Vampire Survivors has done more than just survive the night.
Against some very big games, Vampire Survivors was the most-played game on Steam Deck in August.
Among a list of the top games played by Steam Deck owners, Valve highlighted excellent bullet hell-roguelike-RPG-thing Vampire Survivors as the top game last month, in terms of hours played. It's quite an achievement for an indie game that’s still in Early Access after an early release in December last year.
And just like that, August is over! Taking a quick look back, here are the top games on Steam Deck for the past month, sorted by total hours played. pic.twitter.com/FuDRLh2XaO
— Steam Deck (@OnDeck) August 31, 2022
The game entered early access late last year, with player numbers dwindling in the months since according to Steam Charts, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped it from surging in popularity last month on the Steam Deck.
An update earlier this month added a handful of new achievements as well as the new playable character, Queen Sigma. The game’s addition to PC Game Pass back in May seems to have found it a whole new audience. In fact, the game was #2 in the most-played on Steam Deck for July, too.
Excuse me… what? 😲 💖
Thanks so much to everyone who has played Vampire Survivors on the toilet 🚽 💩 🦇#VampireSurvivors #steamdeck #indiegame #Top10 https://t.co/tZhS5DMVDW— Vampire Survivors 🦇 PC Game Pass & Steam (@poncle_vampire) August 3, 2022
Since the Steam Deck supports Xbox Game Pass, it looks as though it’s been a perfect storm for the plucky Vampire Survivors developers… resulting in a meteoric climb to the top of the Steam Deck charts.
IGN’s review of Vampire Survivors gave it 7/10 and said: “With its dead-simple graphics and extremely basic map and enemy design, Vampire Survivors seems like it has no business being as addictive as it is. And yet, I felt compelled to put over a dozen hours into experimenting with its many weapon and ability upgrade combinations, starting round after round trying to reach the end and unlock all of its characters. The spell of its appeal wears off quickly once the persistent upgrades reduce the level of challenge, but if this is just the start of its early access run I look forward to seeing more difficulty options and secrets layered on top as it continues to develop.”
Want to check out more indie games? Here are some of the bizarre indie games you may have missed at Gamescom 2022, as well as the best indie games on PSPlus right now.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.