Poncle’s first big step outside Vampire Survivors’ bullet heaven formula lands April 21 with Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors, a $9.99 “turboturn” deckbuilding dungeon crawler hitting consoles, PC, and Game Pass.
Vampire Survivors is finally getting a full spin‑off, and it is not another bullet heaven. Poncle has confirmed that Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors will launch on April 21 as a fast, card driven dungeon crawler that shows the studio is willing to experiment far outside its horde‑survival comfort zone.
The new game trades Survivors’ real‑time swarms for what poncle calls a “turboturn” system. On paper it is a casual turn‑based roguelite deckbuilder, but in motion it is built to feel almost as frantic as mowing down waves in the original. Every action still happens in turns, yet the game encourages you to lock in choices at high speed so combat keeps that snowballing momentum Vampire Survivors players expect.
On launch day, Vampire Crawlers will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and the Microsoft Store for $9.99. It will also arrive day one in Xbox Game Pass on console and PC, continuing Microsoft’s close relationship with poncle after Vampire Survivors’ strong performance on the subscription service. Poncle has also confirmed iOS and Android versions, although mobile will follow later and is not part of the April date.
For poncle as a studio, Crawlers is a clear statement that Vampire Survivors is a universe rather than a single formula. Instead of chasing a straight sequel or another auto‑attacking arena, the team is pushing the same tone and power‑fantasy into a different genre altogether. The setting is still that scruffy, knowingly “average Italian countryside” they love to joke about, and the enemies, weapons, and memes will be familiar, but the way you interact with them is fundamentally different.
The core hook is that “turboturn” combat loop. Rather than steering a character around an arena, you build a hand of cards that represent attacks, movement options, utility skills, and wild modifiers. Each turn you queue up a small sequence of plays, then watch your character blast through monsters in a tight, dungeon‑like layout. The trick is that the interface is tuned so you can resolve turns extremely quickly, chaining decision after decision to create the same avalanche of destruction that made Vampire Survivors so sticky.
For players coming from the original game, that means the focus shifts from dodging patterns and choosing passive upgrades to planning combos and routing through rooms. Where a Survivors run is about surviving long enough for your build to explode, a Crawlers run is more about engineering that explosion on demand. You still chase overpowered synergies, but now you build them out of card interactions and positioning rather than just evolving weapons on a timer.
That makes Vampire Crawlers feel like poncle’s answer to the question of what happens when you take the Survivors addiction loop and bolt it onto a genre more associated with slow, methodical play. Turboturn is designed to strip away the usual downtime of turn‑based dungeon crawlers, turning what could have been a ponderous card game into something you can blaze through in short, chaotic sessions. It is still completely playable at a more relaxed pace, but the systems clearly reward fast reads and decisive choices.
At $9.99, Crawlers is also priced to sit comfortably next to Vampire Survivors rather than replace it. With Game Pass pulling in a wider audience on day one and a broad slate of platforms out of the gate, poncle is positioning the spin‑off as an easy curiosity pick for existing fans and a low‑risk entry point for players who bounced off the original’s auto‑attack chaos. If Crawlers lands, it will not just be another hit for poncle, it will be proof that the Vampire Survivors universe can sustain very different kinds of games.
Vampire Crawlers: The Turbo Wildcard from Vampire Survivors launches April 21 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC for $9.99, and will be playable through Xbox Game Pass on day one. Mobile versions are planned to arrive later on iOS and Android.