Warhammer Survivors, Just One More, Emperor, I Swear – PC Review

Auroch Digital seems to be having a blast with the Warhammer license. After two successful forays into the world of "boomer shooters" à la Doom with its , the British team now turns its gaze to a much more recent subgenre, directly involving its creators. In collaboration with poncle, Warhammer Survivors offers exactly what the name suggests: Vampire Survivors with a Warhammer theme. Both Age of Sigmar and 40K, by the way. Two realities for the price of one, for a pastime that will forcefully absorb many more hours than you intend to dedicate to it.

The main differences between Warhammer Survivors and its famous source of inspiration are mostly aesthetic; the title does not aim to reinvent the wheel and certainly doesn't need to. For those unfamiliar with the genre, we're talking about a "bullet heaven," a top-down roguelite action-RPG where we must survive, as the name suggests, hordes of beasts eager to kick our butts. However, the player can only move around the map, dodging threats and collecting items; they will have no control over weapons, which will attack automatically based on their respective cooldowns and the most suitable target.

Eliminating enemies grants experience points and levels up, allowing us to choose a new weapon or artifact, or upgrade one we already possess. After that, we try to survive until the timer runs out or until a swarm so tough and numerous arrives that we can no longer repel it. Surviving enough minutes, reaching a certain level, or performing specific actions will unlock new characters, environments, and modifiers, while with the accumulated money we can improve our parameters to make subsequent runs faster.

The first few games, and generally the first 5-10 minutes of each session, are quite anemic, due to the limited pool of options and the lack of action on the field, but a moment will come when we will have amassed such a vast arsenal and the game will try so hard to kill us that the screen will fill with bullets, monsters, explosions, numbers, indicators, and pools of blood. Non-stop, until the inevitable game over. We can decide where to move and which power-up to prioritize to direct the current build, but we will always be at the mercy of fate regarding equipment and opposition. Sometimes we become so enormous that literally gods start arriving just to bury us, but most of the time we die before reaching that glorious moment. 

Therefore, after a while, a certain underlying monotony is felt. But then you look at the clock and three hours have passed. This is the magic of Vampire Survivors, perfectly transposed here too: the ability to convince you to do a quick run and then deprive you of the entire day with the cry of "just one more and I'll stop." After years of updates, poncle's title surpasses Auroch Digital's in terms of content, however, Warhammer Survivors' 1.0 holds its own decently and does not rule out future expansions.

For now, we can only impersonate the "good" factions, fighting against Skaven and Goblins on one side, Tyranids and Orks on the other (and not only), but we still have a lot of favorites to choose from, with many weapons, mechanics, and references well adapted to the context. After dozens of hours, new stuff keeps popping up, and having two universes to navigate, you'll most likely be busy for quite a while. I also appreciated the presence of elements that recall the original board game, with items like dice, glue, and paint pots accompanying greatswords, bolters, and Warp portals. Fighting literally on a workbench is priceless.

Despite the chaos that tends to be created, with hundreds of sprites on screen, the action remains quite legible, the various types of enemies easily distinguishable, and bosses well highlighted. The numbers will come to occupy 80% of the view, but at that point, there's little to worry about. Of course, some characters are better than others, just as some weapons or artifacts are preferable to others, but more or less, a balance can always be found, at least on your side of the field. I do believe that the balancing of some enemies needs to be reviewed, as they sometimes have a bit too many hit points, Nurgle's Beasts first and foremost. It also happens that they pass through walls, making navigation of corridors and barricades a nightmare, or push each other, ending up on top of us and causing us to lose a lot of health, or worse. Minor issues, which hardly affect the desire to immediately return to sowing destruction.

The interface is functional, but I wouldn't have minded a more readable map and slightly smaller levels; it takes an eternity to go from one end to the other. Performance is rock-solid; the game is a featherweight after all. The soundtrack is good, epic and rock-infused, in line with the locations, but it is soon drowned out by the plethora of sound effects. I admit, however, that, given its constant presence in the background since the first launch, I eliminated all forms of audio for something more "relaxing." It would have soon become boring otherwise.