Platform: PC
Genre: Roguelite, Deckbuilding, First-Person Dungeon Crawler, 2D

If you ever have an addiction problem with roguelite-slash-deckbuilders like the Slay The Spire series, avoid Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard From Vampire Survivors at all costs.

This is not indicative of the game’s quality, far from it. It’s just that after just playing through a few minutes of this first-person dungeon crawler with deckbuilding and roguelite progression, just after dinner, you realize that when you’re done and need a break, it’s 6am and you have to go to work in a few hours.

Vampire Crawlers is 2026’s version of nicotine, crack, vaping, and all sorts of addictive forbidden fruits rolled into one. Similar to 2022’s Vampire Survivors, but with a new perspective and a turn-based format.

Suckfest

Vampire Crawlers is a deckbuilding dungeon crawler where you pick a titular Crawler and bring them to fight through levels upon levels of themed dungeons. The game is in a first-person viewpoint, with combat being turn-based and your attacks being cards you play. You have a mana pool to contend with, as you need it to cast powerful spells. You have cards that cost zero of course, but you need to level up to get better cards to fill your deck. And you level up by killing enemies you see on the map.

Once you’re done with the initial tutorial that teaches you the ins and outs of dungeon crawling, exploring, combat, and deck-building/card amassing, you’re left to your own devices. Pretty soon, you’ll figure out how to do combos (cast spells from 0 mana onward for stacking bonuses), buff up your current cards with gems that grant double damage or draw effects, get more money from more runs to upgrade your stats, find more Crawlers to join your dungeon party each with their own bonuses and playstyle incentives, and modify your own cards. You can also sacrifice and combine cards for better attacks and powerups, which usually cost 2 or more mana but have devastating effects and deal way more damage as part of a combo. Plus they would usually have 2 empty gem slots, meaning more customizability.

The game will throw curveballs at you, from destructible cards, boss and elites using a play-cards countdown system to attack you instead of the usual “crawl forward to attack” method, and a smart way to curb infinite plays. Protip: if you see your cards cracking glass, end your turn ASAP lest you accidentally play that card repeatedly and summon the fury of Death(s).

Much like its predecessor Vampire Survivors, Vampire Crawlers has that replayability sauce, albeit in a new perspective and format. You don’t need to move and autoshoot in real-time; you can honestly take your sweet time as you waylay your Temu Castlevania sprites and foes to oblivion with crazy card combinations. And each playthrough of a stage is short; usually you dungeon crawl through 5 levels of depth and then the level ends (via Death paying you a visit like in Vampire Survivors). Granted, it’s not as chaotic as its origin title, but the sounds, the aesthetics, the simple-to-play-hard-to-master aspect of its gameplay loop, and the dopamines triggered when you murder everything in one turn with your set of powered-up cards are all there and then some.

Card Me

Vampire Crawlers walks that fine line between familiarity and a fresh new perspective: first-person dungeon crawling like in the 90s RPGing days of yore and early 2000s mobile games pre-iPhone. Plus it’s only RM24.99, equivalent to a big meal in a Malaysia mall ala Pavilion. That’s 50+ hours of dungeon crawling and intricate card power combinations with legally distinct Akumajou Dracula sprites and cute 90s Konami synth-style metroidvania music; you can’t get a better deal than that. Also, game companies should take a cue from developer poncle and just save costs to reuse their expensive assets to make new games instead of taking years building new games from scratch. But as the Symphony of the Night saying goes: enough talk, have at you! And by that, I mean have more Vampire Crawlers in your free time.

Final Score: 90/100