Developer Poncle continues to be hard at work on Vampire Survivors and will be releasing update 1.0 on October 20. This is a major release that will bring the game officially out of early access.
Poncle released their latest update notes last week, letting players know that the game’s main content will be complete and will surprise players with what’s in store. The notes state that there will be balancing tweaks to items and achievements as well as the introduction of some new achievements. The notes state that a new language update will be added to the game so that it can reach a wider audience. Save data will also be intact; all your progress from early access is safe and will carry over.
After the indie developer released the game in December 2021, it exploded in popularity, climbing to the top of the Steam charts with an all-time peak player base of 77,061. It was so successful that the two-person development team transitioned to supporting the game as full-time careers, and the game hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down. It has spent the last two months on Steam’s ten most played games on the Steam Deck.
It helps that Poncle stays consistent with giving the game constant free updates. The amount of content added to a game that, for the longest time, cost $2.99 (before having the price adjusted to $4.99 on September 21) should be commended. The game has received at least two updates each month since its release, and the latest patch, 0.11.3, released on September 15, completed the early access road map Poncle had laid out for the game.
The game will continue to run in Electron, but the team is still hard at work porting it to a new engine. Poncle’s goal is to have the option to transition to the new engine at the end of the year to ensure that the game can perform at its maximum capability on the broadest range of machines possible. The developer goes on to explain that this is just the beginning for Vampire Survivors, so players should have much to look forward to in the coming months.