Vampire Survivors is a breakout indie hit on Steam, Twitch

Vampire Survivors is a small indie game that’s moved from obscurity to success in what feels like overnight. I started seeing the game, created by solo developer Luca Galante, on social media last week — a few scattered posts before a sharp rise in frequency. As it turns out, that’s the trajectory the game itself experienced after a slow launch in December, according to Vice. Most of the Vampire Survivors’ In its initial month it only had a few users. But on Jan. 6, it reached 1,000 simultaneous players — and began growing rapidly from there.

More than 30.000 people play simultaneously at the moment Vampire Survivors on Steam — the peak is 36,546 at the time of writing, according to Steam Charts. That’s on top of an unknown number of players accessing the game for free or downloaded from itch.io, with thousands of viewers watching streamers play the game on Twitch.

Maybe you haven’t seen anything about it yet. You will probably soon. Here’s the gist of it: In Vampire SurvivorsYou move your character about the screen and let the game do all of the shooting and spellcasting. You can level up by picking up and killing other things, which allows you to upgrade your weapons or use special moves to fight off ghosts and skeletons. If I had to categorize it, I’d say it’s something like a bullet hell roguelike meets AutoChess. At first, it’s a pretty chill game — no thoughts, just spells and monster hunting. It quickly turns chaotic with thousands upon thousands of enemies appearing from all directions. With its Castlevania-esque pixel graphics and a knot of spells being cast, it’s a lot to take in. But it’s also a ton of fun.

There are two versions of the game: a free version you can play in-browser on itch.io and another that’s $2.99. Galante said that the Steam version would receive content updates regularly, while the browser version was essentially a demo. But still an actual full-game.

It’s simple — no clicking — which lets the challenge of weaving through a field of Medusas or extra-large praying mantises take center stage. There’s always something flashing on screen, always a sound denoting your wracked up score. You can play every game differently due to that roguelike aspect. There’s multiple characters and room for variation in builds and build order. Each round you play, coins are earned, which allow for new elements. Vampire Survivors.

Like plenty others, I’ve started this game and now I feel like I can’t stop. When I’m not playing, I’m watching streams of Twitch, where it’s been increasingly popular in a way that’s surprising to me. Being so chaotic, it’s hard to watch. Exhausting, almost, to keep up with everything going on-screen — more so than playing it, even, where you’re the one controlling the action. It’s what I enjoy about watching. Vampire SurvivorsThe best thing about streaming is to see what other people are building. No one streamer I’ve watched played entirely the same, which is neat to see in such a simple game.