Vampire Hunters Early Access Review
What if Doc Ock used firearms? Stay with me here. He has four extra appendages. That is six total weapons he could use at the same time. He could be his own Sinister Six! He could rebrand himself as the Six-Shooter! He could…. nevermind. Spider-Man would still find a way to win and ruin all the fun. It would at least look pretty cool. Well, what if I told you that you could play a game where you actually wield several weapons at the same time?
Developed by Gamecraft Studios, Vampire Hunters is a roguelite, retro FPS. It is what Vampire Survivors could look like as a corridor shooter. Your only objective is to kill everything before it kills you. In the words of Neo/John Wick, “Guns. Lots of guns.”
When you first begin, you might feel more like the hunted than a hunter. For the first few runs you only can choose from the revolver, shotgun, or rifle as your starter weapon. Just start moving and killing. Also, there is a giant wall of death slowly creeping up behind you in case you need any incentive to get going. As enemies die, they can drop soul orbs. Pick up enough and you “level up,” providing you with three options.
Options include both upgrades for weapons you currently carry or new weapons to use. New weapons are used in tandem with your existing weapons and not just in a dual-wield capacity.
You might have just had a shotgun. Well, now you have a shotgun with a flamethrower attached. Throw on a laser and a sniper rifle and even a gun that shoots saw blades. Do not worry, there are weapons for your other hand(s). How does a baseball and a bullwhip sound?
The combinations are endless. Another incentive to keep on moving is the combo meter. Killing enemies start up a combo meter with a short timer. Additional kills increase the count and reset the timer. Failing to kill within the short timer or getting hit will reset the count. As the count goes up, so does the chance soul orbs will drop and the chance that more than one soul orb will drop. Early on in the run, it is advisable to worry less about your combo. The faster you move, the more enemies will spawn and in the beginning of a run, you are ill-equipped to handle the hordes en masse.
Post-run, gold collected can be used for permanent upgrades or buying new weapons. Upgrades include increases to damage, fire rate, reload speed, soul orb drop rate, and health to name a few.
Gold can also be earned by completing in-game achievements such as surviving for X minutes or killing X number of enemies. Like most roguelites, some runs will feel completely fruitless but after a few upgrades, you feel invincible until you are not. Fortunately, most runs are super quick, and starting a new one is quick and easy.
Vampire Hunters is the perfect mashup of FPS and Vampire Survivors-styled games. Replayability is super high with the quick runs and randomized rolls making each try completely different. As the game is in Early Access, players can look forward to new maps (there are 5 currently) and more weapons in the future. You definitely should give this highly addictive, boomer shooter with a twist a try right now.
