Warhammer Survivors Isn’t Much More Than a Vampire Survivors Reskin, Which Is (Mostly) OK

When I first heard that developers Auroch Digital and Vampire Survivors creator Luca “Poncle” Galante were working together on Warhammer Survivors, I was thrilled. A studio of Warhammer lore fiends collaborating with a solo dev who birthed a genre seemed like a recipe for success. But having now played through most of the game’s sci-fi battles and a smattering of fantasy incursions, I think your enjoyment of this game probably hinges entirely on how many modern bullet heaven games you’ve played. If you’re looking for something that meaningfully changes the formula, you won’t find it here. While Vampire Survivors should be respected and lauded for laying the foundations for an entirely new type of video game, it has been surpassed by newer projects that have fundamentally changed the fledgling bullet heaven genre for the better. Newer games have implemented incredibly robust progression systems, more objective-based gameplay and entirely new camera perspectives. There’s no problem with Survivors being knocked off the pedestal it built – every developer should learn from their peers, and the oldest games will never be the most polished games (even if they stand the test of time as cult classics). The issue is that Warhammer Survivors just feels like a massive, reskinned expansion of Poncle’s original game. Despite a striking visual identity and plenty of Warhammer-themed weapons and items, this game never escapes the shadow of Vampire Survivors, which may diminish the enjoyment of genre enthusiasts. Auroch Digital’s stab at a bullet heaven game isn’t unique, and its thrills wear out sooner than one might expect, but I think that’s mostly OK. It’s full of charming, vibrant Warhammer-themed pixel art, and that feels like what the true appeal of Warhammer Survivors just might be. This is the type of video game junk food that keeps you up until 5 a.m. every once in a while, completely destroying your sleep schedule. It won’t go down as one of the bullet heaven greats, and it doesn’t need to. You’re not locked into playing as space marines — there are other Imperium troops available as well.Auroch Digital That fresh coat of paint is really fun Vampire Survivors veterans will have a sense of deja vu from the pixel art-styling and increasing enemy clusters. There’s some extra content and quality-of-life features bolted on here, but you’ll instantly know what you’re getting into. When players start a run, they’re dropped into iconic locations from a top-down perspective in order to purge the area of ravenous xenos and chaos cultists. The onslaught of enemies grows increasingly fearsome as time wears on, with larger and more dangerous enemies joining the fray. As players dodge and defeat the alien threats, though, they provide experience points and items that exponentially ramp up player power. Once you start getting your hands on an expanded arsenal of weaponry, it becomes obvious why Auroch Digital was the right choice for this project – it’s a development studio full of folks who obviously love the twin worlds of Warhammer, and that passion can be found in every nook and cranny of Warhammer Survivors. The game’s visual style is striking, which is something I’ve come to expect from any Auroch Digital game – Warhammer Boltgun has richly detailed pixel art, and the development experience from those boomer shooters has translated extremely well to Warhammer Survivors’ 8-bit arcade trappings. The cost of entry is worth it just to see massive tyranid aliens and chaos space marines rendered in all their retro glory. And the space marine power fantasy thrives here as players wield some of the most iconic space marine weapons, including gory chainswords, hard-hitting boltguns and face-melting flamers. What’s truly special, though, is how many of the game’s weapons and passive power-ups pay homage to the series’ tabletop roots – I was chuffed to see explosive D6 dice and mini figure glue, which both became a regular part of my screen-clearing builds. One of the few innovations within Warhammer Survivors is the ability to jump between universes after runs.Auroch Digital Innovations are far too few One truly unique feature allows players to collect allies that wield weapons, instead of just building out a one-man arsenal. These allies trail behind the main character, which alters how players may approach hordes of enemies. Certain characters unlock massive buffs if they continue adding allies to the party, which introduces another way to scale up damage very quickly. This doesn’t change how account-wide progression works, but it’s a new play style that shakes up the Vampire Survivors formula. But it was when I discovered my favorite playable character in Warhammer Survivors that I started really noticing the game’s biggest weakness. I found myself enjoying the Sister of Battle’s gameplay, since she gets to wield a holy shield that repels enemies and damages evildoers who get too close with nearly constant pulses of light. As I continued to invest in this play style, I realized that this character was a nearly one-to-one re-creation of my Vampire Survivors main (Poe Ratcho, with his stinky demon-killing garlic). It almost feels as though Auroch Digital was afraid to deviate too far from Poncle’s original vision for a bullet heaven game. The characters and weapons feel like reskins; the upgrade shop looks nearly identical, and even the in-game war chests that elite enemies drop have the same opening animation as the loot boxes from Vampire Survivors. Warhammer Survivors is well-built, but often feels like a massive DLC for Vampire Survivors rather than a standalone game. Warhammer Survivors’ gameplay loop has all of the same dopamine hits, down to the same chest opening animation.Auroch Digital/Screenshot by CNET An extremely polished bullet heaven (but not quite what I wanted to see) There’s plenty of meat on Warhammer Survivors’ bones. The Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar universes have their own progression tracks, with unique maps, characters and secrets to unlock. Survivors’ scale is remarkable – this game is probably twice as large as Vampire Survivors was when it launched from Early Access, and it could get even bigger with post-launch updates and future DLC. If you love Warhammer and have never played a bullet heaven game before, Warhammer Survivors will likely ensnare you the same way Vampire Survivors did the rest of us in 2022. Figuring out effective weapon combinations, slaying thousands of oncoming foes and watching loot fly out of treasure chests with all the pomp and circumstance of a digital slot machine are all still surefire ways to flood your brain with dopamine. But if you’ve delved deep into this genre and have enjoyed the immense mechanical advancements of later games, I suspect you’ll find Warhammer Survivors a bit lacking. At its core, this is a game centered around achieving increasingly large damage numbers to defeat foes that continue to get faster and stronger until you’re overwhelmed – it’s a simple premise that can only be mastered through repetition. Yet Poncle’s award-winning formula started wearing thin for me this time around, and I say that as someone who believes the world is richer for having more action-packed Warhammer games and good Vampire Survivors clones in it. Too many elements feel rehashed and reused (characters and weapon drops are the worst offenders), and Warhammer Survivors very quickly begins to feel like a carbon copy of a game I’d already played. Sure, it’s copying from an excellent game. But no difficulty spike or mystery is novel enough to remove my sense of fatigue, and I was left wishing there was some additional layer of progression or mechanical depth to keep me engaged between runs. Warhammer Survivors currently commands an even higher price tag ($8) than its predecessor. Auroch Digital is making a big ask, especially since this game doesn’t benefit from Vampire Survivors’ multiple years of free content updates and DLC. Warhammer Survivors isn’t quite as expensive as its contemporary competitors, but it also lacks their innovations. As it stands, I think this is a solid game – but as a pricey reskin, I wouldn’t recommend it over similar games like Vampire Hunters and Megabonk, unless you’re a Warhammer fan just looking for more ways to mow through enemies. Warhammer Survivors is available now on PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, iOS and Android for $8 and is included within Game Pass subscriptions.