Poncle, the studio behind Vampire Survivors, is developing a roguelike deckbuilder spinoff titled Vampire Crawlers. Revealed during Thursday’s Xbox Partner Preview, the first-person experience keeps the frantic spirit of its predecessor while replacing bullet‑hell action with card-driven mechanics. There’s no firm release date yet; Xbox Wire says the game is expected to arrive sometime next year.
Although it shifts genres, Vampire Crawlers won’t feel completely foreign to fans of Vampire Survivors. Many recognizable upgrades — like the bible, whip, and garlic — return, reimagined as cards and systems that reflect the new design. Poncle’s founder and CEO, Luca Galante, explains that the team’s goal was to distill the core pillars that made Vampire Survivors successful and apply them to established genres in fresh ways.
The trailer already highlights classic roguelike deckbuilder features, but the game also experiments with pacing and exploration: cards can be used deliberately for strategic depth or rapidly for chaotic, high‑tempo encounters, and players navigate a first‑person dungeon between fights.
Galante says the project grew out of a desire to remove the things he finds most tedious in the genre — notably lengthy animations — and to accelerate combat so battles feel immediate and engaging. He also wanted to move beyond the “bare-bones choices” he often sees in roguelikes, so the dungeon exploration was added to create a sense of moving through a world full of varied possibilities rather than only navigating menus.
Poncle itself has expanded considerably since Vampire Survivors launched, growing from a solo effort into a studio of more than 20 people. The original game has received multiple DLCs, collaborated with titles like Balatro, and even led Poncle into publishing. With that momentum, the studio is positioning Vampire Crawlers as the first in a series of spin‑offs, and many are eager to see how the team adapts its signature chaos to a new genre.
Source: Polygon
