It’s wild to think Vampire Survivors has spent two years taking over our lives without ever coming to PlayStation. Developer Poncle is finally fixing that. The roguelite bullet hell sensation will hit PS4 and PS5 at the end of August.
It’s arriving on Sony’s digital storefronts August 29 and will have all of the game’s previous DLCs available as well. That includes Legacy of the Moonspell, Tides of the Foscari, Emergency Meeting, and April’s Operation Guns which added a Contra crossover. The base game is $5 and all of the DLC combined is an additional $9. Plus there are all of the free updates that have added all sorts of other characters and easter eggs.
Why did it take this long? Poncle, a tiny indie team, has been taking its time with ports, working on one console a year. While Microsoft was on the ball with an Xbox version shortly after the 2022 PC release, Vampire Survivors didn’t come to Nintendo Switch until a year later, with a fantastic free mobile version taking precedence early on. Poncle blamed the more recent holdup on Sony’s submission process, noting that the team had never put a game on the PlayStation store before.
In the meantime, Vampire Survivors has spawned dozens of worthy clones, copycats, and clever adaptations. A Deep Rock Galactic take on the formula called Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor became a mini-sensation on Steam in its own right earlier this year. Like Slay the Spire before it, Vampire Survivors seems to hit on something archetypal that elevates its mashup of mechanics into its own subgenre.
It’s nice that PlayStation owners will finally be able to see what all the fuss is about. And also, I can’t wait to burn another hundred hours chasing that Platinum trophy.
