Vampire Survivors Dev Faces Film Adaptation Challenges As The Game Has No Plot

Vampire Survivors developer Poncle has revealed their struggles in transforming the game into a live-action film. Originally announced in 2023 as an animated series, the adaptation is now confirmed to be a film developed in collaboration with Story Kitchen. 

As Poncle pointed out in a recent Steam update, bringing the roguelike indie game to the big screen presents unique challenges, starting with the fact that the game has no story. For now, details about the adaptation remain scarce, and no release date has been announced. 

“As mentioned last year, rather than jumping the gun and making stuff for the sake of making it, we have preferred to wait to find partners that felt right,” Poncle shared. “Especially because to make anything that isn’t a video game out of Vampire Survivors requires good ideas, creativity, and that quirky knowledge of the game. That is a very difficult triplet to get 100% right.”

Vampire Survivors has won nominations for Best Game and Game Design at the BAFTA Games Awards 2023. As of January 2025, the game has sold an estimated 6 million copies on Steam and has surpassed 3 million downloads, with 1.7 million installs on iOS and 1.49 million on Android by January 2023, while the specific sales figures for console versions such as PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch are not publicly disclosed. 

The developer consistently released free updates with new characters, weapons, and stages, and up to Jan. 21, 2025, Vampire Survivors got 5 DLC: Legacy of the Moonspell, Tides of Foscari, Emergency Meeting, Operation Guns and Ode to Castlevania.