Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors opens with a strange kind of confidence. Poncle and co-developer Nosebleed Interactive have taken Vampire Survivors and turned it into a deckbuilding dungeon crawler that feels like a joke until you start playing it. The game is out now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X, and that matters because this is not a novelty side project. For players who liked the build-crafting chaos of Vampire Survivors, this spinoff offers a fresh format without losing the series’ core obsession with turning simple actions into a runaway power trip.
Quick Facts — Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors
| Developer | Poncle |
|---|---|
| Platform(s) | Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X |
| Genre | deckbuilding dungeon crawler, turn-based card game, roguelike |
That’s why the surprise lands so hard. The reviewer calls it “What do you mean that developer Poncle successfully adapted its lightning-in-a-bottle Vampire Survivors into a deckbuilding dungeon crawler?” and that disbelief makes sense when you see how much of the original game survives the jump. Poncle’s approach “sees no distance between gimmick and quality,” and that’s the right read here. If you’ve been waiting for a roguelike that treats deckbuilding like a weaponized toybox, this one deserves your attention.
What Is Vampire Crawlers?
Poncle and Nosebleed Interactive frame Vampire Crawlers as an old-school PC dungeon crawler first and a card game second. You move through each floor in first-person, block by block, using directional keys while you hunt enemies, open treasure chests, collect experience points, and work toward a boss fight. That structure gives each run a clear rhythm, and it makes every room feel like a small tactical problem instead of a blur of menus. The perspective also puts the game’s 16-bit ghouls right in your face, which makes the visual style feel more immediate than the zoomed-out chaos of Vampire Survivors.
Most of Vampire Survivors’ structure carries over, just in a different form. You still select a stage to fight through, pick a specific character with a unique starting weapon, open chests that contain three upgrade options, buy permanent boosts with collected gold, and work through a massive list of achievements to unlock new toys. That’s a smart move, because it preserves the loop that made the original so sticky while changing how you interact with it. If you want a deckbuilder that respects Vampire Survivors’ obsession with momentum and unlocks, this is the one to watch.