Vampire Hunters is a new rogue-like shoot ’em up made and published by GameCraft Studios. We took the plunge and dived into the the demon-flooded world for some gun-frenzy action. Here are our thoughts.

Since Vampire Survivors blew our minds and showed the kids of today that graphics aren’t the be all and end all of an enjoyable game, many games have been released under suspiciously similar titles. It’s easy to assume that these games follow the same thread or have the same addictive qualities but is it necessarily correct to make such bold presumptions?

Vampire Hunters and Vampire Survivors

Sadly, the answer is here is a resounding ‘no’. Although the team don’t once imply that the games are similar, it’s certainly an assumption we are expected to make. There are a few similarities but the compelling nature of Vampire Hunters is distinctly lacking and it doesn’t take long for this to become evident.

Vampire Hunters puts you in a series of corridors and forces you forwards by the ways of a moving wall that is constantly cutting off your option to turn back. The only option is to push onwards and into the oncoming waves of demonic creatures.

Like in Vampire Survivors, you automatically collect experience points by defeating enemies and are met with a choice of three weapons or upgrades each time you level up. However, this is where the similarities end.

The Weapons of Vampire Hunters

Vampire Hunters‘ arsenal is where the game really shines. With such a wide selection of weapons, each as crazy and as over-the-top as the last, there’s not a shadow of a doubt that there’s a some form of demon destroyer that will leave a smile on your lips. Furthermore, you carry and fire all of your weapons simultaneously (à la Vampire Survivors), adding to the feelings of being a badass while reining merry hell upon your foes. It’s over-the-top and way beyond but don’t we just love that?

Collect and Earn Upgrades to Survive the Hordes of Vampire Hunter

Like in any rogue-like game, upgrading your character and weapons is key to survival in Vampire Hunters. Upgrade each of your weapons to and collect character modifiers to progress further into the corridors of Castle Transylvania and max-out your stats to achieve total dominance over the undead hordes.

Collecting items on your travels will give you certain skills that will come in handy in your fight, while constellations will give you character buffers like faster movement, enemies dropping more XP and even nerfing the waves. However, some of these come at a price, like a flipped screen or brief moments of total darkness.

Vampire Hunters Needs a Little Longer in the Oven

With only a handful of levels to offer, GameCraft Studios needs to release some more content before sticking a price tag on Vampire Hunters. It just doesn’t fill enough time as it stands but does leave you wanting more. Whether this is their intention and they have more levels lined up to drip-feed the addicted after release is unknown but we would like to think they have plans to bring a little more to the game in the coming months.

Vampire Hunters Summary

While we are in firm belief that Vampire Hunters is just jumping onto the Vampire Survivors bandwagon and cashing in, we don’t necessarily see this as such a bad thing. There are a few similarities between the two but Vampire Hunters is different enough to easily stand as its own game. A little in-house cleaning is needed before public release but there’s still some enjoyment to be found as it stands.