History VideoGame / VampireSurvivors

* NotCompletelyUseless: The two pure-support weapons, Laurel and Clock Lancet, are mostly situational outside of supplementing an already good build; the former shields the player character from damage but otherwise can't repel enemies, the latter freezes enemies in place but doesn't damage them. However, their combined power is the most effective way of countering Red Deaths, as Laurel blocks their touch of death for at least a second at max charge and Clock Lancet can freeze them to give time for Laurel to recharge. Having both is essential for any task that involves surviving past the point where Red Deaths spawn. [[spoiler:Their special evolved forms are the intended way to kill Red Death, though they have no effect against White Hand]].

* NeverTrustATitle: The game is called ''Vampire Survivors'', and there's a crusty Dracula look-alike on the menu giving you the evil eye. By the time you clear a few stages, you'll have obliterated tens of thousands of ghouls, ghosts, gremlins, plant monsters, mummies, mudmen, bats, skeletons, demons, witches, eyeballs, and virtually every other variety of spook that '''isn't''' a vampire. In fact, there are no actual vampires in the game. Many of the bestiary descriptions lampshade the game's conspicuous dearth of vampires, as does the original version of stage 3's description and the game's release trailer, the last of which proudly advertises that the game has 0 vampires. Further, even the "Survivors" part is questionable considering that it is technically impossible to survive, as the stage ends when the player is killed by Death [[spoiler:or White Hand.]]

** Drowner (Blue) spawns in Gallo Tower at around 25 minutes, Cappella Magna at 5 minutes, and in the Bone Zone at 15:00. It fills the bottom of the screen with an instant kill plane that slowly rises, forcing you to constantly stay on the move upward. Like Stalker, it's killable with Pentagram or the Rosary, but will respawn.

The game is available on Platform/{{Steam}}. It released out of Early Access on October 20, 2022. A demo can be played on [[https://poncle.itch.io/vampire-survivors poncle's itch.io page]]. On December 15, 2022, the game received its first wave of DownloadableContent, titled ''Legacy of the Moonspell''. The second DLC, ''Tides of the Foscari'', was released on April 13, 2023. An upcoming animated series based on the game was announced on the 29th of April 2023. On the 6th of December 2023, a crossover DLC pack with ''VideoGame/AmongUs'' was announced, titled [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WMUJ_YMPlY "Emergency Meeting"]], slated for December 18th. On the same day, a major patch update included standalone "Adventures" with a bit more actual story and standalone progression seperate from the rest of the game.

* AwesomeButImpractical: In theory, the Paranormal Scan can give a character infinitely-scaling stat-growth. In practice, unless the player is using Ghost Lino, a MechanicallyUnusualFighter par excellence, or gets very, ''very'' lucky, it's actually pretty hard to get both the Lifesign Scan weapon and the Mini-Ghost necessary to evolve it in a timely fashion, limiting its growth potential, and outside of using the Sarabande of Healing Arcana the Lifesign Scan can't actually deal damage, so [[MagikarpPower staying alive long enough for unlocks to open up in the first place is itself challenging.

* AdamSmithHatesYourGuts: In early versions, purchasing one of the permanent powerups increased the cost of every powerup on the board, so starting with the most expensive purchases was recommended to make the most of your gold. This was later adjusted so that the cost increase is less steep.

** Patch 1.4.0 allows you to Seal items before a run, removing them from the drop table. This is useful for gold farming when you don't want Orologion to drops. When farming gold with the Gold Fever pickup, you get gold for each mob you kill and it's on a timer which gains more time for each mob you kill. The Orologion pickups will freeze time, preventing more spawns and hence could easily end a Gold Fever. Seal is also useful for removing weapons or passive items not suitable for a run.

** Peppino is a tree. Peppino can't move because it's a tree. That's the joke. However, if you have movement upgrades, the best you can do with Peppino is crawl along the ground. Offsetting its poor mobility is its initial Soul Eater weapon, which makes it pretty much invulnerable to the early waves until certain bosses start showing up, a Mad Groove Arcana which pulls all collectibles to its vicinity, and a massive Magnet bonus.

** The Gatti Amari is an unreliable pet-based "weapon" that relies on randomly moving cats that will only ''sometimes'' attack enemies, may hurt the player (being the only weapon that can do so), and can steal powerups off the floor. Ranking it up adds more cats, makes them faster and stick around longer, but doesn't mitigate these problems. However, the weapon relies heavily on luck, and uniquely, allowing one of the cats to steal a Floor Chicken increases the weapon's own internal LuckStat. This means more than any other weapon Gatti Amari suffers from MagikarpPower to an extreme; early on it will nearly useless and almost totally unreliable, but stacking the appropriate upgrades and letting the cats steal a large number of spare Chickens will turn it into a self-sufficient instrument of death that can obliterate entire hordes, even in the final minutes, and all without the player needing to lift a finger.

** Garlic is one of the biggest examples. It's easily one of the best weapons out of the gate, as it surrounds the character with a persistent, damaging aura that can scythe through the beginner enemies like wet paper, making early farming fast and easy. However, it scales VERY poorly on damage, which is further hampered by not scaling with the ever-useful Amount stat, and even when fully upgraded most mid-to-lategame enemies will shrug it off. It DOES lower enemy resistance to knockback and freeze effects, [[spoiler: and its evolved form, the Soul Eater, boasts a useful LifeSteal effect]], but the player NEEDS to invest in some heavier firepower to survive the transition into midgame.

** The bestiary entry for the Miragellos enemy in the Whiteout stage reads that they're the shades of ghastly humans who whisper "some of the worst things they have said when they walked the earth like, "You have to pay us 20 gold per install. Today, nobody remembers", a brutal dig at the {{UsefulNotes/Unity}} Game Engine, which tried to implement a fee every time the program was installed and effectively turned the entire gaming world against them and destroyed all good will they had, even after backing down.

The game is available on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}}. It released out of Early Access on October 20, 2022. A demo can be played on [[https://poncle.itch.io/vampire-survivors poncle's itch.io page]]. On December 15, 2022, the game received its first wave of DownloadableContent, titled ''Legacy of the Moonspell''. The second DLC, ''Tides of the Foscari'', was released on April 13, 2023. An upcoming animated series based on the game was announced on the 29th of April 2023. On the 6th of December 2023, a crossover DLC pack with ''VideoGame/AmongUs'' was announced, titled [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WMUJ_YMPlY "Emergency Meeting"]], slated for December 18th. On the same day, a major patch update included standalone "Adventures" with a bit more actual story and standalone progression seperate from the rest of the game.

* ActionBomb: A banshee attacks you right at the start of the Inlaid Library. It will explode and take out half your health if it connects. Red rings will pulse from it, accompanied with a beeping sound right before it explodes. More appear as the level goes on.

* {{Roboteching}}: The Peachone and Ebony Wings weapons fire magic lasers that bend around and home in on the area that circles around your character in clockwise and counterclockwise directions, respectively. Once both are upgraded to max, they can combine into Vandalier, which can then be further upgraded itself as a new weapon, and opens up a previous used slot on your character. In addition, using the Gemini Arcana will give each another counterpart, the Cygnus and Zhar Ptytsia respectively. Both remain after their host weapons combine. [[spoiler:You can get even more birds through the secret character Cosmo Pavone, who comes with his own built-in versions of Peachone and Ebony Wings that don’t take up weapon slots, which still allows you to equip the standard versions. Combined with Gemini, you can have six at once.]]

* CapRaiser: Beating Capella Magna for the first time unlocks the Great Gospel, which allows you to turn on the "Limit Break" option on the stage select. This replaces the level up option of gold or floor chicken once all your items are maxed out with further random upgrades to you weaponry's stats, allowing for exponential and absurd power-gain past the point of your power normally being hard-capped.

** The 0.8.0 patch added [Always] bag of coins and [Always] floor chicken as options to pick from whenever you level up after you have already maxed out all available weapons and items. It just always grants you that one item for the rest of your playthrough. On runs with LimitBreak turned on, these instead are replaced with a [Random once] and [Random Always] effect so you can just let the dice roll your upgrades without having to be interrupted.

* LimitBreak: Beating Capella Magna for the first time unlocks the Great Gospel, which allows you to turn on the "Limit Break" option on the stage select. This replaces the level up option of gold or floor chicken once all your items are maxed out with further random upgrades to you weaponry's stats, allowing for exponential and absurd power-gain past the point of your power normally being hard-capped.

*** Gains Boros has unimpressive starting stats and starts with Heavens Sword, one of the weaker evolutions in the game. What they have in their favor is an infinitely scaling 2%-per-level Growth increase that makes them level faster than any other character no question, letting them complete a build faster than anyone else by leaps and bounds, and working with the LimitBreak system added alongside them makes for exponential growth of their weapons that can quickly turn them into a monster.

* SupportPartyMember: The Mini Crewmates added in ''Emergency Meeting'' serve as a version of this. They take up a passive slot instead of a weapon slot and infrequently cast weaker versions of base weapons [[note]] Crewmate is Report! Engineer is Lightning Ring, Imposter is Knife, Shapeshifter is Bone, Scientist is Santa Water, Guardian Angel is Laurel, Ghost is Clock Lancet and Horse is Greatest Jubilee[[/note]]. They all merge with one of the DLC weapons that was added alongside them to evolve them, and uniquely vanish from the slots they were taking up while remaining active, allowing you to replace them with a proper passive while they continue to support you.