After years spent pursuing a career in game development, Italian coder Luca Galante had given up. Uprooting himself from a comfortable life in Rome, he flew to England in the hope of finally making his childhood dream a reality. Yet after countless rejected job applications, Galante found himself flipping Big Macs in Thornton Heath McDonald’s. Dejected, he gave up on his digital dream, leaving what he says might be “the worst McDonald’s in the UK” to code slot machines for a gambling company. Now, 10 years and one bedroom-made game later, Galante is the proud owner of two Baftas.
“I’m still in disbelief,” reflects an endearingly humble Galante. “I don’t believe that any of this is really happening – this is all just [me having] a very long psychotic break.”
Luckily for him, the rest of the planet is sharing in his delusion. Now better known as the creator of the multimillion-selling Vampire Survivors, Galante’s Happy Meal-packing days are long behind him. After writing off the games industry professionally, the pandemic saw Galante turn to his hobby to get through the dreary days. “I needed something to cheer me up. I was coding slot machines in my day job and I just had to do something else for fun.”
As the weeks blurred, Luca began creating a series of game prototypes, sharing them in weekly Zoom calls with his programmer pals who became particularly enamoured by a demo filled with nods to gothic action adventure game Castlevania. “I wanted a game that was super easy to make with very basic gameplay, a fun mobile-like experience that wasn’t just trying to get money off you,” he says. Whacking his crude creation up online as a free download, he merely hoped to showcase the versatility of the programming language he used in his day job. Instead, he accidentally built a tiny online community. “There was only one stage and 12 weapons, but somehow there were these handful of fans that just kept playing it.”
Described by his friends as “the most Luca game they’d ever seen”, it’s a work littered with odd nods to obscure games and baffling in-jokes: “Everything that is in there is in there because I like it personally. The fact it resonated with so many people is really, really weird – but I’m very happy it did.”
Take a quick glance at Vampire Survivors and you might share Galante’s disbelief. Owing an inspirational debt to little-known mobile title Magic Survival, this top down pixel art shooter looks closer to something released in 1993 than 2023. As the player roams a crude-looking map, they slowly become swarmed by wave after wave of demonic creatures, the player desperately collecting gems in a bid to power up and survive the horde.
It’s an utterly entrancing gameplay loop, every synapse in your brain willing you to dive straight back in after each dramatic defeat.
Seeing a throng of passionate players flocking around his prototype, Galante’s peers eventually encouraged him to release the game on Valve’s Steam storefront – and that’s when Vampire Survivors exploded. Thanks to a series of YouTubers raving about this exhilarating indie, the pandemic project suddenly topped the Steam Charts, with players racking up hundreds of in-game hours.
“I thought that people would play the game for an hour, maybe two and call it a day. I never expected people to even play Vampire Survivors a second time – let alone a third.”
The key to Vampire Survivors’ success? Its simplicity. With your pixel-art protagonist’s projectiles autofiring across the crowded screen, you only ever need one hand to play, twirling an analogue stick or tapping the touch screen to move out of harm’s way. It’s what makes Vampire Survivors easy to pick up while you’re lying on the sofa.
Despite teams of hundreds working on FromSoftware’s Elden Ring or PlayStation’s God of War Ragnarok, it is this endearingly pure, fun-first gameplay loop that saw Galante’s bedroom baby beat billion-dollar blockbusters to the Best Game Bafta.
“I will never feel like Vampire survivors is game of the year. My brain simply cannot get there,” reflects Galante. Yet despite his overwhelming impostor syndrome, Luca believes that his awards bode well for gaming’s creative future. “It could have been any indie [winning] really, but what really matters is the message that it sends out – that it is not enough just to put as much budget as possible behind a game to make it the best,” he reflects. “There’s also space for innovation and game design – because those are the things that really matter.”
Undoubtedly it will have irked developers at Sony Santa Monica and FromSoftware, who spent years crafting their intricate worlds and stories, to be beaten by a game that, by the admission of its own creator “literally makes no sense”. “It’s a game about vampires, right? But there are no vampires. There is a reference to Sailor Moon right next to one to Bayonetta!” He pauses to chuckle. “But it all just works. The point was not to create some kind of deeper meaning, it was just to have fun.”
Yet while Galante sees the game of the year award as a victory for indie developers, the game design Bafta sitting on his shelf feels far more personal. “I remember one recruiter literally laughed in my face when I [said that] I wanted to get into game design. I never thought I’d be a game designer, so to win a Bafta for game design really meant something.”
Now, thanks to Vampire Survivors’ success, Galante has finally achieved his childhood dream of opening his own game studio. Ninety-five percent of the PC version of Vampire Survivors was made solo. His UK-based outfit – Poncle – now boasts 16 employees, helping him roll out a constant stream of updates on an ever-growing number of platforms. Partnering with animation house Story Kitchen, Luca’s beloved game is also currently being adapted into a fully fledged animated series. Not bad for a man who four years ago had all but given up on his dream.
What advice would a Bafta winner offer to struggling creators? To find happiness where you can and to embrace the power of giving up. “After working a few years in the gambling industry, I found out that I could be happy even without living my dream … with Vampire Survivors, I could clearly see its potential, and it just felt fun to make with no end goal in mind, so I just kept going.”
Now boasting an eye-watering 6m sales on Steam, an additional 3m downloads on mobile and with a Nintendo Switch version launching this month (17 August), Vampire Survivors has been a considerable moneymaker. Yet Luca admits that initially, charging for it all presented a moral dilemma. He’d spent $1,100 on pre-made assets for Vampire Survivors, and initially Galante felt like he shouldn’t profit from it at all, until friends convinced him otherwise. After years working in the predatory gambling industry, offering value is something Luca takes seriously.
“When you go through those courses, when you find out how many people had their life ruined through gambling … that really changes something. I love the idea of being able to play games anywhere on my phone, but if I go to the Play Store or to the App Store, most of the stuff I see is not there to give me entertainment, it’s simply there to take my money – and I don’t like that.”
It’s why Galante feels he still has to ensure that Vampire Survivors is the best game that it can be. “Now that this has become so successful and the players have given me so much, I almost feel in debt to them. There’s still huge potential to expand the game and I simply cannot walk away from it … I owe the players to try and fulfil that potential.”
“At the same time, I am absolutely itching to do something new. I’d like to go back to game prototypes I never finished. I’d like to do something completely new with the team that I put together.”
Vampire Survivors represents a throwback to the earliest days of interactive entertainment, a DIY piece of software that exists purely for fun’s sake. Despite its rudimentary graphics and retro feel, it’s this refreshingly anarchic home-computer spirit that resonates with its millions of players. As one of the few true indie developer rags-to-riches tales, Galante is living proof that even if the world doesn’t recognise your talent, the only person you truly need in your corner is yourself.
“It’s all just absolutely surreal, but what can I do? I guess I’m just gonna keep working on [Vampire Survivors] … because it’s still fun.”
