Two years back a game blew up beyond all expectations, spawning an entirely new genre despite only a very few entries coming close to matching the insanity that made it so good to begin with. Vampire Survivors hit the gaming jackpot, but its real accomplishment is that its success just made the game better. The base game grew beyond all reason, with updates adding characters, weapons, levels, and secrets even as the price, which was already cheap for the amount of playtime, turned into a ludicrously-good value. Paid DLC followed along, adding even more features and new gameplay twists, but the big news was a collaboration with Konami.
When A Vampire Comes Along, You Must Whip It
When Vampire Survivors came out it was a little hard to ignore how much of the spritework was “inspired” by Castlevania, to the point that a lot of people wondered when it would get hit with a cease & desist order. Thankfully that never happened, and during the upgrade cycle the sprites were changed to be unique to Vampire Survivors. It would still be easy to think there may be bad blood between Konami and Vampire Survivors' developer poncle, but last May’s DLC saw the two team up to release the collaboration that everyone had not been waiting for, a Contra crossover, which was just an excellent bait & switch overall. As it turns out, though, that was just the first crossover and today saw the announcement that everyone would have expected: Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania.
Vampire Survivors Gets Its RPG on with Tides of the Foscari DLC
Ode to Castlevania is the next paid DLC for Vampire Survivors, and it’s promising to be absolutely massive. Over twenty characters taken from Castlevania history join the search for vampires, wielding forty new weapons across the biggest map yet, backed up by thirty tracks from the series history, plus secrets, spells, glyphs, and all sorts of other new goodies. Ode to Castlevania isn’t kidding with its title, featuring deep cuts in the form of almost-forgotten heroes, monsters, bosses, and just about anything else Castlevania-ish that could be crammed in. Except for a vampire, of course, and before anyone mentions Alucard, apparently being half human and half vampire makes him a dhampire.
Ode to Castlevania is the next paid DLC for Vampire Survivors, and it’s promising to be absolutely massive.
Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania is scheduled to be released on the thematically-appropriate date of October 31. There’s also a mysterious countdown page with a90s-style guestbookyou can leave a name and quote in for…reasons. Possibly good reasons, but it’s a little too early to guarantee that. Meanwhile the new trailer features an animated intro followed by plenty of gameplay showing off the new weapons, characters and monsters, and it’s worth watching just to see how many of them you can recognize.
