Back in November 2025, Vampire Survivors dev poncle announced the game's first-ever spin-off title. Now, Vampire Crawlers is getting a public demo, and you can be one of the first to try the game out for free.
Taking the hectic action of poncle's smash-hit game and applying it to a new genre, Vampire Crawlers is a turn-based deckbuilder with rogue-lite elements. If you love the theming and environment of Vampire Survivors, and the busted combos of mobile card games like Balatro, this game is sure to make you happy. poncle has even trademarked the term Turboturn, referring to how you can trigger your next set of moves without waiting for animations to complete.
According to the Steam page, Vampire Crawlers is set to release on iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, PC, and other consoles in early to mid-2026, but you can get a taste of the action very soon thanks to this first demo. As part of February's Steam Next Fest celebration, you can try out the Turboturn for yourself from February 23, 2026. Plus, the demo is also coming to Xbox Game Pass.
Alongside this news, today marks the beginning of a new video series called "Let's Explore Vampire Crawlers," which explores the game's mechanics and features in bite-sized sessions to give you a taste ahead of the demo's launch. You can also stay up to date with development via the Vampire Crawlers Steam page and community Discord server.
If you love the world of Vampire Survivors but deckbuilders aren't your thing, fear not! The Vampire Crawlers Steam FAQs reveal that this game is "hopefully the first of a series of spin-offs" for the title, so maybe your preferred genre is on the list. The page continues, "The idea is to take some of the accidental core pillars behind the development of VS and to apply them to existing genres. We're talking about accessibility, immediacy, affordability, replayability, lightheartedness, and tons of flashy stuff."
Will you be giving Vampire Crawlers a go? Let us know in the Pocket Tactics Discord server! Despite falling out of love with mobile card games, I have a feeling that our Hardware Editor, Connor, will be hopping in, given his consistently high review scores for Vampire Survivors' DLC.