[Auto Attack Survivor Games] Vampire Survivors, Spirit Hunters, and Nomad Survival!

MNC Dover

Welcome to Auto-Attack Survivor games!

Vampire Survivor has proven to be a runaway success and it's spawned some copycat games and built a genre of it's own. There's no elegant name, so I'm calling it Auto-Attack Survival for the time being.

Basically, AAS games involve you running around avoiding enemies while your character automatically attacks. There's usually a time limit you're trying to reach before the game ends. Often times, there will be some rouge-lite game elements in how you can power-up your character before a game or even during the game. You play as one of several different characters and try your best to survive against non-stop waves of enemies. After each game, you can often spend in-game currency to upgrade your character on your next run (for example: more starting health, faster attacks, etc).

The controls are often simple: use the WASD or Arrow keys to move. And....well, that's it! The games will auto-attack for you, allowing you to focus on your character's position. As you run around the open ended levels, you can objects for bonuses and power-ups.

As you destroy enemies, they drop XP. Collect enough XP gems and you level up! This gives you a choice of getting a new weapon/item or upgrading your existing stuff. Each game has it's own variation on weapons/items you can collect, so they're all different in their own way.

And honestly, that's basically it. These games are a personification of power creep. You start with a single weak weapon, but before you know it, you're cluttering up the screen with projectiles and flashy beams. It gets super crazy extremely fast. No really, check it out:



I'll update this thread as new stuff gets added to the games!

PLEASE POST PICS OF YOUR AMAZING RUNS!

MNC Dover

Behold the power of the 5 weapon evolution run!





I had a perfect AoE build using Santa Water, Garlic, Axe, Cross, King Bible, and the Magic Wand. I didn't know about the update or I could have upgraded the Santa Water for a 6-weapon evolution run. Oh well, still insane!

Polaritie

Oh neat, the water got an upgrade.

My record so far is 32:45 survived. So close to the fourth reaper appearing when they stopped getting frozen.

MNC Dover

Another stage complete, this time getting the Santa Water upgrade.



The upgrade creates the usual Water circles, but the circles start moving towards you while getting bigger. It's pretty nutty AoE, as long as you don't outrun it.

Ketar

The upgraded Santa Water is insane.

Results screen spoilered for huge image size. 7.1 million damage from it even though I didn't get it evolved until only about 12.5 minutes left. 48,429 enemies killed is my new record by a lot.

Kai_San

Needs to be Steam Deck time because that feels like the perfect place to play this

MNC Dover

Kai_San wrote: »

Needs to be Steam Deck time because that feels like the perfect place to play this

Everywhere is the best place to play this. Although I’d be concerned playing this on the Steam Deck because of the 30 minute run format. Unless the Deck has massive battery life, which I highly doubt.

Viking

I don't know if you all know this, but this is a pretty fun game.
just saying

Lavender Gooms

My go-to things I try to get for most runs are Garlic (Soul Eater), Super Bird, King Bible (Unholy Vespers), and Axe (Death Spiral).

I'm not sure if the upgraded Santa Water is worth taking the thing I need to evolve it though. My favorite is cheesing the library by getting six items and then the bonus two within it on top of that, plus an extra weapon from birds.

I'll never be able to survive Death so i'm going by what level I can get to before the end for my personal goals. My record is 132 with

Porta Ladonna- Library
Garlic-> Soul Eater, Cross -> Heaven Sword, Fire Wand -> Hellfire, Peachone + Ebony Wings -> Vandalier, Lightning Ring, Santa Water
Duplicator, Spinach, Candelabrador, Spellbinder, Clover, Pummarola, Empty Tome, Stone Mask

This game is way too much fun for what it is. It's wild how well they have done it.

cooljammer00

I've only played the web version but I can see why it's so popular. Seems like everyone is playing it til the wee hours

Fencingsax

Perhaps you should add the free version to the OP?

It has fewer features, but still fun.

taliosfalcon

I just bought this and it is pretty fun but; i wish the difficulty scaled up a bit differently/harder. Made it to the 30 minute mark on the first level my second try; made it to that on the library on my first attempt of it (although here i stumbled across some hilarious garlic combo where I didn't even have to move from the 15 minute mark until death appeared; i just sat in the middle of the map and occasionally moved around to pick up gems and everything died before it could touch me, so uh, that may have been a fluke) Hopefully the 3rd map scaled up a bit quicker. I haven't even purchased any of the gold power ups yet.

Heroth

Highest so far... Reaper appeared and insta-gibbed me... i assume you have to freeze him or something? *shrug*

Ketar

Heroth wrote: »

Highest so far... Reaper appeared and insta-gibbed me... i assume you have to freeze him or something? *shrug*

30 minutes is supposed to be the limit and the Reaper is supposed to insta-kill you. You can potentially last a few extra minutes with a specialized build that freezes them (more will show up over time) but there's no real point unless you enjoy the challenge of it.

MNC Dover

taliosfalcon wrote: »

I just bought this and it is pretty fun but; i wish the difficulty scaled up a bit differently/harder. Made it to the 30 minute mark on the first level my second try; made it to that on the library on my first attempt of it (although here i stumbled across some hilarious garlic combo where I didn't even have to move from the 15 minute mark until death appeared; i just sat in the middle of the map and occasionally moved around to pick up gems and everything died before it could touch me, so uh, that may have been a fluke) Hopefully the 3rd map scaled up a bit quicker. I haven't even purchased any of the gold power ups yet.

Remember that the game is still in early access and stuff is still being added in. I have no doubt that difficulty systems/levels, ala Heat in Hades or Ascension in Slay the Spire, will get added to the game. There's already a "enemies have +50% health" map option, so I think it's on the developer's mind.

The Zombie Penguin

While more diiffuclty would be great, compressing the game down to 20 minutes or even 15 minutes would do it a lot of good, i think. 30 minutes is a pretty large chunk of time! Especially for a game where there's not a huge amount of decision making.

Also the fact that there's a stat to increase the gold you get... which you use to buy permanent upgrades (including one to... increase the gold you get) is just the stupidest thing. rargh! Penguin smash!

Otherwise, fun game. Just knocked off a hyper run that ended at 30.06 minutes, Mortaccio in the libary with Hellfire, Holy Wand, Thousand Edge, Death Spiral and Vandalier + bones, with Duplicator, Crown & all the requisite evolution requirements. Even at the 29 minute mark i basically could stand still while everything died - i just needed to turn and look at bosses funny.

HiT BiT

It's a pity that the enemy resource file looks like such a pain to mod in Vampire Survivors.
Hopes that they will arrange it in a easier way in the future.
At least the playable characters are easy:

altid

It's a fun enough game, but not without flaws.
It hinges slightly on the player knowing which passives are needed to evolve weapons, and some of the passives are of dubious use or completely useless outside of that. Regen is a particularly bad one - its effect is so low that I wonder if it's actually working at all. Also the Pentagram is a trap. Unreliable timing and you get no reward for anything it kills.

The library is the more fun/easier of the two levels imo. Starts faster with more enemies thrown at you, and tends towards larger crowds of weaker mobs. Garlic absolutely destroys this place.

Kai_San

MNC Dover wrote: »

Kai_San wrote: »

Needs to be Steam Deck time because that feels like the perfect place to play this

Everywhere is the best place to play this. Although I’d be concerned playing this on the Steam Deck because of the 30 minute run format. Unless the Deck has massive battery life, which I highly doubt.

It actually does, and has easy to access controls to limit aspects of its power for battery life.

Like for a game like this setting things down to last well over 5 hours shouldn't even be difficult.

TimFiji

What ends those encircling plants? Sometimes I feel it's random but I've only played a few times

Desy

TimFiji wrote: »

What ends those encircling plants? Sometimes I feel it's random but I've only played a few times

They disappear after a time. Not sure how long it is exactly, but it wouldn't be a random time. Probably two or three minutes, it feels like.

The Zombie Penguin

They're just on a timer.

MNC Dover

I have high hopes that the game will get changed over time to accommodate different playstyles. Shorter play times, more difficulties, and (maybe) a rework of weapons/items to make them more useful. So far, the content and feedback from the developers have been flowing. Let's hope it stays that way.

The Zombie Penguin

So far it does feel like your best bet build wise is to go for some combo of King Bible, Axes, Wand, Fire Wand, Cross, Daggers, Birds, Runetracer, Bones and take their respective matching things.

Bones and Runetracer both scale really hard with everything despite (currently) having no Evolution, and they're both the native weapons of two of the better characters - which leaves room free to grab stuff like Crown or Duplicator. Holy Wand + Thousand Edge is a great combo for actually giving you boss-killing ability and the ability to walk in straight lines since it'll rip a path open for you. Cross scales with luck when you evolve it, and getting and stacking clover early can mean lucking into a better quality chest/better drops from terrain (I dunno if it increases the odds of red gems?)

Side note: anyone get a werid thing where sometimes you'll pick up some gems and then instantly level up multiple times?

Polaritie

The massive xp red gems always seem to happen if I have some giant pile of gems building up uncollected. Dunno what's up with it.

I think the weapon upgrades are sort of intended to be a progression deal through discovering them. The Holy Wand is one of my favorites because it's well rounded (and the upgrade item increases the damage of all weapons). The knockback on it is a lifesaver too.

Desy

the massive red gem is the game taking xp drops beyond some item limit and consolidating them into a single gem. So if you find the one gem that's been assigned the xp value from all the gems that were culled for being beyond the item limit, it'll be worth a metric ton of xp.

MNC Dover

I wondered about the red gem huge XP thing. If they want to condense the XP (which sounds smart given the amount of shit on the screen already), I'd recommend they make the gem glow or something. Most of the time red gems are a focus, but knowing a red gem is super powered would be nice info to have.

I'd like to see some changes to underwhelming items:

• Pentagram - Have an on-screen indicator of when the effect is about to fire, allowing the player to pick up nearby items beforehand
• Armor - At levels 3 and 5, provides a shield equal to 10% of your Max HP (stacks to 20%) that refills over time
• Pummarola - At levels 3 and 5, makes Floor Chicken restore 10 more health (stacks to +20)
• Wings - At level 5, standing still will cause your character to charge up. After 3 seconds, you're next move is a half-screen dash that kills all non-boss enemies you pass through.
• Attractorb - At level 5, character will activate a Vacuum item every 2 minutes

Some of these might be weak or OP, but there just thoughts off the top of my head.

Desy

The Crown is also pretty underwhelming too. I wouldn’t take it without knowing how much faster it’d give me an extra level than I would otherwise have gotten “normally” since taking it is itself giving up the item I would’ve taken instead.

Polaritie

destroyah87 wrote: »

The Crown is also pretty underwhelming too. I wouldn’t take it without knowing how much faster it’d give me an extra level than I would otherwise have gotten “normally” since taking it is itself giving up the item I would’ve taken instead.

For the crown, I'd just make it pair with the laurel for some kind of evolution.

But it's a pseudo damage increase still because faster upgrades means faster killing (it's why the lady who starts with a wand is nice - she caps out just that little bit faster). But you're right about giving up the slot. I think it takes 15 levels for it to come out ahead though. Per rank of crown taken. So uh...

Lavender Gooms

Porta Ladonna in the library, without picking up any gems for a little while. Doesn't lose her cooldown buff until she levels, so... don't level for a bit. ZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAP

Polaritie

Aistan wrote: »

Porta Ladonna in the library, without picking up any gems for a little while. Doesn't lose her cooldown buff until she levels, so... don't level for a bit. ZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAP

Challenge: How long can you survive at level 1 doing this?

That's silly in the best way.

NEO|Phyte

Mortaccio seems stupid good with his +projectiles trait. Wasn't able to get any midrun pictures because unless I open it through the actual play button in the steam window to be able to tell it to run with the steam overlay, I can't f12 screenshot, but I did get a picture of the pause screen at the 16 minute mark when I got my 4th weapon evolved, and also the victory screen 14 minutes later.

I had a very comfortable gap between me and the enemies during the final minute, compared to how claustrophobic some final countdowns can be.

Lavender Gooms

Polaritie wrote: »

Aistan wrote: »

Porta Ladonna in the library, without picking up any gems for a little while. Doesn't lose her cooldown buff until she levels, so... don't level for a bit. ZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAP

Challenge: How long can you survive at level 1 doing this?

That's silly in the best way.

Make sure to refund your magnet upgrades. My best after a few attempts was 7:41.

klemming

How do you unlock the hyper mode for the first level? That's pretty much the only achievement I've got left to get.

NEO|Phyte

klemming wrote: »

How do you unlock the hyper mode for the first level? That's pretty much the only achievement I've got left to get.

If it's like the library's hyper unlock, somewhere at the 20-25 minute mark a specific boss enemy spawns, kill it.

Lord_Asmodeus

I'd love for them to add an evolution for the Lightning Ring

Anyway, here's this

Desy

NEO|Phyte wrote: »

[...] Wasn't able to get any midrun pictures because unless I open it through the actual play button in the steam window to be able to tell it to run with the steam overlay, I can't f12 screenshot, but [...]

Ah! Thank you. Now I can take screenshots myself. Was kinda sad the desktop shortcut doesn't open with steam overaly.
Anyway, Santa Water upgrade is pretty good.

I like that I'm thinking of my build weapons as close-defense, screen dps, or survivability. That thinking is why I was looking for Axe or Runetracer after I evolved the birds. Bible or Garlic would've been ok, but overkill. I already had Water and Wand for zoning and knockback. Wanted something that'd move out into the whole screen instead of only affecting things that got close. Axe just happened to come up first.

emp123

I've yet to unlock most of the characters since I've been dumping money into unlocking character bonuses, but the Runemaster in the library is insane overkill. As is the Super Bird.

I always try to get Super Bird and the books, partially because I think its really funny to hit things in the face with books, partially because they're really fucking good. I should really try the hyper versions of the maps, not sure what the difference is though.

Here's the best chest I think I'll ever get:

Lavender Gooms

Hyper is the only way to play imo. Regular so sloooow going back to it.

Heffling

Polaritie wrote: »

Aistan wrote: »

Porta Ladonna in the library, without picking up any gems for a little while. Doesn't lose her cooldown buff until she levels, so... don't level for a bit. ZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAPZAP

Challenge: How long can you survive at level 1 doing this?

That's silly in the best way.

If you're determined with it, you can kill a boss and get the Laurel (so you get an item without leveling). The cooldown reduction is so great that the cooldown on the laurel is done before the duration, so you become invincible. I saw a post of someone on reddit sitting at like 110 minutes with dozens of reapers on the screen.

Lord_Asmodeus wrote: »

I'd love for them to add an evolution for the Lightning Ring

They just added one for Santa Water on Saturday, along with a new character and a new support item.

klemming wrote: »

How do you unlock the hyper mode for the first level? That's pretty much the only achievement I've got left to get.

To unlock hyper mode, kill a boss that spawns on that level at the 25 minute mark.

MNC Dover

I have no doubt that all the weapons will eventually get evolutions. They're only missing the Lightning Ring, Clock Lancet, Laurel, Pentagram, and Runetracer. Maybe the Bone, but it's unique to the Skeleton character, so maybe not. The items that aren't tied to evolutions yet are Armor, Duplicator, Wings, Crown, and Stone Mask. Not a lot of useful combinations though, so we'll see how it all plays out.