Presented by Vendetta
Vampire Crawlers gets another trailer at the Golden Joysticks 2026, raising the stakes with card-based carnarge
Counting cards
Vampire Crawlers gets a look in at the Golden Joysticks with a new, showing off its "AAAA" deckbuilding gameplay, and you can play it now on pretty much every platform.
As a spinoff of 2022 smash-hit Vampire Survivors, Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors converts the original roguelike shoot-'em-up into a tactical deckbuilder, where the arsenal of monster-shredding holy weapons and cast of characters are now cards that you draw, joined by many others to help you vanquish vampiric foes.
You do a bit more than just move around in Vampire Crawlers but that doesn't mean it's any less chaotic. You get to explore dungeons and play your cards against whatever horrors you find to unleash devastating combos and clear your path, translating the same ludicrous snowballing power mechanics of Vampire Survivors into a more Balatro-like card-based format.
You can play tactically, choosing your cards carefully to win every encounter as efficiently as possible or take rapid and chaotic turboturns. As with the original game, chests will appear to provide boosts, this time in the form of power-ups, and gems can be used to enhance your cards. Regardless of your preferred playstyle, you'll be relishing the simple joy of numbers going up as you get new cards for your deck and level up on your beast-bashing romp across the Italian countryside.
Vampire Crawlers is available now, having launched on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Switch 2 back in April this year. It's even on iOS and Android devices as of October 12, so you can play it on almost anything!
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Will Sawyer is a Guides Editor at GamesRadar+ with over five years of experience in writing online guides, news, and features, and has a BA (Hons) in Journalism. Starting as a freelancer, Will contributed to startmenu and Game Rant before joining the GamesRadar+ team in August 2021. Since then, he has written hundreds of guides about a huge range of games, with shooters and action games being his areas of expertise. Outside of writing about games, Will hops between multiplayer shooters with friends, such as Darktide and Helldivers 2, and delves into whatever has been on his backlog for far too long. He also tries to get through his never-ending Warhammer pile of shame of grey Tyranids, Aeldari, and Chaos Space Marines.