Minimalist auto-roguelike Vampire Survivors will soon get perhaps its most significant update yet in patch 1.8: Adventures.
As explained by developer Poncle in an FAQ, Adventures are a remixed way to play Vampire Survivors in parallel to your main game. These scrambled “miniature story modes” (or “wacky sidequests”) reset the player’s arsenal and progress from scratch without overwriting progress in the main game, and challenge players with unique conditions, progression, and win criteria. They’re somewhat akin to starting a seasonal character in an action role-playing game like Diablo 4.
Adventures will be playable in co-op mode, and will be split up into chapters that offer specific setups of items and characters and win conditions, linked by some lore text. They’ll be free to any Vampire Survivors player, although some are linked to paid DLC add-ons.
Poncle says patch 1.8 will add three Adventures — two available from the base game, one linked to DLC — after which it intends to add a new Adventure with every subsequent update or DLC release. Adventures need to be unlocked within the base game or linked DLC before you can play them.
“The Legacy of the Moonspell DLC Adventure showcases Vampire Survivors gameplay with a series of original twists, featuring remixed environments, characters, and weapons,” Poncle says. “One of the Adventures available in the base game will explore how we’re reworking classic content, with a slightly serious storyline and a chance to earn unlocks earlier than normal. The other Adventure will be as absurd as you’d usually expect from Vampire Survivors.”
Adventures will vary in length, although Poncle estimates it will take an hour or two to complete the first few. That said, there’s a kind of prestige system in place, whereby Adventures can be “ascended” after they’ve been completed, tweaking stats like Luck or Greed to make a subsequent playthrough more rewarding. This can be done over and over again, to infinity.
Although progress in Adventures and the main game is mostly separate, there are a couple of small areas of overlap. Relics and game modes carry over from the main game into Adventures, while completing an Adventure rewards the player with a cache of coins to use in the main game.
Overall, Adventures sound like a substantial addition to a game that was hard enough to put down in the first place. The 1.8 Adventures update for Vampire Survivors is “coming soon” to all platforms.