Vampire Hunters is a rogue-lite first-person shooter from Brazil-based crew Gamecraft Studios which, as the name suggests, shares quite a few similarities to the king of rogue-lite games, Vampire Survivors. Indeed, a lot of elements are present. The huge number of enemies, the outrageous firepower the player gets to possess, the choice of weapons as you level up and, of course, the fact that you’re battling vampires. It’s even an auto-shooter (if you enable that option, which you should). Case closed. It’s a straight clone, right? Wrong.
By taking this from 2D to 3D, Vampire Hunters opens up the gameplay, adding verticality to the levels and requiring you to have your head on a swivel as you no longer have a 360 degree view of the action. But does it work? Well, initially we were pretty sceptical. The reason that auto-shooters have simple 2D visuals is to enable them to display massive numbers of enemies. Even the mighty PS5 struggles when you push Brotato into the further reaches of Endless Mode and that looks like a Flash game from the past. So how is this all meant to work in 3D? By giving us PS1-era quality visuals and simplifying the hell out of the polygons.
But, if you’re new to the genre then you’ll need a quick recap. The idea with these games is that enemies are heading towards your position constantly and you’ll automatically shoot them when they get too close. As they die, you’ll need to collect gems/materials/whatever this game decides to call them which will level you up. When you max out your current level, you’ll be offered a choice of perks, weapons or items and then it is back to the action. As your arsenal increases, so does the number of foes in play until everything is just a blitz of projectiles and vampires.
While your left-stick movement is always important in these games, it’s how you use those weapons and perks to build your character that is key. This is where something like Brotato shines so much because you need to think strategically while also using your Geometry Wars 3 Pacifism dodge skills to stay from being overwhelmed. In Vampire Hunters, that sort of dodging is a little harder and so you’ll need to use the levels to push enemies into chokepoints as you mow them down.
Hopefully, you get the idea and we can talk about whether or not this game lives up to a genre which is rapidly becoming one of our favourites. And while our early impressions weren’t great (but then again, even the brilliant Vampire Survivors isn’t great at the very start either) we found ourselves warming to the game quickly. Moving the action into 3D makes the levels matter now. Instead of flat expanses, now you get to use your environment in a tactical way. You can’t just stay still either as there are often chests and healing potions to collect which you won’t want to miss out on. There’s no AFK-ing here.
Vampire Hunters does the rogue-lite thing of giving you permanent upgrades too. You can increase your damage, armour, collection distance and so on, making you stronger every time you play and each of the game’s individual classes can be upgraded too with more permanent stat upgrades and artifacts that can be equipped for extra bonuses also. And while this means that theoretically you could just brute force your way to success through repeated failures, we found that it was enjoyable always being at the edge between success and failure, upping our abilities as the levels got harder.
Just based on the main gameplay, we were finding ourselves really enjoying the game. There’s enough content to keep you going for ages here and it’s all just a lot of fun. Mindless blasting mixed with tactical progression. Great stuff. But then we spotted something. There’s a ‘Classic’ mode that keeps some of the gameplay elements but shifts the gameplay from large arenas and instead sees you battling along a long corridor. It might not sound like much of a change but they’ve also incorporated the levelling up system from Brotato, allowing you to use money to buy and combine new weapons. Suddenly, we had found ourselves a whole new addiction. As far as bonus game modes go this is as good as it gets!
Whichever version of Vampire Hunters you play, this is a great game. Sure, it might seem a bit unpolished at first with its basic-looking visuals but you soon forget about that when you’re mowing down dozens of the undead per second. The game just works. The auto-shooting combat is great, feeling a bit like a hyper version of the original Unreal Tournament mixed with Serious Sam and the rogue-lite stuff is executed brilliantly. We’ll be playing this game for months.
The only major downside is the interface which is absolutely awful. It’s clearly been designed for the PC version but the way it has been ported over is just the worst case scenario. On some screens it’s very difficult to put the focus on the element you want to select and often you can’t even tell what item you’re on. It’s just so bad and needs an immediate and total refresh. Also, sometimes the upgrade screens just lock up meaning you just have to go into the next wave without upgrading. It’s bad and it’s obvious enough that even minor playtesting should have picked it up.
But, thankfully, this problem isn’t enough to spoil the party and Vampire Hunters is still a fun, addictive and wild shooter that has kept us hooked for days so far and we can guarantee that’ll turn to months. It’s a little rough around the edges but it’s a brilliant experiment in taking an overcrowded genre and giving it a whole new perspective.
+ Successfully takes the auto-shooter and puts it into 3D
+ Classic mode feels like a whole extra game and it's great
- Terrible UI