History VideoGame / VampireSurvivors

* BaitAndSwitch: The "Tides of the Foscari" DLC's marketing made it seem like it would be themed of D&D inspired games, complete with FighterMageThief characters. [[spoiler: It's really based on Celtic and British mythology.]]

* {{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.

** The Stalker, which appears in certain stages, is invincible to all but very few weapons, but normally, it only, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin stalks]] the player slowly, so it's not hard to play keepaway until it despawns. However, Curse accelerates the Stalker like all other enemies, potentially making it too fast for the player to escape, especially if Torrona's Box is maxed out.

* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: During patch 0.10.0, if the player acquired Golden Eggs for every single playable character, they would no longer be able to unlock Cosmo Pavone, who requires bringing a character who's never had any Golden Eggs to a certain map, and even applying Golden Eggs to all of the good characters would make this a frustrating task. Patch 0.11.0 addresses this with the addition of Queen Sigma, who refuses to pick up Golden Eggs and is more than powerful enough without them to fulfill Cosmo's unlock conditions.

* 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, and unique vanish from the active slots they were taking up while remaining active, allowing you to replace them with a proper passive while they continue to support you.

* BaitAndSwitch: The "Tides of the Foscari" DLC's marketing made it seem like it would be themed of of D&D inspired games, complete with FighterMageThief characters. [[spoiler: It's really based on Celtic and British mythology.]]

** Finding the Atlas Gate unlocks Adventures. Adventures are basically unique scenarios with remixed versions of stages, with gold, unlocks and power ups being separate from your main file and starting from the equivalent of an entirely new save file. They have a trackable story (in the [[ExcusePlot loosest definition of the word]]) and serve as ADayInTheLimelight for one character in specific, with the character choices being restricted to only ones that make sense with the scenario, as well as limited items in the base pool, though the others are unlockable for money. After completing all the goals, you can Ascend the adventure which resets it completely but gives you Adventure Points that you can use to add a stacking 25% luck, growth, greed or curse to it.

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.

** Finding the Atlas Gate unlocks Adventures. Adventures are basically unique scenarios with remixed versions of stages, with gold, unlocks and power ups being separate from your main file and starting from the equivalent of an entirely new save file. They have a trackable story (in the [[ExcusePlot loosest definition of the word]]) and serve as ADayInTheLimelight for one character in specific, with the character choices being restricted to only ones that make sense with the scenario, as well as limited items in the base pool, though the others are unlockable for money.

** missingN&#9647. Sometimes he starts with game-breakingly good stats. Sometimes his stats are bad to the point of ''literally'' breaking the game. Sometimes you get both!

* NonIndicativeName: 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.]]

** The Flash Arrow is the most precision weapon in the game, being an aimed weapon with only a singular projectile, with amount only going towards causing more damage. At max rank and evolved to Millionaire, it can do the single most damage out of anything in the game with that singular projectile, though the need for precision never really drops.

* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Parodied with the Flames of Misspell weapon.

* DestructibleProjectiles: Projectiles in this game are coded as single-health enemies and therefore die to anything. Any weapon that creates an aura around the character, like Garlic, thus grants complete immunity to projectiles.

* CursedWithAwesome: The "Curse" stat increases enemy speed, health and spawn density by the amount of the stat that you currently have. It's ill-advised to take Curse until one is sufficiently prepared, as it's ultimately a challenge upgrade. The character Lama has a passive that revolves around the Curse stat. For every 5% increase in curse, up until 50%, she also gains an equal amount of might, move speed and area.

** All the characters who share the gimmick of gaining more projectiles with levels start off with no bonus at all. It takes them 20 levels to even match what [[CrutchCharacter Gennaro]] has from the very start of the game, but by level 60, they can triple his already strong bonus (and in the case of Gav'Et-Oni, '''quadruple''' it by level 80). They also tend to have weapons that start off extremely weak, but scale very well with most stats. Downplayed for Ambrojoe, who starts off with a massive Amount bonus that gradually fades away over the course of his first five levels. Mortaccio, the first of these characters you're likely to unlock, is a good example, with a weapon that starts out extremely weak and slow but can absolutely flood the screen with bouncing bones in the latter stages of a run. In addition, [[spoiler:if the Chaos Malachite has been unlocked, he goes OneWingedAngel at level 80.]]
** The Peachone and Ebony Wings weapons will passively fire over a rotating area around the character, and fire HomingLasers in a spread path. This makes both of them, even combined, very unreliable to aim unless the screen is full of enemies. However, as they level up, the intensity, amount and frequency of their attacks will raise, but even then it's a fairly weak weapon. When both birds are maxed out, they evolve by undergoing a FusionDance and emerge as Vandalier. This evolved weapon still needs to be leveled, but at max level the bird will unleash its lasers in two areas at once, and will be erasing entire hordes of enemies. It also frees up one of the weapon slots taken by the second bird, allowing you to obtain and potentially evolve a seventh weapon.
** The Pentagram is a double edged sword with an extreme downside: it kills everything on-screen, but also destroys everything else too, from XP gems to pickups to treasure chests. Upgrading the Pentagram and your luck stat will give increasing chances of it not destroying objects, but never reach a 100% chance, which can leave you really hurting for levels. That is, until you get the Crown and evolve it into Gorgeous Moon, whereupon not only does it no longer destroy objects, it actually does the exact opposite by turning every enemy on-screen into a variable-cost experience gem, and then magnetizing them all to you as if you just got a Vacuum pickup. Get the evolution early enough and you'll make back all the lost experience and then some, while also having a screen nuke that can kill everything but the final stage bosses in one hit every 30 seconds or less.
** Christine, the character who starts with the Pentagram, has a terrible early game. The Pentagram leeches her experience and she's only compensated by getting an extra level to grab a different weapon, and she has the lowest starting might and max health of any non-joke character. Get past this rough start, and she can potentially be one of the strongest; her high starting cooldown can be stacked with other buffs to be the highest in the game (to the point where Gorgeous Moon can activate ''consecutively''), which obsoletes her damage issues, and her high speed lets her get out of bad situations while also making her ideal for surviving Red Deaths past the 30-minute mark.
** [=Zi'Assunta=] starts with the Vento Sacro, which is a strictly frontal whip attack that deals only ScratchDamage but [[DeathByAThousandCuts hits very quickly]] and can deal critical hits by default. It's very concentrated in its small area of attack but pales in comparison to a well-upgraded Whip which can hit behind you at least. It upgrades by uniting with the Bloody Tear, the upgraded form of the Whip. Once you get there, though, it not only has the LifeDrain of the Bloody Tear and the fast scaling attack speed of the Vento Sacro, but it also creates explosions when it crits — something that happens pretty often with the number of hits you execute per few seconds.
** 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.
** The first ghost character Exdash has ''terrible'' starting stats besides luck, and they start with the Ebony Wing listed above. They'll struggle to evade, survive, and even kill the earliest enemies, and will most often die within the first few minutes. If they survive, their ''monstrous'' LuckStat will let them reliably get powerups from abundant torches, multiple 3x and 5x drops from chests, and they'll near-constantly get favorable outcomes from Luck-based weapons such as the Critical weapons, Gatti Amari's random behavior, and Pentagram preserving drops. They can become ''insanely'' powerful in the late game...''if'' they can survive the first few minutes.
** The second ghost, Toastie, is an {{Exaggerated}} example. They're a OneHitPointWonder who has 1 health instead of the usual 100... Until level 100, where it suddenly jumps to having 9999 hit points. At level 200, its armor also reaches the 9000s, reducing even Red Death's damage down to ScratchDamage (and letting you buy the time you'd need to kill it).
** Rounding out the "Luck Ghosts" is Smith IV, who has identical base stats to Exdash and Toastie, just with a little more health than the latter (5 instead of one, before upgrades), but passively gains luck, might, area, speed and duration for ''every'' level-up. Get a rhythm going with staying alive and getting him leveled and he can end a run having turned the entire screen into a field of instant death even on high curse runs. Though it's slightly downplayed in that Smith starts with Vandalier, who even at rank 1 is immensely stronger than the individual birds the other ghosts start with.
** Three of the Arcana are like this, V: Chaos in the Dark Night, XVII: Lost and Found Painting and XVIII: Boogaloo of Illusions all have the same effect with different stats, being swapping between have -50% and +50% (25% for Boogaloo) to Speed, Duration and Area, respectively. On its own, this means that they have periods of weakness, followed by periods of power, however picking them makes it so you gain 1% of that stat per every level from that point on. Picking these as your second or even your first Arcana will make you very weak in the early game, but survive long enough to level out of the subtraction entirely, and it's only up from there until your weapon moves at lightning speed, lasts forever, or covers the entire screen.
** Clock Lancet and Laurel are pretty much strictly utility and defensive items, freezing enemies but not doing much damage and giving your a regenerating shield that only blocks up to three attacks, which is underwhelming for items that could be better spent on things with actual killing power. However if you have discovered the Yellow Sign, you can see and collect the items that are used to evolve them, though they are situated very far from your starting position. [[spoiler:The Gold and Silver Rings evolve the Clock Lancet, and the Metaglio Left and Right evolve the Laurel. Unlike other evolutions, you must fully upgrade both items in a pair to their max of level 9 on top of the original weapon to enable it to evolve, and the Gold Ring and Metaglio Right increase enemy health, numbers, and damage to make the rest of your run progressively harder. If you pick these items up too late in a run, you may lose out on the opportunity to evolve them in time.]] In other words, find the condition to evolve these humble items, then you get a fighting chance [[spoiler:to kill Red Death legitimately]]. All of that being said, there are a few Arcana, such as Blood Astronomia and Out Of Bounds, that set out to actually make these weapons better in the early game.
** The DLC weapons all follow the trend of being underwhelming and/or outright pitiful until evolving, whereupon they become absurdly powerful, but the one among them that stands out the most is Summon Night, which summons two (by default) spikes from the top of the screen that leave shadow trails that last for almost no time before going away and are very hard to reliably hit with because of how they come from above. With upgrades it adds more spikes and increases the duration, and when it evolves with a maxed duplicator, it becomes Echo Night which adds second set of spikes from the bottom of the screen, making the pattern akin to jaws biting the screen, the duration of the lingering shadows drastically increase, and it gains just enough knockback to hold most enemies in place instead of knocking them away, leaving them vulnerable to being picked off, making it an extremely potent killing machine.
** Syuuto Moonspell has great bonuses to health and might, native armor, and a built-in retaliation... but he is abysmally slow, has penalties to projectile speed and area, starts with 50% Curse, making enemies much harder to avoid at his plodding pace, and has the aforementioned Summon Night as his starting weapon. Thankfully, you can use the Beginning arcana to turn it from a completely pathetic weapon to an only slightly underwhelming one. Once you manage to evolve Summon Night, he goes OneWingedAngel, losing all his weaknesses while gaining another crapton of health and an infinitely scaling bonus to Might on top of the 50% he already has.

** Three of the Arcana are like this, V: Chaos in the Dark Night, XVII: Lost and Found Painting and XVIII: Boogaloo of Illusions all have the same effect with different stats, being swapping between have -50% and +50% (25% for Boogaloo) to Speed, Duration and Area, respectively. On its own, this means that they have periods of weakness, followed by periods of power, however picking them makes it so you gain 1% of that stat per every level from that point on. Picking these as your second or even your first Arcana will make you very weak in the early game, but survive long enough to level out of the subtraction entirely, and it's only up from there until your weapon moves at lightning speed, lasts forever, or covering the entire screen.