I’m not gonna lie, having now reviewed many thousands of indie games on the Switch it can be tough not to get jaded and a bit burned out on games. It isn’t so much that I don’t want to play them, the challenge is more deciding what to go back to once I’ve got everything else covered. On the average week this can be a struggle, even if there are some good options in the mix. What I’m really looking for is something to really grab my attention and not let go, so that even as I prep videos or write reviews the incentive to be done so I can just play a little more is haunting me. Right now that title has turned out to be Vampire Crawlers.

Made by the same team who created the similarly-addictive Vampire Survivors, on the surface this looks like a title that can be easily dismissed. Sharing almost everything with its sibling, pretty well every character, location, and power here is identical… but the method of play is completely different. Rather than it being an action-based dodge-em-up of sorts where you’ll try to run as long as you can, picking up weapons, opening chests, and simply trying to survive here you’ll be doing almost the same thing, but in the form of a dungeon crawler meets a roguelike deckbuilder. Trust me, I understand how none of this may sound like something you really need to play, but if you enjoy smart strategy I’m here to tell you it’s so much better than you can imagine.

Out of the gate, being a roguelike, you can expect the first few runs to be pretty rough as you come to understand the rules and the concept. You’ll move around, get in fights, look for things to break (seen easily on the mini map), and get into the rhythm of combat. The central thing to know here, and it is vital to your success and why you can get hooked, is getting your deck to work in your favor. On the one side you need to be sure you have sources of mana, but on the other you really want to have a fair mix of cards with each number on them, which will be 0 on up. In order to maximize your power you’ll want to get runs in sequence, since that will build a multiplier, and that will then make each successive card more powerful. It takes time, and some key unlocks, to really see it all meet its potential, but once you get a few hours in, you can begin to construct decks that feel like they can break the game and it is glorious. Just like Vampire Survivors before it, when you begin to mix together different characters, runes, and cards, and understand how to work the system in your favor, you can do some devastating damage. While you may feel burned out on deckbuilders, this is a title that completely shatters the mold with multiple systems that intersect to turn it into something truly special.