Vampire Survivors changed the way I think about games in 2022 – Digital Trends
Due to the nature of my job, my gaming habits are a little unusual. I tend to chew through long games in short bursts for review purposes and spend the time in-between sampling as many smaller titles as I can. I’m the kind of person who wants to see everything gaming has to offer, and I strive to get my hands on an array of unique experiences. It’s rare that I come back to a game once I’ve put it down. Practically speaking, it just doesn’t fit my lifestyle.
Yet that was challenged this year by a little $5 video game: Vampire Survivors. I initially dove into it in February as I tinkered around with my Steam Deck, and I figured those few hours I spent with it were where I’d stop. As the year progressed and I found myself catching up on my backlog, though, I suddenly found myself gravitating back to the mini-action game. Sometimes it was just checking in for an hour every month, but by December, it was the only game I really wanted to boot up.
Vampire Survivors is the rare game that’s fundamentally challenged how I think about how I play. It’s small enough to fit into those short moments of silence, but filled with so much content that I don’t feel like I’m ever scraping the bottom. At times, it’s thrilling in a way that few games can truly match. It’s by no means my favorite video game of 2022, but in some ways, it might be the closest thing this year has to a perfect one.
All I need
Vampire Survivors is at once the most visually chaotic and easy-to-play game of the year. The goal is simply to survive an ongoing wave of monsters for 30 minutes. The main character automatically attacks in idle game fashion, with players only guiding them around an endless map with a joystick. Instead of intense combos, the action is more focused on smart decision-making. Every time the character levels up by collecting experience points, players choose a new ability or upgrade. What starts with a tiny character shooting some magic beams every few seconds builds to a crescendo in the last minutes of a run as players can obliterate hundreds of swarming enemies in an instant.
It’s the kind of perfect storm I never realized I wanted from a video game until now. I’ve always enjoyed the catharsis of games like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, which make me feel like an all-powerful god capable of slashing down an entire army. The downside of games like that, though, is …….