Vampire Crawlers, poncle's turn-based, card-driven spin-off of Vampire Survivors, is now out on iPhone, iPad and Android phones. It costs $9.99 on the App Store and Google Play, the same as everywhere else, and it is a straight premium release: no ads and no in-app purchases at launch. The mobile version went live on October 12 at 9:00 AM BST. That is the same day poncle shipped Death Parade, the game's first big free content update, and it is in the mobile build from day one.
That makes six platforms for the game, six months after it launched on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch in April. The phone version is standalone, so you don't need Vampire Survivors installed or owned, and poncle calls it the full Vampire Crawlers experience rather than a cut-down port.
What Vampire Crawlers actually is
Strip away the jokes and Vampire Crawlers is a first-person dungeon crawler, a "blobber" in genre shorthand, built around a deck of cards. The weapons Survivors fans know, like the Knife, Whip, Axe and King Bible, are now cards. Each turn you spend mana to play them, and playing cards in ascending mana order chains them into a combo, so each card multiplies the one after it. Wild cards stretch a chain further. The pitch is the same snowballing power curve as Survivors: a run that starts with one knife against a bat can end with multipliers in the dozens and damage numbers that no longer fit on screen.
Between fights you explore multi-floor dungeons that, as poncle likes to point out, have actual walls this time. You headbutt chests for gems that modify your cards, level up to draft new cards, chase weapon evolutions, and summon other survivors for extra effects. Finding the shovel takes you down to the next floor. Back in the village after each run you buy permanent power-ups, the familiar roguelite loop that kept Survivors players coming back.
poncle's own pitch is that you can play at whatever pace you like. You can think through every turn, or tap through a hand as fast as possible, and the result is calculated the same way either way. That suits a phone, where a run can be picked up for a few turns on a bus and put down again.
Death Parade is in the box
Death Parade is the update poncle spent the late summer previewing in a run of developer posts, after admitting in August that it was taking longer than planned. It is free on every platform. Here is what it adds:
- One new stage and three new dungeons
- Two new Crawlers, Sir Ambrojoe and Big Troubler
- Two new weapons, one new evolution and one new utility card
- Four new gems, four new Arcanas and two new Relics
The theme is deliberately throwing cards away. One new Relic caps how many cards you can hold, and the rest of the update gives you ways to profit from that limit. Sir Ambrojoe can Switch cards, discarding random ones and drawing replacements straight away, and he deals damage every time a card is discarded. Cards with Afterlife trigger when they hit the discard pile, and cards with Scavenge grow stronger for every card discarded during an encounter. Big Troubler is unlocked by discarding 500 cards in total. A new Arcana, Chair Game, Switches up to four dead-end cards once per turn to try to keep a combo alive.
Death Parade is post-game content. To find it, beat the final boss and then explore the world map, where new dungeons including Moongolow and Moongohigh appear. Moongolow is a challenge stage built around the hand-size Relic. Clear it once and that Relic becomes an optional toggle on every other stage, a pattern poncle says future challenge stages will follow. All the new content is available whether the toggles are on or off.
One warning for existing PC and console players: because of how save data is upgraded, anyone who was mid-dungeon when the update installed is sent back to the village.
Controls, saves and requirements
The mobile version plays in landscape only, with no portrait mode. It supports PlayStation, Xbox and MFi controllers if you would rather not play on the touchscreen. It works offline once downloaded, and you only need a connection for the initial download and for updates.
The big limitation is saves. There is no cross-save between mobile and PC or console at launch, and you cannot bring an existing PC or console save across. Progress syncs between Apple devices, or between Android devices, but not from one ecosystem to the other. poncle says a poncle account system is planned to handle cross-platform sync later, without giving a date.
On iPhone and iPad you need iOS or iPadOS 18.6 or later. The download is a little over 1GB. On Android you need Android 12 or later on a device with OpenGL ES 3.0 support.
poncle's mobile track record
poncle has form on phones. Vampire Survivors itself came to iOS and Android in late 2022 as a free, ad-supported release, and later arrived on Apple Arcade as Vampire Survivors+. Vampire Crawlers takes a different approach: one up-front price, matching the other platforms, and no monetisation inside the game. poncle has also promised future content and fixes for the mobile versions alongside the PC and console builds, so phone players should not end up a patch behind.
