Vampire Survivors, the smash-hit video game where you stand your ground and mow down endless hordes with auto-firing weapons, is becoming a co-operative board game, and the designer attached to it knows his way around a deck.
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Find events near youIf you have not played it, the 2022 indie original is a "bullet heaven" roguelike. Thousands of enemies swarm the screen while your character blasts away automatically, levelling up and combining weapons into increasingly silly engines of destruction. Vampire Survivors: The Board Game, from Grey Fox Games, turns that into a co-operative deckbuilder for up to four players.
You pick one of the game's characters, such as Antonio or Imelda, then play cards each turn to move, attack and gain experience. Level up, stack up power-ups and hold back wave after wave of monsters across a session of around 45 minutes, building towards a final showdown with Red Death himself. Survive or fall, you unlock new content to carry into your next run, mirroring the moreish progression that made the video game so hard to put down.
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Set up your group for freeThe board game comes from Emerson Matsuuchi, the designer of the Century trilogy and the hidden-movement game Specter Ops, so it is in safe hands for this kind of escalating, combo-driven play. Translating an action game about overwhelming odds into a turn-based card game is a neat trick, and the deckbuilding format suits the original's weapon-stacking loop nicely.
It is due to arrive in 2026. A co-op scramble against the horde is exactly the sort of thing that drags a group back to the table, so gather your survivors and start planning the night.
Sources: Grey Fox Games | Card Gamer | Dice Tower Dish
