. However, the game is so tight that there is often no time to go there. Furthermore, when the boss' minions appear everywhere around you, you will often lose more HP in the fight than you get back when you take the healing potion as a reward. The boss fights for experience gems seem to be hardly worth it (I guess there should be at least a full level-up). It would also be good if the reward weren't blocked right away by the boss so you could grab it.
The initial swarm of rats seems to be a bit too large. For the non-magical classes, this swarm seems to be a much more of a problem than the later ones. Moreover I would consider lowering HP of the "thieves" (the next wave); there seems to be a very sharp spike in difficulty (the rats will die with one hit of anything while the thieves need at least 4 or 5) and maybe sending a bit less of them.
It would be nice to have health bars for the monsters. Especially with the bosses and the later enemies that have a lot of HP, I never know whether I need to kite them some more, or if it would be better to turn around and hit them with the "front attacks" because they're near death.
Some more comments for v1.3 (they're going to be quite negative and I'm sorry for that, but I found it to be a big step back in terms of enjoyment):
The hordes seem to be way too big. In v1.1, I was able to win with all the characters. In v1.3, I never got even close to winning with any of them. With so many monsters, the game essentially plays itself because most of the time you have only one sensible choice (to run straight away from the monsters). Another effect is that you cannot collect the gems from the monsters you've killed until you make a huge circle with the mass of the monsters on your heels, and often, even when you manage to do it, another wave of monsters comes from a different direction and blocks the access to those gems by literally standing on them. (This also happens with other goodies like potions and chests and it's even more painful with them). The result is that when the orcs come, I'm level 3 (as opposed to 7-8 in v1.1), and sometimes I haven't been able to get even to the level 2, and my un-upgraded abilities are not enough to cope with them.
Having removed many of the walls that were in v1.1 just adds to the problem. In v1.1 many monters would become stuck on them and you could get a moment of respite when you needed it; the monsters wouldn't also be coming at you from all directions.
Adding new special places with bosses is nice, but now there seems to be no way to visit them and not die. The treasure chests and combat numbers are solid additions too. Making the movement animation faster is also great.
The character variations (more/less demage from certain abilities, more/less HP and so on) also seem to be more hindering than helping, especially the fact that the "melee" characters have a -XX% penalty for magical attacks. These characters are already at an disadvantage because the "melee" abilities aren't as good for wiping out large hordes, and now, even if they acquire a magical attack, they will still be weaker with it. I don't think that the characters need to be balanced — in v1.1. some were easier than others and that was OK. All of them need to have a fair shot at winning, though.
Wow, an amazing wall of feedback, evolvent! I can tell that you've played both version 1.1 and version 1.3 a whole lot!
I will need some time to digest everything that's in here, but my initial reaction is that I see where you're coming from.
On v1.1 I could quite consistently beat the game myself too (well, I'm impressed that you beat it with the archer!), while in v1.3 it has become a lot harder, and also one seems to be forced to bate enemies into these lines as one flees away, unable to gather gems at the rate that would be needed to keep up with the power curve.
You definitely touch on a lot of balancing issues, and it's to be expected. I really want to expand the game beyond the initial 1.1 version, and for that I have to experiment with it, and in the process risk that some versions are much harder (or much easier) as we stabilize the formula and find what works and what doesn't. To get there, feedback like this is priceless!
Awesome ideas on the hammer. I've been thinking of ways to improve it myself, and these were some good ones!
I really want the buffs and debuffs in there to make each choice of character more than just a different starting ability, but it adds complexity to the formula that will need some time to stabilize, and with that added complexity, more item variation is probably needed to add a wider possibility space as one seeks to beat the power curve.
There was a lot of detail in this post of yours, so please give me some time to digest it over a couple more reads, and I'll see what can make it into v1.4, or a later version.
Keep the feedback coming, and I think we can turn this into a pretty amazing game! I want the game to be hard, but I also want it to hit the good notes when XP trickles in and enemies fall in the dozens around you. It's supposed to be a dopamine rush of a game, with high replay value and where getting consistent wins require mastery, but it should be more than just running away while going pew pew with the spark and boom boom with the fireball until the last boss falls.
Well, thanks for reading all of that! Of course I know that balancing is a rough ride that mostly ends either in "too easy" mode, or in "too hard" mode. And I get where you want to be going with the game (and I would call that the right direction). (By the way, I was trying some more plays with the axe slash guy, and I even got to see the dragon! (Not that I got to hit it, though.))
Anyway, some more random thoughts:
If the game should require some mastery to win consistently, we should ask where that mastery will be coming from. I think that most of it will be coming from the strategic (high-level) considerations like: what level-up to take, when to go beat a miniboss, when to run for a potion, when to try to collect the gems that were previously left on the ground somewhere else. Since the dragon boss comes in a fixed amount of time, the object of the game is essentially to prepare well for its coming (while not dying in the process). At the high level, I guess this could be considered a game of risk management (risk too little and you will be unprepared, so you won't have much chance on taking out the final boss, risk too much and you get killed). And that itself needs to give the player a way to manage the risks.
The core game loop seems to be very solid, but it doesn't allow for too much tactical (low-level) mastery. There's a couple of things we can do, though. First of all, I think there should be more obstacles and perhaps other "terrain": you can use it to split the monsters or make them get stuck (and of course you can get stuck yourself). That's interesting to manage.
The second thing is that we can "get rid of the conga line". The line emerges so much because of three factors: 1) all the monsters go straight towards you; 2) you don't want to be close to them; 3) all the weapons work best when the monsters are tightly packed and/or as many of them as possible are on the same straight line with you.
Each of these factors can be quite "easily" removed: 1) make some monsters move in other fashion (e. g. if they're too tightly packed let them go perpendicular to make sort of a circle); 2) make the close combat less fatal; 3) add attacks with other patterns (circles or something more spread-out).
Another thing that could be done: let the heroes block 1 point of damage each round. That could allow for more daring tactical maneuvers with more considerations (do I get more into contact and risk getting enveloped, or do I chicken away?), as well as fulfilling the point 2 above, but it won't save you if you really screw up; also bosses do more than 1 damage, so you will still get hit by them.
I will gladly try it, but I won't be able to do it before Sunday as I'm going away for the weekend. And of course you don't need to address anything that I wrote about, that's just a random opinion and it can certainly be wrong :—). However I read the changelog and it sounds good.
By the way, I managed to beat the v1.3 yesterday with the archer, so it's not as unplayable as I first whined about, but still it's really hard and in some parts I had only little control over what was happening.
Thanks a lot man for your continued effort, well done beating the v1.3! Did you cross paths with the big black dragon yet btw? He's the key to a top secret challenge win ;-)
All your feedback makes my head spin with other ideas too, and plans I have for the future of the game. So even when one of your suggestions doesn't make it in 1:1 it still might be part of a decision that somewhat yield the same result, or is close enough to plans I already had.
You definitely captured the addictive gameplay of Vampire Survivors here!
The turn-based mechanic fits quite well with the concept! My only gripe is that I wish I could speed up the movement animations so I don’t have to wait for them every time.
My first run was with the archer, and the arrows are a difficult weapon to start off with. You have to run from enemies but then you’ll never hit them when they’re on your tail and you have to soak up a lot of damage.
Next I tried the wizard with the spark weapon and was able to finish the run. The snowballing at the end was really satisfying.
I liked how the level had some special rooms with loot and monsters! The monster variety was nice too.
Thanks a lot Devin! Yes, the different character starter weapons kind of define how hard they are to play, so I should probably have put the archer at number 5 instead of number 1 in retrospect. The Spark mage is definitely the strongest build to start with it seems! I'm glad you got that snowballing experience in the end!
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Vampire Survivors is a non-turn-based rework of at least one much older turn-based game that's otherwise exactly the same, so you've actually taken it back to its roots! ;)
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find that old game yet; I found this page while hunting for it. I had it almost three decades ago on Mac in the Performa days.
Oh really? That's super interesting! I will have to join your hunt for this unknown gem of a game. I was surprised this worked so well turn-based!
I am having an error that states:
An abnormal situation has occurred: the PlayerLoop internal function has been called recursively. Please contact Customer Support with a sample project so that we can reproduce the problem and troubleshoot it.
This is on the Web version.
This is a unity bug, but it seems to have appeared more frequently after the last release. I will have to analyze the changes and see whether anything pops up. Thank you for the report.
I managed to reproduce. I'll get a fix out asap.
This should now be fixed.
It works. Thank you
Awesome!
the game doesn't load
hm, is it the webgl version? If so, would you have a chance to hit F12 in the browser and see of the Console section holds any red error messages?
This should now be fixed.
This game was a lot of fun. Great work!
Thank you! Awesome to get these videos to get some insight into how players play the game and what information doesn't come across perfectly!
Some really nice updates to the game recently. I last played like 2 weeks ago, I came back to try it again and was very pleasantly surprised.
Well done again
Thank you! It's been fun dabbling with in my evenings ;-)
6 days later I try it again and go from 900 something turns per run to a 3200 turn win. I think you need to up the difficulty a bit, the new upgrades just make you too good :)
I also think you decreased the speed at which new waves arrive? Not sure I like it, it creates some longer gaps without action.
welcome back!
Yeah, with this many changes a lot of the balance was going out the window. I'm working on finding back to a good pacing!
I agree that it's a bit too easy to stay on top of the power curve now and deal with monsters faster than new spawn phases trigger. I'll massage it some more for the next release Friday!
Your feedback is much appreciated!
I tweaked the spawn phases a bit for 1.6, do let me know if you think it helps or if more tuning is needed ;-)
This was really fun. I thought I’d found a winning strategy when I was in a room with only one entrance…and then enemies destroyed the walls. What a glorious moment!
Haha! Amazing!
I never understood the VS hype but if it's half as addictive as this was then maybe I need to reconsider.
I do say it could benefit from a randomly generated map rather than a static one.
I completely agree on the randomly generated map, I might do it for 1.6! Haha, I'm happy to hear you like it! The sound of dropping gems will start to haunt your dreams!
I really, really enjoyed this entry. It feels so good when you get powerful after a few upgrades.
Thanks a lot Lintford!
Enjoyed the game, but please add an option to disable the music, it gets copyright claimed on YouTube.
Thank you! Press M to toggle the music 😉
I spoke with the composer btw, and he said to dispute the claim with YT, that way the composer can clear it on his end. A bit cumbersome for sure, but it sounds like it's our only option with this music.
Soooooo good. I am a boss. OP. Pro. The BEST!
ARCHER FIREBALL WINWINWIN
Haha, your treasure time moments were epic! Thanks a lot!
It's a sweet game. I intend to play it some more.
Oh that would be awesome!
Yeah, it's too hard, can't win. Monsters are always faster than the player and you can't kill enough of them fast enough to win. Chests giving random power ups instead of an improvement to an existing one ruins builds.
I love the concept and gameplay, but I think you've strayed too far from the core strategies of vampire survivor.
Thanks a lot for your feedback! The game as is was made in seven days with some evening work this second week, so it will need some time to mature, grow and "set" itself. There are still too few items I think, to narrow down the weapon choices.
But correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't VS pick items randomly up until you've filled all slots, and then will upgrade those you have? And that's kind of the risk of a chest in the early game before you've leveled up enough to carefully pick your build? That's how I've read the mechanic while playing it, but I'm by far no VS master.
This game needs more items before I want to add any such restrictions, as there are only 7 items in the game right now. I suppose that I could add a higher chance for already owned items to get picked from the item pool on chest opening, but its also supposed to be more random than a level up and not a guaranteed boost to your current items. That said, I'm sure it can be tweaked to feel better.
All monsters shouldn't be faster, but some certainly are, maybe too many. I'll put this into my monster tuning notes for 1.5.
Thanks again for the feedback, it's much needed at this early stage!
very cool
Thanks a lot!
That's a great game! I found it to be quite addictive (I even managed to win the v1.1 with all the characters). I wanted to return to this page to give a few remarks and a list of things that could be improved (in my opinion!), and I found there's the v1.3, so I had to give it a try. I did that, and I have even more comments now :—). Hopefully you don't mind a wall of text — I wrote far more than I initially intended.
Comments for v1.1:
Some more comments for v1.3 (they're going to be quite negative and I'm sorry for that, but I found it to be a big step back in terms of enjoyment):
Wow, an amazing wall of feedback, evolvent! I can tell that you've played both version 1.1 and version 1.3 a whole lot!
I will need some time to digest everything that's in here, but my initial reaction is that I see where you're coming from.
On v1.1 I could quite consistently beat the game myself too (well, I'm impressed that you beat it with the archer!), while in v1.3 it has become a lot harder, and also one seems to be forced to bate enemies into these lines as one flees away, unable to gather gems at the rate that would be needed to keep up with the power curve.
You definitely touch on a lot of balancing issues, and it's to be expected. I really want to expand the game beyond the initial 1.1 version, and for that I have to experiment with it, and in the process risk that some versions are much harder (or much easier) as we stabilize the formula and find what works and what doesn't. To get there, feedback like this is priceless!
Awesome ideas on the hammer. I've been thinking of ways to improve it myself, and these were some good ones!
I really want the buffs and debuffs in there to make each choice of character more than just a different starting ability, but it adds complexity to the formula that will need some time to stabilize, and with that added complexity, more item variation is probably needed to add a wider possibility space as one seeks to beat the power curve.
There was a lot of detail in this post of yours, so please give me some time to digest it over a couple more reads, and I'll see what can make it into v1.4, or a later version.
Keep the feedback coming, and I think we can turn this into a pretty amazing game! I want the game to be hard, but I also want it to hit the good notes when XP trickles in and enemies fall in the dozens around you. It's supposed to be a dopamine rush of a game, with high replay value and where getting consistent wins require mastery, but it should be more than just running away while going pew pew with the spark and boom boom with the fireball until the last boss falls.
So, we've got some work to do!
Well, thanks for reading all of that! Of course I know that balancing is a rough ride that mostly ends either in "too easy" mode, or in "too hard" mode. And I get where you want to be going with the game (and I would call that the right direction). (By the way, I was trying some more plays with the axe slash guy, and I even got to see the dragon! (Not that I got to hit it, though.))
Anyway, some more random thoughts:
If the game should require some mastery to win consistently, we should ask where that mastery will be coming from. I think that most of it will be coming from the strategic (high-level) considerations like: what level-up to take, when to go beat a miniboss, when to run for a potion, when to try to collect the gems that were previously left on the ground somewhere else. Since the dragon boss comes in a fixed amount of time, the object of the game is essentially to prepare well for its coming (while not dying in the process). At the high level, I guess this could be considered a game of risk management (risk too little and you will be unprepared, so you won't have much chance on taking out the final boss, risk too much and you get killed). And that itself needs to give the player a way to manage the risks.
The core game loop seems to be very solid, but it doesn't allow for too much tactical (low-level) mastery. There's a couple of things we can do, though. First of all, I think there should be more obstacles and perhaps other "terrain": you can use it to split the monsters or make them get stuck (and of course you can get stuck yourself). That's interesting to manage.
The second thing is that we can "get rid of the conga line". The line emerges so much because of three factors: 1) all the monsters go straight towards you; 2) you don't want to be close to them; 3) all the weapons work best when the monsters are tightly packed and/or as many of them as possible are on the same straight line with you.
Each of these factors can be quite "easily" removed: 1) make some monsters move in other fashion (e. g. if they're too tightly packed let them go perpendicular to make sort of a circle); 2) make the close combat less fatal; 3) add attacks with other patterns (circles or something more spread-out).
Another thing that could be done: let the heroes block 1 point of damage each round. That could allow for more daring tactical maneuvers with more considerations (do I get more into contact and risk getting enveloped, or do I chicken away?), as well as fulfilling the point 2 above, but it won't save you if you really screw up; also bosses do more than 1 damage, so you will still get hit by them.
The latest version doesn't address everything you've touched on (I wanted to get the release out today), but let me know what you think about v1.4 ;-)
I will gladly try it, but I won't be able to do it before Sunday as I'm going away for the weekend. And of course you don't need to address anything that I wrote about, that's just a random opinion and it can certainly be wrong :—). However I read the changelog and it sounds good.
By the way, I managed to beat the v1.3 yesterday with the archer, so it's not as unplayable as I first whined about, but still it's really hard and in some parts I had only little control over what was happening.
Thanks a lot man for your continued effort, well done beating the v1.3! Did you cross paths with the big black dragon yet btw? He's the key to a top secret challenge win ;-)
All your feedback makes my head spin with other ideas too, and plans I have for the future of the game. So even when one of your suggestions doesn't make it in 1:1 it still might be part of a decision that somewhat yield the same result, or is close enough to plans I already had.
All this feedback is super valuable!
Very nice game! I can see this as an official Vampire Survivor-like.
Thank you!
You definitely captured the addictive gameplay of Vampire Survivors here!
The turn-based mechanic fits quite well with the concept! My only gripe is that I wish I could speed up the movement animations so I don’t have to wait for them every time.
My first run was with the archer, and the arrows are a difficult weapon to start off with. You have to run from enemies but then you’ll never hit them when they’re on your tail and you have to soak up a lot of damage.
Next I tried the wizard with the spark weapon and was able to finish the run. The snowballing at the end was really satisfying.
I liked how the level had some special rooms with loot and monsters! The monster variety was nice too.
Thanks a lot Devin! Yes, the different character starter weapons kind of define how hard they are to play, so I should probably have put the archer at number 5 instead of number 1 in retrospect. The Spark mage is definitely the strongest build to start with it seems! I'm glad you got that snowballing experience in the end!
Nice work! Overall solid game, addicting gameplay with the constant leveling up. Had fun playing it.
Thanks a lot for giving it a go Loyd!