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Vampire Survivors devs address delays of features & DLC on mobile

Developer Poncle is still trying to figure out how it wants to distribute Vampire Survivors' Legacy of the Moonspell DLC on the mobile version.

TJ Denzer

January 5, 2023 7:35 AM

Image via Poncle

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Indie developer Poncle had a breakout year with Vampire Survivors in 2021, gaining mass attention and hype as the game landed on Xbox Game Pass, PC, and eventually mobile. Mobile has been an interesting challenge for the studio, though. The Legacy of the Moonspell DLC still isn’t on mobile, and it’s joined by features such as cloud saves and save transfer. Poncle says it’s working on the matter, but may take longer than expected because it didn’t actually intend to handle the mobile port itself in the first place.

This was shared in a recent Steam developer blog post on Vampire Survivor’s Steam page. While addressing various matters of 2022, Poncle gave sizeable attention to the mobile part. The studio knows it has work to do in getting key features and DLC over to iOS and Android versions of Vampire Survivors. Originally, it intended to outsource the port, but when Poncle couldn’t find a mobile developer with “non-predatory” monetization strategies (as well as seeing clones pop up in the mobile space), it chose to handle the port itself, adding an extra workload for the team alongside unexpected challenges.

Poncle’s race against time to beat the clones and put a proper Vampire Survivors port on mobile paid off in the short term. The game is highly reviewed and rated a top pick in Apple’s action game section, as well as on the Google Store where it is additionally reported to have already crossed 500,000 downloads. However, now the team has to figure out how to distribute the recently released Legacy of the Moonspell DLC in a way that won’t annoy mobile players.

“How do we make it fair, but also accessible to players who are only into free games. We'll figure something out and publish the DLC asap!” Poncle wrote.

Vampire Survivors was a beloved part of 2022 gaming and made both our Indie Top 10 and Shacknews Top 10 Games of 2022. The mobile version may be a bit behind, but it’s still an excellent way to play the game. Just keep in mind that Poncle has a lot on its plate and may take a bit to update the iOS and Android versions. We’ll share further details as they become available.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.