Film

Try New Vampires Survivors Game For Free Soon

23 January 2026

It’s been over four years since Vampire Survivors first took the world by storm, and soon, fans can finally get their hands on a demo experience for the follow-up. Revealed in a 2026 Xbox Partner Preview showcase, Vampire Crawlers is a spin-off that maintains the basic flavor but changes genres to focus on a deck-building, dungeon-crawling experience.

Developer poncle revealed today that a free demo for Vampire Crawlers will be available starting on February 23. The demo will be available as part of Steam Next Fest on PC, along with a simultaneous Xbox release. Ahead of the demo, poncle is releasing some new gameplay overviews to offer a more detailed look at what to expect from Vampire Crawlers.

Vampire Crawlers Will Get A Demo In February

A player selecting a garlic card from their hand in Vampire Crawlers.

Right now, Vampire Crawlers is focusing on “two key mechanics“: “The Turboturn” and card customization. The Turboturn is all about translating the chaotic pace of Vampire Survivors to a turn-based format, allowing players to trigger moves before animations have finished. Card customization, meanwhile, makes use of gems to tweak cards for various purposes and set up more interesting combos.

Both of these concepts serve the overall excitement of numbers going up and effects filling the screen, both of which defined the original Vampire Survivors experience. This eclectic concoction, however, might be a little more difficult for other games to emulate.

While players will still have to wait a month before they can actually try out the Vampire Crawlers demo, it’s nice to know that it’s coming soon. As of now, there’s still no specific release date for the game, but poncle is targeting a 2026 window. The demo is a comforting sign that everything is presumably proceeding well, and it could be an opportunity for poncle to curate some helpful community feedback before the full release.

Living Up To Vampire Survivors Will Be A Challenge

Vampire Survivors Gameplay — Vampire Survivors gameplay.

Vampire Crawlers will have an uphill battle to replicate the same addictive property that made Vampire Survivors such a huge hit, but advertising a demo a month in advance suggests that poncle is confident in its ability to hook players. According to the press release, the game has now passed 200,000 wishlist additions on Steam in the time since its November announcement.

Either way, Steam and Xbox users will be able to find out just how fun Vampire Crawlers is for themselves when February 23 rolls around. For everyone else, the final release will also bring the game to PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.