Vampire Survivors Creator's New Game Adds Steam Demo, Already Drawing Thousands of Players

The second entry in the Vampire Survivors franchise, Vampire Crawlers, now has a free-to-play demo on Steam and Xbox, and it is already drawing in thousands of players. While many might argue that card battlers or deckbuilding games are not the hottest genres in the industry, Vampire Crawlers suggests they can be fantastic when infused with the right dose of Vampire Survivors‘ formula.

For those unfamiliar, Poncle’s previous game, Vampire Survivors, released in 2022 and is widely considered one of the best action roguelikes in recent years. In fact, it has won multiple awards, including three BAFTAs. The game was so successful that it spawned an entire subcategory of titles inspired by it, now known as Survivors-like. While the developer could have easily continued expanding on such a massive hit, it instead made the bold decision to explore an entirely new genre: a “turbo wildcard” deckbuilding game with roguelite elements, a move that already seems to be paying off.

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Vampire Crawlers Demo Is Out as Part of Steam Next Fest 2026

As promised by developer Poncle, Vampire Crawlers‘ free demo launched on February 23 alongside Steam Next Fest 2026. The good news for console players is that the demo is also available on Xbox, though there is currently no playable preview on PlayStation. Shortly after release, thousands of action roguelike fans jumped in to try Vampire Crawlers on Steam, with data from SteamDB showing over 3,000 concurrent players just minutes after going live.

Fit the 9 games into the grid.

While the game shifts from Vampire Survivors‘ bullet-hell roguelike gameplay to a turn-based, deckbuilding angle, it still includes elements that can entice OG fans of the original. For starters, Vampire Crawlers features familiar faces from the previous game, including Antonio, Gennaro, and Arca. It also retains the beloved pixel-art visual style that fans of the IP have come to love. The current demo even opens with a top-down shot as a tribute to Vampire Survivors before switching the camera to a first-person perspective.

Vampire Crawlers seemingly takes place in the same universe as Vampire Survivors, featuring familiar enemies and mobs.

Poncle Follows an Interesting Design Philosophy with Vampire Crawlers

“Sometimes, [turn-based games] become slow and repetitive, to the point that many modern titles offer speed-up functions, as well as options to skip animations,” developer Poncle says. Vampire Crawlers, by contrast, is described as a response to this issue, built around a philosophy of nonstop combat. “You don’t have to wait for animations to finish before triggering abilities,” the indie developer explains. There is even an option to unload the entire hand at once, regardless of the current stage of combat.

That said, Vampire Crawlers is far from a basic incremental game where button-mashing leads to dominance. Quite the opposite. It introduces multiple strategic layers, including Mana costs, gems, and buffs that only activate when cards are played in the right order. The goal is not to remove strategy from classic turn-based design, but to reshape it into a “turboturn” concept, where everything can unfold at once without forcing players to skip anything.

Fans Seem to Enjoy Vampire Survivors’ New Spin-Off

It is still too early to call Vampire Survivors‘ latest spin-off a success or a failure. However, the deckbuilding roguelike has already attracted thousands of players. Also, a quick look at early impressions on social media and Twitch points to an overwhelmingly positive response. “I love the fact that you can play cards at basically any speed,” one fan wrote on Reddit. Another added, “It’s so much fun, and I’m still unlocking stuff hours later, going to be playing this all week.”

More Vampire Survivors Spin-Offs Are on the Horizon

Fans who enjoyed Vampire Crawlers‘ creative shifts may be glad to hear that developer Poncle plans to continue in this direction. “This is just a spin-off of Vampire Survivors, hopefully the first of a series of spin-offs,” the studio said on the game’s official Steam page. Poncle appears eager to take the fundamental pillars of Vampire Survivors‘ formula, “accessibility, immediacy, affordability, replayability, lightheartedness, and tons of flashy stuff,” and apply them to different genres.

Once Vampire Crawlers is fully released and able to stand on its own, the indie developer will likely move on to new projects, if it is not already working on them. That said, Poncle has promised long-term support for the dungeon-crawler card game even after the 1.0 launch, stating, “We are already planning to keep supporting the game post-launch, and we have a thousand ideas about what we could do.”

The Vampire Crawlers demo is currently available on the Steam and Microsoft storefronts, with a 1.0 release planned for 2026.