Our best roguelike of 2022 and the BAFTA jury’s game of the year is getting new DLC. Vampire Survivors has announced Tides of the Foscari, a “never heard before tale of a warrior, a mage, and a thief venturing into a forest,” due out on April 13, a mere two weeks from now.
Taking place in an elite school divided into three houses, Tides of the Foscari will be Vampire Survivor’s second DLC, following last December’s Legacy of the Moonspell. It will introduce eight “extremely original and not remotely derivative” new characters, 13 “unique weapons, definitely not drawn from the personal media tastes of a selection of game devs”, and a new stage, which promises to be the “perfect place to have an average adventure with zero complications”.
Plus, most importantly of all, it adds new animations for two of the game’s heroes. “After countless updates, millions of players, and almost 180,000 overwhelmingly positive reviews, TWO(!) of Vampire Survivors heroes can finally do more than strut from side to side,” reads the announcement press release.
There will also be seven new music tracks and 21 new achievements, but those don’t have a wry line of text accompanying them.
We’re close enough to April 1 that I thought this was some kind of ill-judged gag at first, and we weren’t really going to get new DLC at all. But it looks like we really are getting more Vampire Survivors (the kazoo solo that plays during the trailer is, apparently, the April Fools part). It’ll cost $1.99 / €1.99 / £1.59 when it releases two weeks from now, in keeping with the game’s frankly absurd low pricing so far.
The DLC will be accompanied by the game’s 1.4 patch, and it’ll sadly knock your 100% completion score down to some vile two-digit number when it releases. Sorry, Phil Spencer.
I honestly have never even noticed a story in my tens of hours with Vampire Survivors so far, so it’s kind of amusing to see Poncle emphasise the definitely-not-borrowed narrative elements of this one. It all sounds quite Fire Emblem: Three Houses, so I can only hope the DLC suddenly makes the game take a hard-left turn that forces me to question all my convictions and loyalties up to this point.
If you’re hungry for more Vampire Survivors, and you have a couple of bucks to spare, you can find the page for Tides of the Foscari over on Steam.