Vampire Crawlers Demo Launches February 23 on Steam and Xbox
poncle is ramping up momentum for Vampire Crawlers, the first spin off of 2022 indie breakout Vampire Survivors, by confirming a free demo release date and kicking off a new developer video series designed to keep the reveal cadence flowing into launch season. The demo will go live on February 23, 2026 for PC via Steam during Steam Next Fest, and it will also be available on Xbox. The full game is also planned for PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android, but poncle has not shared demo plans for those platforms yet.
The announcement arrives alongside episode 1 of a bite sized feature series called Let’s Explore Vampire Crawlers, which is structured as quick gameplay reveals focused on explaining the systems that make this project distinct from Vampire Survivors.
At a high level, Vampire Crawlers pivots the Vampire Survivors universe into a rogue like deckbuilding format, and poncle is clearly pitching speed and player agency as the differentiators. The standout mechanic is Turboturn, described as turn based combat without the wait. Instead of forcing players to sit through long animation cycles before they can queue the next decision, Vampire Crawlers lets you trigger your next move immediately. The game stacks and executes your ability inputs intelligently, allowing you to play at an aggressive pace while still keeping the feel of tactical sequencing. This is a smart design bet because it targets a real friction point in many deckbuilders, where the strategy is strong but the tempo can feel sluggish during long runs.
The other pillar is card customization through Gems. poncle describes Gems as a way to modify cards with a broad range of effects, from straightforward damage multipliers to full weapon evolutions. The key promise is build flexibility, letting players choose whether they want simple power scaling or deeper combo planning. In practice, this reads like poncle is aiming to keep the chaotic build breaking energy of Vampire Survivors, but translate it into a deckbuilding framework where the player crafts that chaos through upgrades rather than purely through luck of the drop.
Market interest is already looking strong. poncle notes that Vampire Crawlers has surpassed 200,000 wishlists on Steam within 2 months of its announcement. That is not a guarantee of success, but it is a meaningful demand signal, especially for an indie spin off trying to prove it can stand on its own rather than ride pure brand halo. Vampire Survivors remains a hard act to follow, but poncle is playing this correctly by using a demo, clear system messaging, and consistent video drops to convert curiosity into hands on adoption.
Are you hoping Vampire Crawlers keeps the pure chaos of Vampire Survivors, or do you want it to lean harder into strategic deckbuilding depth now that it has a slower, more deliberate core system?
