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Is it really a survival game if you’re undead?
Swedish developer Stunlock Studios was the team behind arena brawler Battlerite, and has brought some of that style of action to V Rising, making for a rare combination—a survival game with combat that doesn’t suck. You know what does suck? Vampires, with the blood-drinking and that. V Rising is a multiplayer survival game where you’re a wannabe Count Dracula, chopping down trees and building a castle when you’re not dodging daylight and hunting peasants.
V Rising had its Early Access launch today and took off like a frog in a sock. It peaked at 46,593 concurrent players and right now is the number 12 game on Steam. User reviews are sitting at Very Positive, with praise for the technical combat, PvP, difficult boss fights, and dynamic enemies who sometimes turn on each other. My favorite user review simply sums it up as: «Valheim if Valheim was a Goth Girl».
«The day is finally here, our vampires have been revealed in the moonlight and it’s up to the players to discover their secrets,» said Johan Ilves, marketing director at Stunlock Studios. «With a lot of blood, sweat and tears (but mostly blood), we have created the foundations for a truly unique vampire gameplay experience. This Early Access campaign will allow us to fine-tune V Rising and take the final steps in creating a genre-defining gem.»
The aim is for V Rising to leave Early Access «within 12 months», with the final version having more of basically everything, including enemies, biomes, crafting recipes, weapons, and so on. Hopefully it’ll also get controller support along the way, and become playable on the Steam Deck, which it seems like a natural fit for. V Rising is available on Steam.
Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He’s written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was published in 2015, he edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and actually did play every Warhammer videogame.
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