Vampire Survivors' bullet heaven remix on the roguelike formula has been so popular that it's basically sprouted an entire subgenre, but it's never made good on its titular promise of surviving vampires until now, that is. Oh, and it's even found a way to bring Baldur's Gate 3's Astarion into the fold (kind of).
Developer Poncle and rights owner Konami have collaborated on a massive Castlevania-themed DLC for the smash hit roguelike that, after three whole years and over 30 updates, is finally adding vampires to Vampire Survivors. Poncle call it a "full circle" moment for its beloved gothic roguelike as The Ode To Castlevania expansion has a huge castle to explore, more than 30 music tracks, over 40 new weapons, and over 20 new characters to play as, including iconic series mainstays like Alucard and Richter.
Poncle's newest trailer for the crossover is just as fun, zany, and celebratory as you'd expect - an iconic conversation between Richter and Dracula is recreated below and it definitely put a smile on my face - but there's also a nice surprise hidden in the video's description, too: Baldur's Gate 3's Neil Newbon (Astarion) voices Dracula himself, with YouTuber SungWon Cho (ProZD) as Richter.
The trailer doesn't explicitly say whether the two actors have roles in the DLC, but I've since played through the expansion myself, and the two characters certainly sound like Newbon and Cho, at least in the one voiced cutscene I've found so far - just, maybe without the old-school filter distorting their voices so heavily.
"Due to the massive size of this update, our next patch will take a bit longer than usual to be released, but it will come with free content as always," the developer wrote in a recent blog. "We'll try to make less updates, but bigger, so that there's less achievements-related stress and a bit more stuff to experiment with."
See where Vampire Survivors lands in our best roguelikes to play right now list.