According to IGN, Poncle is developing Vampire Crawlers as a follow-up to their surprise hit Vampire Survivors. The new game launches in 2026 across Xbox Series, PC, PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch simultaneously. Vampire Survivors originally hit early access in December 2021 before becoming a massive success months later. Vampire Crawlers shifts to first-person perspective while adding deckbuilding mechanics to the roguelike formula. IGN previously gave Vampire Survivors an 8/10 rating, praising its addictive depth despite occasional dull periods.
The smart pivot
Here’s the thing about Vampire Survivors‘ success – it basically created a whole new subgenre of “reverse bullet hell” games where you automatically attack while focusing on movement. And now every developer and their cousin is making clones. So Poncle’s move to first-person deckbuilding is actually brilliant. They’re not just making Vampire Survivors 2.0 – they’re evolving the formula before the market gets completely saturated.
Why 2026 makes sense
2026 feels like forever away, right? But think about it – Vampire Survivors only left early access in 2022. The game still has legs, and Poncle probably wants to milk that success while carefully building something genuinely new. Rushing out a sequel could kill the golden goose. This gives them time to polish while the original continues selling. Smart timing, honestly.
Going everywhere at once
Notice how Vampire Crawlers is launching on everything simultaneously? That’s a huge shift from the original’s PC-first approach. Vampire Survivors built its audience on PC before spreading to consoles and mobile. Now Poncle has the brand recognition to go big from day one. Cross-platform launches are becoming the standard, and they’re clearly learning from the industry’s playbook.
But is it really a sequel?
The article’s headline jokes that it’s “totally not a roguelike deckbuilder” when it obviously is. That’s the interesting part – what makes a sequel these days? Same universe, completely different gameplay? Look at what happened with Zelda going from 2D to 3D, or Resident Evil‘s various reinventions. Sometimes the best sequels are the ones that dare to change everything except the soul of what made the original special. And if anyone can pull that off, it’s probably the team that turned a simple bullet hell game into a cultural phenomenon.
