The Hungry Gamer's Vampire Survivors First Impressions

0:00 Oo, that looks tasty. Welcome folks. The Hungry Gamer is back with another mini preview and today we are doing a first impressions video about Vampire Survivors from Gray Fox Games. Now, this is a title that I did not know anything about, nor do I know anything about the video game that it is based on of the stand name Vampire Survivors, which is kind of a bullet hell style shoot them up video game. And my understanding is there's people that have put thousands of hours into this game. I don't know. But that said, I was on a live stream with an employee of Gray Fox Games about a week ago, and he was talking about it. And usually I'm not one for vampires. It's just it's not my jam. So that's probably why I hadn't heard anything about it cuz this thing is crushing it on crowdfunding right now. It's something like I don't know 2,000% funded or whatever. But the way that Lance from Great Fox Games was talking about it, I thought, you know, that actually does sound kind of cool.

1:07 It's a little bit of a tower defense style game. Not really. you're just trying to survive against a bullet hell game, but as I'm trying to tie that into a type of board game style that's out there kind of tower defense and I thought, okay, that sounds kind of cool and it's doing really well. So, people must know something. So, what this game is is each player will be playing one of the vampire survivors, which are again from the video game. How many there are, I don't know, but the base game starts with four and there's a whole bunch you're able to unlock as you go through. And what's going to happen is on your turn, you will have a hand of cards and you get to play all of your cards if you want or you can keep your cards. And the cards might move you around or they're going to deal damage. And most importantly, I think a lot of the cards are going to deal damage in patterns, very specific patterns of where they're going to hit on the board. You can't rotate the patterns. You can't turn the patterns. There are ways to upgrade your character. So maybe you can do a mirror pattern, but that's what it's going to be. Or perhaps it'll be you'll fire in a diagonal line, make your choice, or a straight line or things like that. And you're just going to be trying to kill these monsters that are encroaching from all four sides of the board. And every round, you'll play through all the cards you want to play through. Then you will activate any enemies that have a little boot symbol on them. And the little boot symbols means they're going to just move their way towards you, go a diagonal, so they're on the same row or columns you are as they're trying to get closer to you. Some of them will shoot, in which

2:37 case you'll just get shot for some damage. And then you'll do a spawn and then everywhere around you, all four sides around you, more bad guys will filter into the board and push everything closer to you. If a bad guy lands on you, well then you get hurt. And you're able to die two times, but it's not a new life as you might think. It is you get defeated, you go down to zero health, and then you come back at one health. So, it's you kind of get a little second wind as it were. In addition to that, there are light sources that are out and you can destroy those light sources and it'll either be coins or a floor chicken. I call it a floor chicken because if you ever played gauntlet that was the best food you could find, you would hit something and there'd be a big old chicken on the floor and you could go and eat that and heal up. Everything that you kill, for the most part, they're going to give you crystals or coins and you'll use those crystals or coins to buy new cards at the end of the round. And it's important to know that every time you get a new card, it goes directly into your hand.

3:37 And if it's a card that can be played instantly, you can play it instantly. If you find a way to get a card during your turn before you have finished playing all your cards, you can still play those cards right away as well. So there's a lot of cycling through your deck and playing all the cards that you get. Then eventually to win the game, you're going to have to get to the point where the Grim Reaper comes out. That's kind of the final big boss. and you win if you survive until the Grim Reaper shows up. Then you've won. You're expected to lose to the Grim Reaper. But if you can somehow beat the Grim Reaper, then you have a super epic mega huge amazeballs victory, which I think is the technical term in the rule book. I'm not quite sure, but someone can correct me on that. And that's how the game's going to play. However, as you're going through, you'll be trying to accomplish these different objectives, these different goals, and it might be spend four coins throughout the course of the game.

4:29 That's one of the ones that we had. Another one that we had was very simple, use two axes, which is a card you can buy on the same turn. And then we actually had a third one which you couldn't do, which was survive 20 minutes with a certain character. We weren't playing with that character, so we couldn't do it. To be clear, this kind of survive 20 minutes is kind of from the video game. It's actually survive until the second wave is what it's going to be. So, they've kind of taken that time minutes thing and they've kind of turned it into something that is more board game applicable. But at the end of the game, all the ones that we unlocked, we flip over and it gave us something new. And so in our case, when we finished up, we had unlocked a new set of cards that we're going to be able to get mixed in, which we'd be able to buy as we went through the game, and another complete character. So, the core game is going to come with kind of the four base characters you start with, but then it's going to come with a whole bunch of others that you unlock as you play. And so, that's kind of how this game works.

5:23 So, with that said, what do I like about this game? And as a reminder, I've literally played this game one time on TTS. So, this is very much my first impressions of the game. So, with that said, the first thing I'll say is, and this is something that's exciting for all of those people that have played the video game, and you know these characters, you can see them on the screen right now, but now, for the first time ever, you're going to get to see the backs of those characters. And these are actually going to be acrylic standes, which I'm a big fan of. I particularly love acrylic standies when you see the back of the character, even though the back does not matter as far as this game and how it plays. The next thing I'll say is the game was really easy to learn and to play. I was taught the game. I chatted with Lance for about 15 minutes before we even started. He taught me the game and we played all the way through. Got to the Grim Reaper and then we died when the Grim Reaper showed up. But got all the way there. It was under an hour, including us talking, including him teaching, and us getting to the endgame was under an hour. So, they're saying the game is gonna play about 45 minutes. That seems right to me. Absolutely seems right to me. And so, I love that. I love that is quick. I love that is easy to pick up and play.

6:35 And though I don't know for sure, but based on what I know about the size of standies and all of those things, it does not seem like this game is going to take up a ton of space. This is going to be something you can play on a humansized table, which is fantastic. Next thing I'm going to say is I love when a deck builder lets you use your cards. And this is a game that does that. One, every single turn you draw four new cards. It doesn't matter if you held a bunch of cards in your hand. Four cards every single turn. And the cards that you buy go into your hand. So, you are actually cycling through your deck pretty darn quickly. And you're always getting to play your cards. And I really love that there's no hand limit. You can hold on to one card until you know it's the right time to use it. Just the way to go. And because of that, it creates for a ton of fun combos. Really cool combos as you're going through. It's like, ah gosh, I need to get to this guy, but I can't get to him. Ah, but I can move one space and oh, I can mirror my whip action because I put this one card as an upgrade. Now I use my other whip. I use that. I kill these two things. That opens up this space right next to me to where now I can throw this weapon. I can hit this one thing. And then because I've done that, I actually need to get to one that's next to that that I couldn't reach, but I have this candalabra and that's going to allow me to do one damage something next to something I already hurt. Very cool combos you can build up and you can use.

7:57 I like that there's a lot of instant cards that you can play on other players during your turn. Really, really clever. Works really, really well. Along with that, as I just implied, the powers you're getting are very satisfying as you're playing through. There's very few cards that I was like, eh, I don't need that. And some of them maybe a little bit, but as I watched Lance play his characters, like, oh, I see how I could use that. And this was again the first time I played. So, satisfying powers, easy to figure out how to use. With that said, each of the characters also plays differently. Now, there aren't any character specific powers, but what you do get with each character is a different starting deck, and that starting deck is going to be what you're building off of through the whole game. So, the character I was playing, I just keep mentioning the whip had a whip and I could hit one side, then the other, go whap, whap. And I had a bunch of those in my deck and I could fuse one down. I could put one down to power myself up.

8:50 So, I was chasing cards like that. I was chasing cards are a little more melee oriented because I knew I was going to try to get up into the collective grills of all the bad guys. And so the characters, even though there's nothing asymmetric about them other than your starting deck, it really does feel like they play different just based on how it is that you start. And then of course, you're going to kind of build to your strength. So it just intensifies as you go through the game. The next thing I'll say is I really enjoyed the building pressure from turn three. It really felt like it's like, oh my gosh, this is going to be this is going to be hard. This is going to be intense. Ah gosh, they're coming. I got to move. What am I going to do? I don't know what to do. Ah, and it just built built built built built. But it was always manageable. Even in the times that I felt like there is no chance we're getting out of this round, we would get out of the round. Or even at the times when I wound up not being able to move, I just didn't have any move cards. Ah, I can't do anything.

9:45 It's over. We would manage to get ourselves out of it. And that's really, really satisfying to always feel like you're in trouble, but always to feel like you have a really good chance to win. So, I really, really like that. Next thing I'll say is it really does have the vibe of those video games that you play through. And I guess it's not a rogike style game, but that vibe where you're going to play through, you're going to do a thing and depending on what you do, it's going to unlock more stuff that you get to use the next time through. I'm thinking like slay the spire, right? You get all the way to the top to slay the spire and then you've unlocked a new character. Or maybe you don't get all the way to the top, but you've unlocked other things that you're able to use. And so it makes every successive play more and more robust. And this feels like that, especially because, as I mentioned, you're going to play in under an hour. So, you're unlocking these things pretty darn quickly. And so, that really, really works for me. So, with that said, what are my quibbles with the game? Well, the first one is, and this clearly didn't bother me, but kind of the core here is you're playing over and over again, the same game over and over again to unlock these things to make the game more and more robust. And to be clear, I felt it was pretty darn robust in that one play that I had. And obviously, you could just add in whatever jump you want right off the bat. But the real joy of the game is doing that. It's doing the same game over and over again, but attacking it in different ways. And there's different bosses that come out that come out in different orders and all those things, but you have to be interested in

11:16 that. There's not some long story you're going through. There's not even a hint of, well, maybe there's a hint of story. We just didn't talk about it. I don't know. But you're just trying to survive and you're trying to make your way through. And every time, the next time you play, there's more stuff you're able to use. And so that's either going to be your jam or it's not because the arc is going to be similar every single time. The next thing I'll say is it is a kind of pixel art style. And I don't know if this is like 32bit, you know, Sega Genesis style or I guess that's 16 bit. I don't know, whatever it is, but it has that style of art. And I know some people are very, very anti-ixel art. And so this is in that realm. Next thing I'll say is, and again I've already mentioned this in the parts of the game that I think work really well. Just as a reminder, the differentiation is coming from the character decks and how you build your deck every single round. So, just something to keep in mind.

12:06 Obviously, because there's a lot of puzzle elements to this game. If you're really AP prone, then you might fall into turns where you're just stopping and trying to figure out, well, if I go here and do this and do this, and just trying to puzzle it all out. It's something that's there. This is not a problem that I have, nor was it a problem that Lance had. So, we kind of were cooking all the way through, but maybe something to think about. And then, so the last thing that I will say is you are very much at the mercy of the draw. There are just going to be times when you just can't move because literally you have no way to move and there is no kind of mitigation or redraws and to me that's kind of the fun of the game. Like I really really enjoyed trying to figure out what to do when I couldn't move or all I had was movement or whatever it might be. But again, if you are someone that is anti kind of randomness and luck, then you're at some point you're going to be frustrated by this. But there you have it, folks. I I tried to dig real deep into everything I could possibly think of that might not be to your taste with this game, but as far as a first impression goes, it was fantastic.

13:08 If I had gone to a convention and I went to the Grrey Fox booth and I did a demo of this, I would have bought it. No question. It was fun. It was fast. It was entertaining. It was interesting. It's more brain burn than you think it's going to be. And I really think that they have a real hit on their hands here. I really enjoyed it. So, I don't know the video game from a hole in the ground as I already said to you, but it kind of makes me want to check it out. As always, if you found this video useful, please like, subscribe, share, maybe become a channel member. As always, thank you so much for watching. Have a wonderful, wonderful day.