long awaited vampire survivor Engine upgrades are coming! Developer Poncle finally announced that the game will be fully switched to the new engine on August 17th, just over a month since this writing.
The game currently runs on Phaser, but the team has been working on porting it to Unity. On the development side, the main benefit of moving to Unity is ease of cross-platform development. However, on the player side, Unity provides better performance.
Poncle shared the news in a Steam post, which also gives us new insight into the co-op mode announced last month.
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You might be surprised to learn that Vampire Survivor — a game that takes place on a 2D plane with primitive visuals and character sprites that barely animate — somehow sucks. The truth is, no amount of PC horsepower can eliminate late game drops.
Once you’ve evolved all your weapons and are very close to the 30 minute mark, especially with Limit Break turned on, the game can get tough. This was a limitation of the old engine, and Poncle said it shouldn’t happen with Unity.
The Xbox version of Vampire Survivor, as well as the recently released mobile port, are actually already running on Unity. The game has maintained two versions on PC since Poncle revealed his intention to move to Unity last September. Some players outside of the development team even played the beta.
The general consensus is very positive, especially when it comes to the responsiveness of the game UI in the later stages. The performance update also benefits Steam Deck users and anyone with a lower-spec PC, so that’s definitely good news.
If you’re somehow avoiding playing Vampire Survivor (BAFTA’s Game of the Year 2022), you should definitely address that. Even now, before the engine switch, it’s still an excellent game – and one of the best ever on Game Pass.