A free August update will add four-player couch co-op to Vampire Survivors – just as the game emerges on Switch.
Vampire Survivors – already one of the best-value indie games currently on the market – is to get a four-player local co-op mode on 17 August.
The free update will add drop-in, drop-out couch co-op, with up to four players able to “seamlessly switch between single and co-op play between stages”. Developer Poncle also notes that the new co-op mode will even work on Steam Deck, but adds that you’d have to bunch up on the sofa a bit to see what’s going on.
Vampire Survivors’ co-op mode launches on the same day the game finally makes its debut on Nintendo Switch – a port first announced during yesterday’s Nintendo Direct livestream.
For the uninitiated, Vampire Survivors is a top-down roguelite survival game in which you face an ever-increasing onslaught of enemies; assuming you don’t die within a few seconds, you’ll gradually level up and acquire increasingly powerful weapons. Eventually, you find yourself wiping out vast hordes of ghouls, ghosts and sentient plants, unlocking treasure chests containing yet more XP and power-ups, and generally enjoying the little dopamine hits as the screen fills with great swathes of overlapping damage numbers.
Developed by Luca Galante, Vampire Survivors quickly became an indie sensation on its initial release in 2022, and even wound up winning Best Game at this year’s BAFTAs. That’s quite an achievement for a game made by just one person, and put together using graphics from an off-the-peg asset pack.
Vampire Survivors’ success is such that Steam is already filling up with clones – Soul Survivors, Samurai Survivors, Deathtide Survivors and Doomsday Survivors are all recent titles that offer suspiciously similar top-down, pseudo-bullet-hell action. Not that Galante is likely to be too bothered; according to VG Insights' stats, Vampire Survivors has, to date, sold around 5.9 million copies and generated $16.9 million in revenue. And that’s before the game has even launched on Switch.
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