How Vampire Survivors was recreated for Xbox without players even noticing

It’s the decadent core loop of shoot, survive, die, repeat that has left countless Vampire Survivors players – including Xbox boss and superfan Phil Spencer – completely hooked. Its early presence on Xbox and PC Game Pass also ensured that millions could instantly get involved in this surprising new title.

But Vampire Survivors wasn’t originally designed for this magnitude. The brainchild of creator Luca Galante, it was originally developed for PC platforms using web technologies, specifically JavaScript. Poncle Tech Director Sam McGarry tells us that the launch version of Vampire Survivors was “basically a browser game”.

The build didn’t perform very well on platforms other than PC, players encountered issues across devices, and fixing those issues quickly became a priority for the team. When it became the hit as we know it today, it became clear that it needed a new engine – something fans were asking for early on. It turns out the team pulled this off so seamlessly that many were unaware it even happened.

“The overall goal was that players wouldn’t notice,” says McGarry. “To this day, there are still players who don’t realize that the engine is already out there and has existed on Xbox since launch, so we still have differences to work out, but I think we’ve done a pretty good job.”

Xbox was the first platform Poncle launched the engine-enhanced Vampire Survivors on, and McGarry tells us that one of the biggest challenges the team has faced, and still faces, is level parity between different versions of the game to maintain in parallel – the new engine on the Xbox and the original Javascript version on the PC.

“It’s very important to us to ensure that players can move between Xbox platforms and continue playing,” says McGarry. “And we’re also trying to keep that quality, so you can switch between two different versions of the game without feeling like you’re playing different copies of the game, without having technical issues or anything like that.”

All of that effort paid off though – McGarry says that the game’s inclusion in Game Pass was crucial to how it became a word-of-mouth success. “If you look at a screenshot of Vampire Survivors, you might not be drawn into the game just by looks,” says McGarry. “And we often find that early players don’t always get the catch until they’re further in. Then we really see people going, ‘Ah, okay, I’ve got the game now. People will also often play it, bounce and then come back. Being present on Game Pass helps us to bring many more players through the doors and experience the game.

“The other great thing on [Game Pass] is that it was also available via the cloud. So, not only can people play at home on their console or PC, but they can also play on the go or… on the toilet on their phone. This was also a relatively painless process; We released the game and ticked a box, and then it was basically just available in the cloud like that.”

A development team creating two versions of the game for Xbox and PC is a league away from the times before Galante worked independently on Vampire Survivors. Over the past twelve months, the development of the Poncle team has mirrored that of a Xenomorph – arise fast and grow fast. But despite this rapid expansion, the actual workflow hasn’t changed all that much, a testament to the game’s solid foundations.

“Ultimately, we just have more people in the process now,” explains McGarry. “So it’s still starting and going with Luca, he’s doing this work on this PC version along with writers and other teams that are helping with the creative side of things. We then take that work and replicate it in the new engine. This dual engine setup has helped us to keep the same workflow in a way, without disrupting the creative part at the very beginning of the chain.”

Poncle would like to point out that while Galante is still at the top of the creative tree and most of the game’s increasingly wild ideas came from him, Vampire Survivors is now being created by a team that is providing all the input and feedback.

“The more people we bring on board, the more we can take from Luca,” says Poncle Lead Game Developer Adam Goodchild. “All last year everyone tried to take away as much as possible so Luca could focus on the creative side.

“The original goal of what Luca wanted to do hasn’t changed at all. It’s just very different in the pace at which we can do it because there’s more of us and everyone has a role now.”

Vampire Survivors still distributes regular updates and content. The first Premium DLC, Legacy of the Moonspell, was released in December and the second, Tides of the Foscari, is out today.

These paid DLC packs are themed around their own worlds – Moonspell took us to the snowy mountains of the “East”, while Foscari promises a lush, living forest that hides a magical academy with absolutely nothing unusual. This has always been the plan for Vampire Survivors, but Galante and the team still strongly believe that any content that changes or improves the core gameplay loop should simply be included in free content updates distributed to everyone Player who either purchased the game or is playing through Game Pass. We can’t say too much, but the team have a lot in store in this department as well.

“For anyone who can’t or won’t get the DLC, you’ll get other updates at the same time,” adds McGarry. “We’re also constantly adding little things to the base game, adding more achievements… if only to give Phil Spencer something new to wrap up with.”

Vampire Survivors: Tides of the Foscari is available today for Xbox and PC platforms.