You can try Vampire Survivors' successor for free on PC now

The official demo for Vampire Crawlers is now live, giving players their first hands-on look at the next project from poncle, the team behind the breakout indie hit Vampire Survivors. The demo has launched as part of Steam Next Fest, offering a limited-time opportunity for fans to experience the new title ahead of its full release.

Try it now for free!

While it shares thematic DNA with its predecessor, Vampire Crawlers marks a significant shift in design philosophy. Instead of the auto-attacking, survival-driven chaos that defined Vampire Survivors, the new game pivots toward a turn-based, card-driven dungeon-crawling structure. Players construct and refine decks as they progress, combining weapons, modifiers, and character abilities to engineer powerful synergies. The result is a hybrid that blends roguelike progression systems with tactical deckbuilding mechanics, demanding careful planning rather than pure reflex.

The demo showcases core gameplay systems, including dungeon exploration, escalating enemy encounters, and the layered build customization that underpins each run. Familiar visual elements and darkly playful aesthetics return, but they are reframed within a more strategic combat loop. Each decision you make influences long-term survivability, reinforcing the game's emphasis on adaptability and optimization.

In typical poncle fashion, the studio is encouraging players to experiment aggressively with the demo's systems. The team has openly invited the community to "break" the game by discovering unexpected interactions, extreme builds, and emergent exploits. This feedback-driven approach mirrors the iterative development process that helped refine Vampire Survivors into a genre-defining success.

The demo is currently available on Steam for PC during the festival period. With anticipation already building around poncle's next release, Vampire Crawlers appears poised to reinterpret the studio's signature formula through a more deliberate and systems-heavy lens, strategy enthusiasts a fresh evolution of the vampire-slaying formula. The best prices to get your copy of Vampire Crawlers will be available with our comparator as soon as pre-orders are open. Meanwhile you can check out the best deals for Vampire Survivors if you want to know wat's behind all the hype for its successor