It has been wild to see how much influence Vampire Survivors has had on the space over the past few years. While not everything about the game was unique, its mixture of elements and insistence on using autofire in place of active twin-stick shooting absolutely made it feel both distinctive and quite addictive. Since its release we’ve seen a pretty steady stream of lower-tier attempts to crib its signature style, but too many of those have had play that has been too thin or unrefined, and very few have done much to stand on their own. I’d say that Achilles: Survivor is one of the first I’ve encountered that’s managed to take a next step, charting its own path by essentially running with an elevator pitch of “What if you combined Vampire Survivors with elements of tower defense?”

It turns out that the answer is a formula that works pretty well in its own right. Borrowing a load of locations and characters from classic mythology, I’ll admit that the game already had me on its side from the get-go. Mixing that lore, which allows for some pretty cool enemy units (as well as some interesting character unlocks) and structures, with a move away from pixel art graphics absolutely helps set it apart visually. In terms of play, it will start out pretty familiar, with your character slowly acquiring new attacks and perks to power them up, but most critically you’ll now have the ability to construct different traps and support structures to help you out. Given that you’ll also have perks options that will allow you to build more quickly or make those structures you build more resilient does a great job of spreading out the possibilities for how you’ll advance your character, and opening the door to your focus on making those your focus. In particular, having a healing station, or coming to the forge to super-charge one of your perks once you’ve advanced it 5 levels can help turn things around, so the change is far from being superficial, you really can build your tactics around it.

The fact that there are plenty of new areas and characters to unlock, with varied classes that you can slowly make more formidable with meta progression options also helps maintain your interest, always looking for the next challenge to complete and reward to be gained. All of that diversity then helps to compensate a bit for what generally feels like a slightly sluggish pace. Since it doesn’t feel like it varies with more or less elements on the screen at once, this feels like a purposeful choice, and while it could have made play tougher I would have liked the pace to have been picked up a tick or two just to make things more interesting, though at this speed everything does feel more deliberate. I’d be curious to see a version optimized for Switch 2, just to see what could be changed to polish the game up further, but in the end I still found this to be very satisfying, if not a bit addictive. If you’re a fan of the Vampire Survivors formula and have been looking for a game to take it in a new direction, this is the most worthy successor I’ve seen to this point.