You can get buffs that increase damage, health, armor, and other stats.Įach run of Vampire Survivors differs because you’ll assemble a unique build of items and passive buffs – in one run you’ll tool up with weapons that attack the ground around you, making it impossible for enemies to get close in another you’ll bristle with spells that call in lightning strikes and big globs of holy water on the map, incinerating big clumps of enemies at random.Īs you carve through the armies of Dracula, you’ll earn gold you can spend on stat boosts that apply to all your runs, giving your individual play sessions a sense of grander purpose. Then you may acquire a passive buff that reduces all your attack cooldowns by 10%, making all your attacks fire off more frequently. You might whip every 1.2 seconds, fire off a magic missile at the nearest enemy every 2.7 seconds, or throw out a heavy axe every 4 seconds. You’ll face a horde of literally thousands of enemies – vampires, zombies, mummies, ghosts, and, for unexplained reasons, a giant praying mantis – that increase in strength and number right up until the last second.Īfter gaining a few levels, you’ll flesh out your auto-firing catalog.

Your goal in Vampire Survivors is simple: hold out for 30 minutes. This is why I’m so frustrated with Vampire Survivors: it didn’t look like an idle clicker for the first ten hours, and now I can’t walk away. It’s got to the point that, if I find myself playing an idle clicker, I try to delete it from my computer or block it in my browser before it can get its hooks too deeply into me. I have the time, but I’m not using it how I’d like to. These games reveal the lie I tell myself. I often tell myself I don’t have enough time to read this book, work on that project, or play that critically acclaimed game, and then I’ll remember I’ve played 50 hours of an idle clicker while watching through all eight seasons of House for the third time. It may seem silly, but I carry genuine shame about this.

Vampire survivors collection tab