Vampire Survivors Dev Poncle Discusses Film Adaptation Hurdles: 'No Plot in Game'

Vampire Survivors developer Poncle has shed light on the challenges of adapting their hit game into a film, despite it originally being announced as an animated series. In a recent Steam post, Poncle revealed they are still collaborating with Story Kitchen on a live-action film adaptation. The core difficulty lies in the fact that "the game has no plot," making it a unique challenge to translate the mechanically simple action game, centered around defeating hordes of enemies, into a cinematic experience.

Poncle emphasized the importance of taking time to find the right partners to ensure the adaptation is done justice. "As mentioned last year, rather than jumping the gun and make stuff for the sake of making it, we have preferred to wait to find partners that felt right, especially because to make anything that isn't a video game out of Vampire Survivors requires good ideas, creativity, and that quirky knowledge of the game," Poncle stated. They highlighted the complexity of achieving the perfect balance of these elements, saying, "That is a very difficult triplet to get 100% right. Please remember the game has no plot — it doesn't? — so nobody can really anticipate how a film about it is going to be. That is part of what makes it exciting."

The developer humorously acknowledged the irony of adapting a game with no plot, sarcastically noting, "the most important thing in Vampire Survivors is the story." With the nature of the adaptation still unclear even to Poncle, no release date has been announced yet.

Vampire Survivors is a fast-paced gothic horror game with rogue-lite elements, allowing players to snowball against hundreds of monsters through strategic choices. Initially a humble indie game on Steam, it became a surprise hit, gaining immense popularity and leading Poncle to expand the game significantly. The core experience now includes 50 playable characters and 80 weapons, alongside two major expansions and the notable Ode to Castlevania DLC.

In our 8/10 review, IGN praised the game, stating, "Need a game to play while listening to podcasts? This is it. Vampire Survivors is outwardly simple but turns out to be an incredibly deep hole to fall down — though it's not without extended dull periods when you get ahead of its curve."