NOCLIP Pocket E76 - Attacked by a Chair - Vampire Survivors

Thank you, but the podcast is in another coffin. Welcome back to
NOCLIP Pocket! Today, we’re talking about Vampire Survivors, the
game that seemingly everyone has played. Vampire Survivors released
in a form of early access on PC and mobile, and grew a pretty large
player base by the time it hit its official release last year and
has since popularized a genre that it has become the blueprint for,
coincidentally similar to its main inspiration, Castlevania. In a
Survivors game, the player defeats hundreds (or thousands, or
hundreds of thousands) of enemies to incrementally become stronger,
in this case without any controls beyond movement, until the entire
play area becomes a visual disaster of exploding projectiles and
whips and skeletons and giant plants, etc. That absurd endgame,
which only gets wilder as the game progresses, is the main driving
force for the player like a bite sized roguelike where the goal is
to outscale the challenges the game sets against you. And Vampire
Survivors, in its simplicity, has really nailed what makes this
work. There is very little input required from the player, meaning
that outside of making decisions on how to build your character,
and which character to build, the skill floor is very low. Anyone
with the desire to beat this game can get to the point where they
are clearing levels reliably eventually, and the steady drip of new
content up to and including paid DLC means they will have new
levels to clear and things to unlock for a long time. Combine that
with the nostalgic homage to Castlevania and the sick ass
soundtrack, and the picture of how this game is as much of a
success as it is becomes pretty clear. We’re going to talk about
the unlock system and how it compels you to keep playing the game,
how characters and weapons impact your strategy and by how much,
and we briefly discuss the merits of referring to this game as a
walking simulator. Thank you for joining us again this week! We’re
trying this new experiment this year called “play games Andy won’t
like” and so far I think it’s gone pretty swimmingly. With Vampire
Survivors being such a smash hit recently, did you pick it up? And
if so, did you get a handle on the fuss, and what it was all about?
Have you played other games in the budding genre? Let us know in
the comments or over on Discord! Next time, we’re going back to a
game that’s been on our list for literally years, but felt
appropriate (and short enough to help maintain our schedule),
Jazzpunk! We hope you’ll join us for that.