My quest to play every genre of Warhammer 40,000 video game has led me now to Warhammer Survivors. Since I’ve fallen and I can’t get out of the Warhammer brain-rot swamp, this grimdark palette swap of Luca Galante’s make the brain go brrr-like Vampire Survivors should be extremely my shit. But not only does playing it makes me feel like something is being extracted from me, be it time, mental energy, or life force, but the game is also just…not my scene.
I’ve never played Vampire Survivors or its roguelike deckbuilder spinoff, Vampire Crawlers, but I watched my husband surrender his life to the game last year so I have a basic understanding of how it works. Pick a character, kill an ever-growing, nigh-endless horde of enemies, get upgrades to increase your power, rinse and repeat.
What surprised and impressed me the most about WS is, for however much the game’s description makes it seem mindless, there’s some strategy to be had. How you move around structures, knowing when to deploy items like grenades or flamethrowers, and which upgrades to prioritize during a run, all required more brain power than I expected the game would demand. There’s an item called vuln oil which randomly spits out gobs of black sludge at regular intervals. Because it doesn’t proc as often nor do as much damage as my chainsword or bolter, I thought it was worthless and ignored it my first few runs. After being forced into the item from a treasure chest and seeing how it worked after a few upgrades, I’ve now decided it’s a must-have.
I’m not fond of the obvious dark pattern-ification inherent in the game, the way it uses psychological tactics to keep you playing. Getting a treasure chest in Warhammer Survivors and seeing coins spit out of it slot-machine style while jubilant music plays is extremely off-putting. I know why it’s designed like that. I know the emotion it’s trying to evoke. Yuck. Playing Warhammer Survivors also makes me feel like I’m actively losing my mind. Not going crazy, but like my brain is atrophying in real time. It involves a ton of focus, which I generally enjoy in a game, but it’s a passive kind of focus. Like with the awareness you need to drive a car, your brain is on but it’s not really engaged in any kind of problem solving.
But honestly, I can forgive all that. I’m not immune to dark pattern exploitation and want to spend a little more time with it to unlock the Sister of Battle character. I think my biggest, pettiest complaint about Warhammer Survivors is that…it’s just not the flavor of Warhammer I want. Firstly, your starting character is an Ultramarine and I’m sick to the back teeth of fucking Ultramarines in Warhammer video games. Space Marine, Space Marine 2, both Boltgun games and now Warhammer Survivors. Ultramarines are to Warhammer what the Yankees are to Major League Baseball. Yes they put up a bunch of Ws; they have the biggest, loudest fanbase; and they once counted among their number some legendary guys. But there are far more interesting factions out there worth paying attention to.
Secondly, and I really must stress this is a petty complaint, where’s the love for the Horus Heresy, man? At the beginning of the game you can choose to play in the 40,000 universe or in the sword-and-board variant, Age of Sigmar. I would have loved to get one extra option to play in the Horus Heresy universe. Walk with me here. You’re a little Salamander space marine, trudging around Isstvan V fighting off wave after wave of Death Guards, Emperor’s Children, World Eaters, and more. As you get stronger, you progress from regular space marines to space marines in terminator armor, then chaos corrupted space marines, then a first captain, then Horus himself. Do you know how hard that would go?? I was ready to scrap this entire blog because I thought I had unlocked my absolute favorite character from the Horus Heresy, the goodest boy Tarik Torgaddon, but when I realized his name was actually Tor Garadon I was crushed.
I know as a Horus Heresy girlie I’m spoiled for choice when it comes to books, animated series, and audio dramas. I know. But sometimes a girl needs a video game that will let her kill her mortal enemy, Horus Lupercal. Warhammer Survivors, then, isn’t the one she’s looking for.
