Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania is our third collab DLC, and our second made in collaboration with with the KONAMI team!

Vampire Survivors would have been a very different game hadn't it been influenced by Castlevania in the first place, so this is straight up the definition of a dream coming true.
This is not a standard DLC pack. This is a celebration of this historical game series, an incredible, full-circle moment in which we have invested all the energy we could muster, and then some!

As usual a huge thanks to all the fans for making this possible, and please try not to binge it when it releases: it's big. IT'S BIG.

What heroes from Castlevania will be able to resist the urge to join the Vampire Survivors in their hopeless search for a vampire? None.

------

https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/3210350/Vampire_Survivors_Ode_to_Castlevania

As the trailer suggests, we went by a simple rule when picking content this time: everything and everyone.

• 20+ characters
  
• 40+ new weapons between base versions and evolutions.
  
• 1 huge stage
  
• 30+ music covers
  
• We could tell you the exact numbers, but we don't want to scare you.

The DLC will add a new stage in Stage Selection as usual, from where you'll be able to start the chain of unlocks to get the new characters and weapons. Given the amount of content, it's very easy to start this chain of unlocks.

The new stage is our biggest one yet and features a lot of different biomes. You'll notice new special icons on the map that will help you in navigating the stage.

When it comes to the weapons, we have tried to reach a balance between referencing, reinterpreting, remixing, and straight up converting weapons of the Castlevania series. We have also added themed Weapon Selectors that will make all characters very flexible, so that they won't get stuck using their default weapon if you prefer to use something different.

There isn't an Adventure this time because the amount of content is probably already overwhelming (but we might add one in the future if we get the chance).

This patch will bring a bunch of QOL improvements to everyone. We'll see the details on release day, but in the meantime here's a summary:

1. Advanced Music Selection: when even that one weirdo that knows by memory the order of the music tracks in the game (me) has trouble choosing the right one, you know it's time to revamp the UI!
   
2. Mega Seal: you are now able to seal a whole "content pack", (including "Base Game", or "Extra".. who needs weapons anyway?) from the Collection menu
   
3. ZOOM: you can now zoom in and out on the pause-menu map. 2024 ho!
   
4. Arcana effect reminder in pause menu: just when you thought this list had peaked at ZOOM.
   
5. New Passives in Preview mode: we needed 2 passives to make the list of new evos feel complete, so we're adding them to the game ahead of time through special means
   
6. Memory usage improvements: probably invisible on PC, but on other platforms this should help better sustain some insane end-game runs

Will the main game still receive free updates?
As usual, yes, we're doing free content updates. There's a lot left on the Chaos Roadmap, especially after adding the Darkanas in the last patch! Going forward we are planning for bigger updates, but at a slower pace.

Why so expensive?
This DLC is absolutely massive; I know this might sound as an hyperbole, but I'm sure at some point you'll see why it's not. The idea was that for the amount of content and production costs, it feels fair to price it about 1 less money than VS.

Why so cheap?
Despite being so big and definitely being a big step up in production, we still have to price this fairly in the context of the other DLCs and of the base game. Normally something like this would not be sustainable; we could do this only thanks to the massive support we have received and keep receiving from the players, so we also want this to be accessible to as many fans as possible.

Are you lying again about the amount of content in the DLC?
What a preposterous question!

More DLC FAQS
While most of the contents of the DLCs are straightforward, being a collab there are some differences. For example, there are no Steam achievements and the music covers won't be available in the paid Soundtrack on Steam (but we will publish them on YT as usual), so please read the FAQs here for more info: https://poncle.games/ode-to-castlevania-faq

After the cryptic nonsense from yesterday, it's time for some proper patch notes!
It's been a while since we added a new major feature, so we tried not to spoil the contents of this patch immediately. Hope it worked to keep the contents a bit of a surprise ːdireyesː

- 9 new EXTRA achievements
- 1 new challenge stage
- 1 new relic
- 2 new special character skins
- 5 new Arcanas
- 🦇🦇🦇

Just like the original 22 Arcanas, the new ones introduced in this patch are to be considered experimental and subject to change. Please post your feedback and comments on the effects of the new 5 cards so that we can keep improving them over time and also influence the design of the future ones.


- Go to the "Secrets" menu and type "forbiddenbox" in the text field to unlock the new stage.
- Reach the bottom of the new stage to unlock the new relic.
- Go to the "Unlocks" menu to see unlock instructions for the new arcanas.
- Complete the available base game Adventures to unlock character skins.


New Arcana cards
There are currently 5 unlockable Darkanas in the game.
You can access Darkanas by pressing the new button on the usual Randomazzo screen. The only difference between Arcanas and Darkanas is their theme, functionally they are exactly the same.
Due to the increased amount of arcana cards, once you have 23 or more cards, every draft will come with a free Reroll and will allow you to pick between 6 cards instead of 4.

New special skins
This is a new game mechanic that allow characters to have special skins that alter them not only visually, but also in terms of stats and weapons. There are currently 2 special skins and they are both rewards for completing the current 2 base game Adventures once.
If you have already completed the 2 base game Adventures, just open the Adventure menu to receive the unlocks.
These two unlocks requries quite a bit of effort, so if that's not your thing please remember that the Secrets-Cast Spell menu (and some googling) are there to help you ;)

New special skin for Imelda Belpaese: Unblinded Imelda
She starts with a level 5 Empty Tome and gets the following bonuses: +40% projectile Speed, +40% MoveSpeed, -10% Cooldown. Complete "World of Light and Dark" Adventure once to unlock.

New special skin for Poe Ratcho: Retired Poe Ratcho
He starts with a level 5 Pummarola and gets the following bonuses: +30 MaxHealth, 5hp/s Recovery. Complete "A Garlic Paradise" Adventure once to unlock.

New stage: Room 1665
Unlocked by casting the spells "forbiddenbox" in the Secrets menu.
A serious challenge stage that strips you of the power of most relics. Enemies grow stronger as you do. You need to defeat around 100 enemies to clear a room and proceed to the next one. Standard light sources are rare, but they are also rewarded after clearing every room.

Relic: Darkasso
Allows to activate Darkanas. It comes with Darkana VI - Moonlight Bolero.
Unlocked by reaching the bottom of Room 1665.

Darkana: VI - Moonlight Bolero
Unlocked by default when obtaining the Darkasso.
It spawns an additional stage boss every minute. These bosses might carry special treasure chests, including Arcana Treasure chests that will let you get extra arcanas even if you have reached the standard limit. There are also Black Treasure chests, that have a chance to hold a new passive weapon that you aren't already carrying.

Darkana: I - Sapphire Mist
Unlocked by finishing a run when Space Dude has a cooldown bonus of -85%.
Every time any equipped weapon fires, it has a Luck-based chance to activate again. This affects is augmented on certain weapons, that will activate 2-3 times instead of just once.

Darkana: X - Hail From The Future
Unlocked by triggering a Weird Souls Purifier with Santa Ladonna.
Every time you level up, a Luck-and-Level-based amount of pickups appears on the stage. The possible pickups include Gold Fingers, Gilded Clovers, Candyboxes, and Arma Dios among others.

Darkana: XII - Crystal Cries
Unlocked by triggering a Starry Heavens with She-Moon Eeta.
When the character's health drops below 20%, an Orologion is triggered. This ability recharges when reaching full Health.
Defeating frozen enemies generates Crystallized Souls, that when picked up restore a bit of Health and provide little bonuses to Growth, MaxHealth, and Recovery.

Darkana: XXI - Wandering the Jet Black
Unlocked by reaching 665 MaxHealth with Bat Robbert.
Losing Health generates exploding projectiles. The amount of Health recovered during the run contributes to the damage inflicted by the explosions. Magnet affects the area and damage of the explosions too.



►When is the game relasing on PlayStation?
- August 29. We finally made it ☠️
►Does the PlayStation version include the Darkasso patch?
- Yes, it will launch at version 1.11

►Does the PlayStation version have a Platinum Trophy?
- Yes. There are in fact 2 PlayStation versions, one for PS4 and one for PS5, and they have separate trophy lists, with a Platinum Trophy each (you receive both the PS4 and PS5 versions, regardless of which one you buy).
All of the achievements available on other platforms will have their trophy counterpart, but due to technical limitations you'll need less trophies than you'd expect to obtain the Platinum.
Every new content update patch will come with a new Trophy Group, just like other platform achievements.
Collab DLCs will not have Trophies for the usual reasons[poncle.games].

►Cross-save beta
- Cross save is available on the beta branches on Steam, Android, and iOS too. We have tested cross-save on all other platforms and it's working fine, but we still have to submit the feature for approval to all of those platforms to be able to fully release it.
- FAQ here: https://poncle.games/account-help


►Other projects
- Online co-op for Vampire Survivors: the technical work is going well, still too early for more details!
- VS-EXPERIMENTS: we have put one on hold, subtituted another one, two are still ongoing, and finally we have greenlit 2 of them! We'll probably have to wait 2025 to reveal more info.

►Where are we on the Extra-content roadmap?
Right here:
If this makes you think we pick future updates by throwing a dart at the roadmap, you're.. ehm... partially correct 🤡
Other than new content, we are also working on some QOL improvements for the next patch, namely seeing Arcana effects on the pause menu, a new music selection menu, and a MEGA SEAL.
1.11.0 Bugfixes and improvements
- Obtaining the Yellow Sign also allows to see if a treasure chest has the potential to contain an evolution (Silver Chests)
- Carréllo projectiles won't be destroyed anymore when they hit the top or bottom edge of the screen
- GoldFingers are now pulled into Mad Groove, unless spawned directly on the map (e.g. Astral Stair ones are ignored)
- Fix for negative coin values (added correction on save data load)
- Fixed dodgy price formatting on powerups
- Fix for controller navigation on long lists on the recap page
- Fix for displaying over 5 arcanas in pause page
- Fix inversion of trigger zones in stages with visual inversion not allowed
- Fixed bestiary text overflow
- Fix for Pentagram scaring the rising water but not the Drowner
- Various fixes to Arcana selection and draft screens
- Various fixes to cursor navigation when playing co-op
- Stacking multiples of the same added weapons in recap screen (eg candy box)
- [Moonspell] Nightsword and Muramasa deal bonus damage depending on Greed
- [Foscari] Fixed collision shape and stats scaling of SpellStream
- [Foscari] Fixed Insatiable by making magnet values match original intended JS version
- [Emergency Meeting] Fixed mini-crewmates not being available in Adventures
- [Operation Guns] Fixed Inverse stage modifiers being non-standard
- [Operation Guns] Fixed issue with infinite Weapon Power-Up on level up in rare cases

- Bug fixes and improvements.

Bug fixes and improvements.


- Bug fixes and improvements.
- Bug fixes and improvements.
- Bug fixes and improvements.
- Bug fixes and improvements.
- Bug fixes and improvements.


Bug fixes and improvements.

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Operation Guns

• Increased frequency of Weapon Power-Up appearing as a level up option
  
• Improvement for Hectic Highway pickups not always looping
  
• Fixed Carlo Cart and Hectic Highway moving too quickly on high-refresh-rate monitors
  
• Fixed a bug with the Firearm weapon not firing for long periods of time
  
• Fix to Proton Beams infinite split causing screen flashes and crashes

[/b]

Diver Mines fly in the direction faced by the player before falling down (really noticeable only with the weapon from level 3 onwards)

Atmo-Torpedoe and Prism Lass can be spammed a lot more than before with low cooldown

Increased damage of Wave Cannon's charged projectiles

"Zephyr" track fixed with the proper music

Tweaked treasure chests in Neo Galuga

Fixed Lance's bonuses glitchy display

Fix for Ariana's hidden Cooldown bonus not working properly

Fix to hide floating Morphed Mortaccio head when entering a boss battle

[/list]

Main Game

• Fixed shared evolutions when using "Shared Passives" option in co-op

[/b]

Fix for arcana re-roll button displaying even if there were not enough arcanas left

Fixed Laborratory doors being incorrectly ventable

Fixed stage completion scroll bar navigation bug

Fixed word wrapping in stage selection

Fix for level up being empty/going straight to limit break in cases where everything else that would be available is sealed

Fix for missing translations showing in some treasure chests

[/list]

Vampire Survivors: Operation Guns is our second collab DLC, made in collaboration with the KONAMI's Contra team, and is now available on all platforms!
https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/2887680

Content:
- 1 large stage and 1 bonus stage
- 11 new characters
- 22 new weapons between base versions and evolutions
- 6 new music tracks
- 13 music tracks directly from the Contra series and 6 brand new covers
- A new 6-chapters Adventure

How to start the DLC
After installing the DLC, the new stage "Neo Galuga" will appear at the bottom of the Stage Selection screen. Play the stage to start the new chain of unlocks.
Alternatively, go to Adventures and play the chapters of Operation Guns to have a strongly guns-themed experience using almost exclusively the new characters and weapons from the Contra series!

There is no DLC when I start the game
Please make sure you're on game version 1.10, as older versions won't detect the content pack. Fully closing and reopening Steam to trigger an update should do the trick!

Patch 1.10
We had a free content update last week that, among other things, also adds the Seal III power-up! You can read all about it, and about other VS news in general, here:
https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/news/app/1794680/view/4104540932629694732

Will the main game still receive free updates?
Yep, just like 1.10 mentioned above.

22 new weapons and evolutions?! My level-up pool!
We have added one more Seal power-up in the latest content patch, so don't worry, you'll still be able to easily manipulate the level-up pool.

Why only $2.49?
As usual we've been receiving kind comments about pricing and giving us more money, some intended just as a compliment, some actually serious. Collab DLCs have a much higher production cost for us, but that doesn't mean their price should skyrocket.
You've already given us the luxury to keep working on Vampire Survivors even just for fun (hence the constant free updates), it just seems fair to try keep the cost of major expansions as contained as possible and border-line risky. We'd need something very big to justify a higher price point.
And then if we accidentally inflate our own production costs because we decide to add 12 characters for fun instead of the usual 8... well that's our problem innit

More DLC FAQS
While most of the contents of the DLCs are straightforward, being a collab there are some differences. For example, there are no Steam achievements and the 6 music covers won't be available in the Soundtrack on Steam, so please read the FAQs here for more info: https://poncle.games/operation-guns

_
Thank you all once again for your continued support and I hope you'll have fun with the hyper-realistic gun fights of Operation Guns!

- 7 new EXTRA achievements
- 1 new challenge stage
- 1 new bonus stage
- 1 new character
- 1 new weapon with its evolution
- 1 new passive weapon
- 1 new power-up, Seal III

Since the early days of VS, people have been asking important questions like "Why is it called Santa Water?" and this patch is finally here to answer that; but what other dark mysteries will surface while looking for answers in the Laborratory?

- Pick up a total of 33 Rosaries to unlock the Laborratory stage. If you've been playing for long you'll most likely already have enough; if so, enter and exit a run to get the unlock.
- Use the levers in the larger rooms of the stage until you get the Santa Javelin and Arma Dio.
- Evolve the Santa Javelin with a maxed out Clover
- Use the levers at the bottom of the new stage to defeat a lot of enemies and unlock a bonus stage
- Survive 20 minutes to unlock Santa Ladonna.
- Seal/Banish 40 items in a run to unlock the Seal III power-up.


New stage: Laborratory
A challenge stage where everything is trying to kill you, including the narrow corridors. There are special levers you can pull to trigger mostly positive effects (depending on Luck) that could also spawn weapons and passives, depending on which room they're from.

New weapon: Santa Javelin & Seraphic Cry
Though starting weapon as it aims for random enemies, can critically hit and it turns the Duration stat into additional Amount for itself. Compatible with special arcanas (Gemini, Twilight Requiem, Tragic Princess). Requires a maxed out Clover to be evolved.
The evolution uses Luck to deal additional damage. Picking up Rosaries while it is equipped turns them into a quadruple screen clearing explosion that turns enemies into XP gems.

New passive: Arma Dio
Allows you to choose any base-game passive.
It actually counts as a weapon, so can also be chosen from a Candybox.

New character: Santa Ladonna
Starts with a temporary cooldown bonus and automatically triggers a Rosary when reaching critically low HP (recover hp to full to recharge the ability). Absolutely nothing else 👀

New stage: Carlo Cart
A silly little bonus stage where you cannot fully stop moving. It plays very differently compared to the average stage, so there are no extra unlocks tied to playing it, it's just for fun.

New power-up: Seal III
As the name suggests, it's a more convenient Seal power-up that allows you to seal 3 items per rank. This brings the total number of sealable items to 60!



►Cross-save beta
- Cross save is now available on the beta branches on Steam, Android, and iOS too.
- FAQ here: https://poncle.games/account-help


►Other projects
- Online co-op for Vampire Survivors: the technical work is going well, still too early for more details!
- EXPERIMENTS: going well, a lot of fun, I'm putting this here and planning to copy-paste this line for many future updates though, this stuff takes time!
[this was copy pasted from previous news as expected :p]

►Will you make more Adventures?
Yes! We had planned to make new Adventures more often, but then realised that while they work very well to isolate new DLC content, the base-game ones are missing something.
So we've been working on adding a new feature to the game (that will remain a little secret for now) after which we'll be back releasing new adventures.

The Tides of the Foscari one is an exception. Instead of just retelling the story of the DLC, we decided to do something different with it, but that requires yet another feature that still isn't in the base game. Hopefully we'll see it happen sometime during the summer!

It's worth noting that in the meantime nothing has stopped us from writing the deepest lore to accompany new future adventures, that, as we all know, together with environmental storytelling, is at the core of the VS experience /s

►Where are we on the Extra-content roadmap?
Right here obviously:
Our next Collab DLC releases in a few days, on May 9th, for $2.49 / €2.49 / £1.99 !
Read everything about it on the store page and here:
https://gtm.you1.cn/games/1794680/announcements/detail/4104540932629701544

1.10.0 tweaks and fixes
- You can now PET the dog by pressing both triggers on a controller.
- When playing co-op, added the option to Share Passive among players for evolution purposes.
- Stage Selection is now split into two steps for ease of navigation if you're playing with a controller
- Updated pre-spawned arcana treasures so they get pulled in by VIII - Mad Groove.
- Improved loader to provide more information about the current DLC loading progress.
- Added missing retaliation damage to Pako Battiliar and its evo.

- Fix for tips not showing in the Treasure Chest info panel of evolutions.
- Fix for Bestiary mobile portrait info masking issue.
- Pickups group in recap page now generates a new row when exceeding max width.
- Fix for the game over red background overlay to use correct sizing after White Hand.
- Fix for Sole Solution causing tile map issues during the fight with The Ender.
- Fixed audio playback error in fight with The Ender.
- Fix for "new content available in store" button showing up incorrectly.
- Fixed character reveal so the characters are the correct scale.
- Hyper mode toggle is now correctly shown.
- Fix for text overlap/sizing in treasure chest info panel.
- Updated pause menu map to match old-engine implementation.
- Fixes for various weapons to hide them correctly when dying in co-op.
- Fix for errors with random arcana selection being triggerable before the animation is complete.
- Fixes for various stage collisions when playing in inverse mode.
- Updated the player stats panel (pause menu) to handle displaying the Recovery value to 2 decimal places, so small increments are shown.
- Fix for DLC ordering so that DLCs will now be loaded in a consistent order.
- Fixed cosmic egg in bestiary.
- Updated the Item Found page to check whether the item you are picking up allows duplicates, and if so displays the base level data.
- Fixed an issue where if you manually changed the window size the current resolution would not display correctly inside the options page.
- Fix for camera zoom issues when playing on displays less than the target 16:10 aspect ratio (both portrait and landscape).
- Fixed selection arrows sometimes showing on mobile when they should not.
- Fix to make drop downs hide when clicking anywhere outside of them.
- Fixed an issue with allowing player 1 to reassign controllers when toggling in options.
- Fix for Gatti chicken eating power and chance upgrades being reset on level up.
- Fix for drowner's spawned via trisection events after 30 minutes being invulnerable.
- Fix for disable moving background not being applied on stage start (only when toggled).
- Fixed formatting / centering issues with secrets page on mobile.
- Added a loader between menu and gameplay to show that the game is loading a stage.
- Fix for Moongolow secret check in co-op.
- Added scrolling to character selection progress panel.
- Fix for hyper (and inverse) mode creeping to stages without hyper (or inverse) unlocked.
- Added in missing scene fade transition between Moongolow and Holy Forbidden.
- Fixed hellfire rotation on world bounce.
- Various portrait UI scaling fixes.
- Fix for error with coin spawn in Poe's Adventure Chapter 3.
- Improved back button navigation on bestiary to be more accurate to JS.
- Fix for cut off character found animation on mobile portrait.

[LEGACY OF THE MOONSPELL]
- Evolving Four Seasons now only requires a maxed out Candelabrador

[TIDES OF THE FOSCARI]
- Evolving the Flash Arrow now only requires a maxed out Bracer
- Fixed a sprite error in Foscari Abyss' background.
- Fixed animation timing of World Eater.
- Fix for World Eater offsets.

[EMERGENCY MEETING]
- Fix Impostongue firing assassination when disabled.
- Updated the body part pickups that Shapeshifter spawns to allow them to be attracted by the magnet.
- Updated the font used for the Vent2Weapon when enemies are ejected.
- Fix for reactor engine sprite not filling in the black bars in portrait leaving visible gaps for the flames.

Today we are announcing Vampire Survivors: Operation Guns, our second collab DLC, made in collaboration with the KONAMI's Contra team!

You might have noticed a couple of very obscure hints in Vampire Survivors about how much we admire and remember fondly playing all the iconic game series sparked by KONAMI over the years, which is why when we got the opportunity to work with their Contra team we took it immediately!

It's been surreal and a lot of fun to retrieve old memories of playing Contra with randos at the arcade, or with friends on a home console, and reinterpret them in a Vampire Survivors sauce. In fact we got a bit carried away and added more content to the DLC pack than initially planned, trying to pick & mix some of the old and some of the new, some of the obvious and some of the unexpected.

This was yet another dream come true for many in our team, so thank you all for your continued support and making this a reality!

Will the agents of the Contra Force resist the urge to join the Vampire Survivors in their doomed search for a vampire? No.


We started with the usual number of characters and weapons in mind when developing this content pack, but it's been very difficult to work with such constraints when dealing with such an iconic series like Contra. So we did the only logical thing, make more:

• 11 gun-slinging characters
  
• 22 new weapons between base versions and evolutions. They're not all guns - some of them trigger explosions too!
  
• 1 large stage and 1 bonus stage
  
• 13 music tracks directly from the Contra series and 6 brand new covers
  
• An explosively silly 6-chapters Adventure

You can wishlist Vampire Survivors: Operation Guns now by clicking the link below.
https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/2887680

And check out the Contra franchise page for even more Contra goodness: https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/franchise/contra

As usual the DLC will add a new stage in Stage Selection, from where you'll be able to start the chain of unlocks to get the new characters and weapons.

Most characters will offer cross-stats benefits for players who like min-maxing, and will be able to find special pickups typical of the Contra series, like Grenades or RapidFires.

Most weapons will have a damage output slightly lower than usual to try paying a little homage to the historically high difficulty of the Contra series, but also there will be a lot Arcana interactions to customise the difficulty to your liking. In the same spirit, there are several weapons that require some aiming or that follow the typical arcade 8-angle constraints when firing.

While we like to joke about the concept of just adding a ton of guns, actually there will also be melee weapons and most of the new projectiles are rather unusual.

Finally, yes, the silly racing-stage seen in the trailer is real and will be playable!

We're finally in a position to make an unsurprising announcement about Vampire Survivors coming to PlayStation, in a time interval vaguely defined as Summer 2024!
We're doing the ports ourselves just like the others, so we took our sweet time to get here, but in this way we can keep the low price and the parity of content, so it's better in the long term. We're doing a port for PS4 and another for PS5.
We can't make any promises yet, but hopefully we'll have cross-save publicly available by then too.

Will the main game still receive free updates?
Yes, we're doing free content updates as usual. In fact there will be one happening around the end of the month! (it will be available on the public-beta branch on Steam in minutes 👀)

22 new weapons and evolutions?! My level-up pool!
We're adding one more Seal power-up in the next free content patch, so don't worry, you'll still be able to easily manipulate the level-up pool.

More DLC FAQS
While most of the contents of the DLCs are straightforward, being a collab there are some differences. For example, there are no Steam achievements and the 6 music covers won't be available in the Soundtrack on Steam, so please read the FAQs here for more info: https://poncle.games/operation-guns

- 7 new EXTRA achievements
- 1 new bonus stage
- 2 new characters
- 4 new weapons (of which 2 evos)
- 1 new relic

In this patch there are a lot of fixes too, including some optimisations that will let you play a run with Sammy for at least 2 more seconds than before!

Steam Achievements notes: this patch actually adds 8 platform Achievements, because it includes the Atlas Gate from the Adventures update!


THE BAT STUFF
- Defeat a total of 161616 bats, from any stage, to unlock the Pako Battiliar weapon
- Evolve Pako Battiliar using Max level Hollow Heart to unlock the Bat Robbert character

THE SPACE STUFF
- Collect 5 Gold Fingers to unlock Space 54 (enter and exit a run if you've already got enough)
- Pickup the Phas3r weapon in Space 54, get it to level 7, and evovle it using Max level Empty Tome.
- At minute 18 in Space 54, locate and collect the Brave Story relic.
- Survive 20 minutes in Space 54 to unlock the Space Dude character.

Available on the Steam public-beta branch and on Android public beta! Please send us any feedback about the feature, it's very delicate since we're talking about save-data, so we'll take all the help we can get to make sure it's solid.
Please also let us know if there's any other service you could find useful. We've been investigating cross-platform-dlc (so buy in one place, play anywhere) but it's the biggest bureaucratic can of worms ever; so, not being a technical problem, I'm honestly not too hopeful we'll be able to get it done (if you follow gaming news then you probably know very well how protective certain platforms are of any paid content).

We have put together a FAQ here: https://poncle.games/account-help



Stage: Space 54
Plain bonus stage with plenty of items and odd enemies. Walls stop blocking movement at minute 11:00
Might be a bit strong visually, so if it's bothering you please make sure to see if checking the "Disable Moving Background" makes it better!

Relic: Brave Story
Allows to choose Random Level Up choices in Stage Selection. Currently selectable only before starting a run. This will let you try do to runs in which the RNG picks weapons for you when levelling up, good luck!

Weapon: Phas3r & Photonstorm
Can be picked up in Space 54, and unlocked for every other run by levelling it up to Level 7. For the base version, Area only affects size horizontally. The evolution fires at least x2 projectiles than the base version, occasionally x5 when dealing a critical hit.

Weapon: Pako Battiliar & Mazo Familiar
Can be unlocked anytime just by killing A LOT of bats, across any amount of runs. It fires additional times when the owner receives damage or loses a shield. The evolution fires more projectiles and deals bonus damage depending on the current Max Health bonus of the owner.

NewCharacter: Space Dude
Fast character that starts with Phas3r.
Has a special ability that fires all weapons regardless of their Cooldown every few seconds. The cooldown of this ability is affected by the Cooldown stat.

NewCharacter: Bat Robbert
Slightly tanky character that starts with Pako Battiliar.
Has a special ability: when falling below 20% health, he gains +16 MaxHP (max +400) and recovers 30% health. This ability recharges every time the character is fully healed.

Well, I know the next 3 steps/updates we'll take on our Chaos Roadmap, but if I say anything I'm going to spoil the surprise effect (and probably find myself face to face with a hitman hired by the marketing team). A lot of players have been asking for more dark/serious settings, so I can at least tell you that 1 of those 3 steps has been cherry picked because it's probably the darkest one we have on the roadmap 👀
It won't be the next one, but should arrive soon enough!

We're also working on new Adventures for the main game of course, together with the "missing piece" of the Adventures mechanics, that once again I won't spoil until we have something concrete to show.

Flash updates on other projects:
- Online co-op: the technical work is going well, still too early for more details!
- EXPERIMENTS: going well, a lot of fun, I'm putting this here and planning to copy-paste this line for many future updates though, this stuff takes time!

I don't usually reveal details about the DEEP LORE of VS, but this time it's worth making an exception, because part of this update is dedicated to... a game framework, Phaser!
Weirder than usual, I know, but Phaser was the original framework I used to make VS, is an absolute joy to use, and if I hadn't loved working with it to begin with, I would have probably never made VS, so I thought it deserved a bit more than just a line in the credits.

I've noticed a few players asking for more info about Phaser the previous times I've mentioned it, so I asked Richard, its developer, to write a few lines for you!

quote=Richard:

Цитата допису Richard:

I can still remember when Luca came to the Phaser Discord and showed off the first public version of Vampire Survivors, which he had created using our game framework. As the developer of Phaser, I'm always interested in seeing what people make with it, no matter what it may be like visually or how complete it is, so I had a look.

Seeing the screenshots on the Itch page, my immediate thought was, "What a strange mish-mash of sprites!" It was almost as if someone had thrown together a bundle of OpenGameArt and hoped for the best. As we all know, looks can be deceiving. Because then I played it. You don't need me to tell you just how sublimely addictive Vampire Survivors is. The Steam score and play time stats are a testament to this. Yet even in that very early stage, it sunk its gameplay hooks deep into me and never let up.

Because each run-through was relatively quick, you felt compelled to give it just one more go to see how you could improve. It didn't matter how insane and chaotic the visuals were. It didn't matter that the game was made in JavaScript and running in the browser. Because as thousands of creatures mobbed you and you swung that King Bible desperately, all of that just blended away as you fixated on the zone you were in.

It's the perfect example of a compelling gameplay loop. Demonstrating clearly that it doesn't matter one bit what tech you choose. You can still make an outstanding game. We've had many people come to Phaser since the release of Vampire Survivors, some looking to make similar games. For those who are curious, Phaser [phaser.io]is a fully open-source game framework that allows you to make web-based games. All you need to know is a little JavaScript, and you can get started within minutes. There are built-in features for physics, animation, audio, and plenty more, and it has been in active development for the past decade. If that appeals to you, then we'll be more than happy to welcome you into our community. While we cannot guarantee you'll achieve the same level of success, after all, that would be like capturing lightning in a bottle; you'll at least have fun trying.

Richard's too kind and is advertising VS more than Phaser, so let me put my two cents and say that Phaser offers incredible support, with dozens of clear examples you can access and edit on the fly directly from your browser window; it allows you to go straight to the fun part of game development. Everyone is different and therefore has different preferences for coding and development; I love the freedom of creativity and speed that a language as chaotic as Javascript provides, and the empowerment I got from Phaser is something I've never seen any other framework to match.
If you're curious just click on one of the examples from the website and fiddle with it in real time!

Not really a Steam problem, but there are a lot of players who have the game on multiple platforms, so just wanted to thank you for waiting that long to get the content that Steam got in December 🙏
We managed to do a global release with this patch today at least, I hope we'll be able to keep it up!


---

1.9.0 tweaks and fixes:
- Optimisation for spawning of gems and coins
- Optimisation for weapons that interact with pickups (Gatti Amari, Vicious Hunger, etc.)
- Fixed red XP gems sometimes flying away and taking forever to come back
- Fixed Coffins not spawning if the corresponding character had been unlocked via a spell
- Fixed Crimson Shroud not triggering retaliation damage
- Fixed a layering issue with CosmicEgg enemy
- Fixed merchant alignment upon multiple opens
- Fixed some particle emitters leaving gaps
- Fixed collision shape of Valkyrie Turner
- Fixed bought weapons in Adventures that wouldn't always level up in the same run they had been bought
- Fixed multiple evos of the same weapon appearing in treasure chests when only one should be present
- Fixed some animations going at insane speed on certain monitors
- Fixed Victory Sword not instant-killing some reapers that should have been weak to it
- Fixed text scaling sometime being off in Stage Selection
- Fixed display of secret characters sometime showing question marks when they shouldn't
- Fixed timing of events tied to music in Gallo Tower, Astral Stair, Eudamonia Machine
- Fixed "Show Guides" option resetting after every run
- Fixed The Directer sometime not getting counted as defeated in the Bestiary
- Tentative fix for Linux launch issue and missing Steam Overlay
- [MOONSPELL] Fixed time limit in Adventure Chapter 5
- [FOSCARI] Fixed Arcana XIX - Heart of Fire sometimes not applying to Prismatic Missile
- [FOSCARI] Optimisation for Shadow Servant at high Amount
- [FOSCARI] Fixed Je-Ne-Viv's World Eater's offset
- [EM] Fixed Mini Impostor and Impostongue appearing as level up options when they shouldn't anymore
- [EM] Fixed the medical scan not clearing its projectiles when the character dies
- [EM] Fixed interaction between Just Vent and Pentagram triggering errors
- [EM] Fixed Magnet bonus from Paranormal Scan being 10 times smaller than it should have been
- [EM] Fixed white box shown on some maps while in Adventures
- [MOBILE] text sizes on portrait when opening grimoire adjusted
- [MOBILE] fix missing options button on fresh save in portrait
- [MOBILE] fix jumping characters on ascension mobile window
- [MOBILE] fix for merchant screen layout on some screen resolutions
- [MOBILE] fix for Ascension animation moving parts of the UI
- [MOBILE] fix an issue for spells sometimes not working on Android
- Other minor bugfixes, tweaks, memory optimisations
- A lot of background work for accounts management and Cross-Save
- (x18) Pushing this change so [new game engine] stops bugging me
- (x6) Pushing this change because [new game engine] decided a feature was a bug

And we're at the start of 2024!

It's been once again a wild ride, and once again we have to thank all of you for your comments, quotes, messages, fan art, reviews, and, naturally, relentelessy keeping up with your 100% (sorry!)

As always, we are incredibly thankful for the community that has built up around Vampire Survivors.

We're doing another huge post like last year to talk about everything that happened and also have a look at what's to come in the future. There's a lot to cover, so we hope you enjoy!

Even after being out for more than one year, the reception of VS keeps being absolutely mindblowing.
Poncle has grown to 20 people now and we're all still busy working exclusively on VS due to the ports, engine changes, frequent updates and releases. And then, you know, the marketing team exists.

We have a lot going on behind the scenes, but I'll keep the update focused on Vampire Survivors and I'll reveal a few bit in the paragraphs below!


*Deep breath* :
Bat Country, DICE Awards Action game of the year[www.interactive.org], BAFTA for Game Design[awards.bafta.org], BAFTA for Best Game[awards.bafta.org], Tides of the Foscari DLC, Astral Stair, Nintendo Switch port, Local Co-op, first players event, OST orchestra recordings (3rd one actually 👀), Whiteout, Adventures, first collab DLC Emergency Meeting!

Missed something? Most likely, oh we have udpated the OST on Steam to be available in FLAC format for example, anyway, 2023 summary done, next!

We are still investigating! To retro-fit online multiplayer in a game as simple as this, but with so much content, is still a huge challenge. We've got help now, and things are looking promising, but it's still too early for us to be able to make any promises. We'll keep giving you tiny updates until hopefully we can confirm it's actually going to happen.

We had this in testing for a while now, but the real hold-up is having to put in place everything that is needed to comply with GDPR, CCPA, and whatever else is required for data protection. We had delays even just in testing the feature in public-beta because there's a lot of work to do - even if all we need to do to bridge the accounts you already have on different platforms is storing just an email and password combination.
We're working on a QOL update for February and we're hoping to launch cross-save in public-beta only at the same time (Steam and Android only to start with).

Yep, we're doing cross-media like the big boys for real!
Back in April 2023 we announced an animated tv series[deadline.com] in collaboration with Story Kitchen. We had of course waited for the various strikes to end before getting to it, so for now we can just say that more info is coming in 2024!

Honestly we have received a lot of proposals to collaborate on cross-media projects, but rather than jumping the gun we have preferred to wait to find partners that felt right, especially because to make anything that isn't a videogame out of VS requires good ideas, creativity, and that quirky knowledge of the game, that is a very difficult triplet to get 100% right!

We have several partners now and we'll reveal more on these projects as they mature and we've got good stuff to show!

If you're somehow managing to follow the Chaos Roadmap and are curious to know what changed from the last time:
- codename Chalcedony turned out to be Emergency Meeting
- Emergency Meeting is update 1.8
- no need to be cryptic about the next update: Honey Moon is the codename for the new update 1.9, "Space 54", currently available for testing on the Steam-PC public beta branch! If everything goes well, 1.9 should reach all platforms in February together with a few performance and QOL improvements.
- the vast majority of these are free content updates of Whiteout-size

I doubt we can get all of these done in 2024, and that's why there are no dates nor an order, but we're here to try!

We know people are demanding more platforms, but we're also keen on doing the ports ourselves, one at a time, and that takes time.
We can't "just hire immediately more people": I don't think that's how a healthy company grows; let's give poncle time to grow organically.
We can't "just get a publisher": it would make us lose control on features and pricing.

I'd love to tell you everything about the next port, but the marketing team would kill me; I can just say it's the most obvious one, so for streaming services of course, codenamed "if it looks like mud and smells like mud, then it's Vampire Survivors"

Our friends at Fangamer have made some neat Vampire Survivors gadgets: an incredibly metal t-shirt[www.fangamer.com], and some enamel character pins that also come with a little accesory. The Queen Sigma pin in particular is very versatile, as shown by Lucy in this video.
I use mine in a little diorama my little siblings made for me for Christmas 😭
(feel free to cringe in the comments, but please appreciate I spared you the rest of the poem!)

Uh-oh, what now?
Something I've been trying to put in place almost since the beginning of VS' crazy ride is finally happening: poncle is teaming up with other indie devs to work on some VS-adjacent experiments. We're calling these experiments because:
- we're starting with just an idea, we don't know where that will lead us and that's okay
- we don't know when, or even if, we'll be happy with the final results and be ready to share them
- it keeps us free to, well, experiment, stay flexible, take risks and have fun
- as you can see from this totally not vague overview, we're following a highly scientific method and it's totally not an esoteric process at all:
What will these experiments yield? Is there a meaning to the icons? Are there "only" six in progress? Why is this called PENTAgram in game, if the star has 6 points? Will there be a vampire? We'll find out the answers to these and many other important questions someday.

---

That's all for now, got a pretty busy 2024 ahead of us!
Thank you all once again and see you in the next run!

- Luca & poncle (including the marketing team)