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Vampire

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 voice cast revealed, includes Returnal’s Jane Perry and Still Wakes the Deep’s Alec Newman

by admin October 1, 2025

Paradox and The Chinese Room have revealed the voice cast performing in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, the action role-playing game which is barely a month away now. The game releases on 21st October.

The actors for all major and notable characters have been named, and feature the likes of Jane Perry, known for her BAFTA-winning performance in Returnal, and Alec Newman, who won a BAFTA this year for his performance in Still Wakes the Deep.

Watch on YouTube

The full list of names given in the trailer are:

Female Phyre (the player character): Tommy Sim’aan
Male Phyre (the player character): Hara Yannas
Fabien: Ronan Summers
Lou Graham: Jane Perry
Michael “Tolly” Tolliver: David Menkin
Safia Ulusoy: Amrita Acharia
Ryong Choi: Kae Alexander
Katsumi Ishizaka: Elizabeth Chan
Ysabella Moore: Joan Iyola
Fletcher: Rufus Wright
Mrs. Amelia Thorn: Bethan Dixon Bate
Simeon “Silky” Ladock: Alan Turkington
Niko Angelov: Martin Razpopov
Patience Boswell: Billy Peck
Onda Cardoso: Jamilya Ocasio
Max Webber: Osy Ikhile
Willem Axel: Richard Brake
Benny Muldoon: Patrick O’Kane
Bet of Night: Amanda Huddleston
Gideon Hall: Alec Newman

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has had a turbulent development and a rocky road to release, courtesy of questionable paid-DLC plans that were subsequently reversed (the playable clans that were going to be charged for are now included in the base game) and an unconvincing preview showing.

For all it might lack the RPG depth that followers of the Bloodlines series might want, and that players of the tabletop Vampire: The Masquerade game might want, Bloodlines 2 does appear to have good production values and strong cinematic character performances. Let’s hope it turns okay.

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October 1, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

I played China’s ‘anime GTA’ Ananta and I wasn’t surprised to find Spider-Man swinging and Batman punching, but I wasn’t quite ready for the vampire who vomits rainbows

by admin September 27, 2025

I may be outing myself as a dullard, but I don’t think I have a mind that could combine a bunny girl doing odd delivery jobs for cash, a cute Japanese kei truck, and a sick vampire who barfs streams of rainbows into a single scene. Perhaps no single mind could, but that was the moment in Ananta, which has made headlines as “anime GTA” since its re-reveal this week, that really won me over.

Ananta is borrowing—or brazenly copying—a lot, but it might have some wild-ass ideas of its own, too.

The main impression I got from playing about half-an-hour of Ananta at this year’s Tokyo Game Show was: Wow it must have taken a lot of people to make this game! China is on the path to dominate the next decade of triple-A games, and there’s no flashier way to do it than to make (or at least appear to be making) the ur-game. Every mechanic from the top 10 or 20 or 50 most popular games in the world, combined, is surely better than any of those games individually, right?

This maximalist approach to big budget game design has never really been great in practice, and a few minutes into Ananta reveal it is indeed doing things that you have done many times in a game before and probably are not foaming at the mouth to do again:

Punching guys with timing-based combos and counters reminiscent of the Batman Arkham games or Sleeping Dogs
Scripted quick-time events that feel right out of an Uncharted or other 2010s action game
On-rails car chases that give you unlimited ammo to shoot out the tires of your pursuers
Web-swinging around a giant city as Spide—er, the anime version of that guy from Prototype

Ananta | Gameplay Video – YouTube

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But then there’s the weird stuff—like hopping into the boots of Lykaia, a purple-haired getaway driver slash cop who has a totally different set of play mechanics to the intro protagonist, whose arms get all weird and stretchy to let him swing around.

In its free roam mode, Ananta let me pull up a phone interface to swap between characters, triggering a straight-outta-GTA-5 camera swoop up into the sky and back down into the part of the city where they’re currently hanging out. I only played as Lykaia for a couple minutes before my demo was up, but as a police officer she can scan NPCs against a database, frisk them for weapons, issue citations, and handcuff them, triggering reactions and dialogue you wouldn’t otherwise see.

Will this be fun? Will it produce any actually interesting systemic interactions or are these all paper thin mechanics that you’ll use three times and never see fit to use again? I have no idea, but it sure does seem like a hell of a lot of work if it’s the latter.

You know the saying about Chekhov’s coffin: it better have a vampire in it who’s violently ill and leans over the side of the truck bed to puke a stream of rainbow sick into the night air.

I spent most of the game as Taffy, a bunny girl whose eagerness to make money sees her blindly accepting an odd job from a rando who texts her to meet at a sketchy warehouse. Turns out the warehouse is full of gang members who try to bludgeon her to death with baseball bats. Good thing she has telekinetic powers! I punched out most of the guys before I realized I could psychically rip a bat out of someone’s hands and thonk it into his skull.

Then a delivery driver crashed his truck into the warehouse and told me I needed to get the cargo across town ASAP. Soon-to-be Gen Z icon Taffy cheerily says “Gotta get that bag” as she takes on the job.

It took me a few seconds into the drive to notice that the cargo in the back of the truck was, in fact, a coffin, and you know the saying about Chekhov’s coffin: it better have a vampire in it who’s violently ill and leans over the side of the truck bed to puke a stream of rainbow sick into the night air.

(Image credit: NetEase)

Taffy is less surprised by this than I am. Not in a “she’s used to vampires who throw up rainbows” kind of way, as Ananta does not use this mission to reveal some sort of in-universe lore about a race of vampires suffering some sort of sci-fi gut-melting virus. The vibe I get from Ananta is that none of these characters are going to be very surprised or upset or unduly threatened by anything: they’re all seemingly different strains of jovial bouncy superhero.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure my driving wasn’t the problem: I delivered the vampire to some sort of cult who played him up as a fearsome warrior as a gag before he continued puking into a rusty barrel.

It was just one baffling sidequest out of a game that promises unfathomable scope. I can’t say Ananta’s driving or punching or swinging felt exemplary—but none of them really felt that bad, either! This may be a game that does dozens of things acceptably well. And it made me laugh.

Maybe Ananta’s developers didn’t start from the cynical position of copying the most high-profile games in the world. Maybe they were just brainstorming and someone said yes to every single idea they came up with, even vampires barfing ROYGBIV? It’s done, love it, it’s in the game. Next?

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September 27, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Preorders Include Bonus Items

by admin September 26, 2025

It’s been a long wait, but Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 finally launches on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on October 21. Those eager to preorder the long-awaited follow-up to the immersive RPG from 2004 can grab one of the multiple physical and digital editions available now–including a $60 physical edition on PS5 and Xbox. The game is available at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. Preordering the game even unlocks a fun bit of bonus content that fans of the original Bloodlines will enjoy.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Preorder Bonuses

Bloodlines Nostalgia Jukebox

Preorder any version of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 to unlock the Bloodlines Nostalgia Jukebox. This in-game item unlocks original music from the original Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines soundtrack composed Rik Schaffer. It’s not much, but it’s a fun extra for long-time fans of the series.

$60 | Releases October 21

The Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 standard edition is the only physical edition of the game available. It includes the base game, plus the Bloodlines Nostalgia Jukebox if you preorder before October 21. You can preorder physical PS5 and Xbox Series X copies for $60 at Walmart and Best Buy. Digital preorders are also available on consoles and PC.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Deluxe Edition

$70 | Releases October 21

While the standard edition is the only physical version of the game, there are also multiple digital editions available that add additional in-game content. The first is the $70 Deluxe Edition, which has the base game and the Santa Monica Memoris DLC pack. The pack contains extra decoration items you can add to your in-game home, including:

Ankaran Sarcophagus
Neon Clan sign
Stop Sign
Voerman Sister Portrait

You can preorder the Deluxe Edition at the PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, and Steam. For those who purchased the standard edition, you can also purchase the Santa Monica Memories pack separately for $12.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Premium Edition

$90 | Releases October 21

There’s also a $90 Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Premium Edition available digitally on all platforms. This version of the game includes everything in the Deluxe Edition, plus an Expansion Pass that will grant players access to the upcoming Loose Canon and The Flower & The Flame story DLC packs launching in 2026.

Preorders are available at the PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, and Steam. The Expansion DLC will also be available as a separate purchase for those who pick up one of the other versions.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 takes place in Seattle, with you stepping into the shoes of an elder vampire. You’ll get to join one of several clans in the region, before diving into a sprawling open world that gives you countless ways to forge your own story. Combat relies on both physical prowess and deadly vampiric powers–though finesse and talking your way through encounters is also a possibility in some scenarios.

If you’re itching to dive back into the Vampire: The Masquerade universe, you have plenty of time to play through the most recent release in the series, Vampire: The Masquerade – Swansong. The narrative RPG is quite different from the upcoming Bloodlines 2, but it offers a unique storyline in the gothic horror world, and is available for cheap on most platforms.

$55 | Releases December 2

Though it won’t arrive until December, this hardcover book looks like it’ll be an excellent companion to the long-awaited video game. At over 200 pages, it provides a look at the game’s development, artwork, and overarching vision for its sprawling narrative. It’s a massive book (literally), and with dimensions of 12 inches by 9 inches, it could make a cool centerpiece for your game room or bookcase.

Published by Dark Horse Books, The Art of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is all but guaranteed to be high quality. So beyond developer commentary, concept art, and all sorts of Bloodlines 2 goodies, you’re getting a premium book that should be every bit as luxurious as its $55 suggests. Preordering at Amazon means you won’t be charged until the item ships, and you’ll be eligible for any discounts that may occur ahead of its release.

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September 26, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

The New 3D Vampire Survivors Clone That’s Storming On Steam

by admin September 23, 2025

Vampire Survivors was one of 2022’s break-out indie successes, a crudely animated 2D auto-shooter in which you moved your Castlevania-inspired character around screens filled with kerbillions of enemies, gaining new automatically triggered attacks and defenses by picking up the diamond-shaped gems dropped by fallen enemies. The more you played, the more characters you unlocked and the more skills would became available as you leveled up. Now meet Megabonk, a 2025 indie success, a crudely animated 3D auto-shooter in which you move your character around screens filled with kerbillions of enemies, gaining new automatically triggered attacks and defenses by picking up the diamond-shaped gems dropped by fallen enemies. The more you play, the more characters you unlock and the more skills become available as you level up.

The absolutely blatant way in which Megabonk takes inspiration from Vampire Survivors doesn’t seem to be doing it any harm. Then again, the most played games in the world are Roblox-made knock-offs, so no big surprises there. Oh, and quite importantly, Megabonk is a ton of fun to play. I mean, a 3D Vampire Survivors sounds like it would be, right? Also, to be scrupulously fair, this game from first-time developer vedinad does have some of its own original ideas…if you look hard enough.

In Megabonk, you move your chosen character (at the start you can choose between a nimble fox with a starting fireball and a clunky armored knight with a swingy sword) around the PS2-like 3D space, with enemies pinging into existence all around you. Much like in VS, you then learn how to move around in a way that’s appropriate for your attacks while trying to shepherd the crowd of enemies chasing you such that you can loop around and pick up the gems dropped by those you’ve killed. Gather enough of these and you’ll level up, and be able to pick from three randomly selected upgrades; a mix of new attacks, improvements for current ones, and various “tomes” that improve your defensive skills.

Scattered around the land are vases to break for extra coins and gems, treasure chests that can be opened by spending coins and which then grant you a randomly selected bonus item), and stone pillars that, when stood near for long enough, will improve something like health regen, knockback efficacy, spawning times for elite enemies, that sort of thing. It’s about trying to maintain your health bar for as long as you can, before losing everything and returning to the main screen. Here, if you’ve managed to gather enough silver coins or reached certain milestones (killed 1,000 skeletons, say), you can unlock new characters, weapons and tomes.

Which, yes, pretty much entirely describes Vampire Survivors. But here you can jump! And glide!

For all I mock, I’m having a good time with it. It’s difficult enough from the start that it makes you want to keep finding those incremental improvements—that’s a mistake a lot of Vampire Survivors clones make (and let’s not forget, there have been so many of them over the last three years), where things are too easy near the start, so you get too far into your early runs before difficulty ramps up, making it feel laborious to go through it over and over. But here, as in Vampire Survivors, I’m finding there’s a sense of strategy in seeking the things that let me improve each run.

In fact, if anything it’s just how, er, “faithfully” Megabonk sticks to the VS formula that is the secret of its success. So many knock-offs sensibly attempt to add their own twists, but too many of those break the formula. It’s perhaps not exactly high praise to point out how Megabonk‘s lack of originality helps it succeed, but it remains true.

Despite costing twice as much as Vampire Survivors (which is still an extraordinary $5), Megabonk is proving that success in player numbers. While it’s not exactly troubling the tops of the charts, 20,000 concurrent players for a first-time dev’s crude-looking indie game is no small feat, and it only released at the end of last week. The game’s already hitting that number today, and the U.S. has barely woken up, so it seems this game is still growing. It’s also boosted by glowing Steam reviews, with the game bathing in 91 percent positive ratings, affording it the highly coveted “Overwhelmingly Positive” label. It’s that combination of a winning formula (albeit somebody else’s) and a massive amount of luck that lets Steam games occasionally see this sort of buzz. And what a treat for the developer, whomever they may be—according to their BlueSky, the game had sold over 100,000 copies by the end of the weekend.

That’s life-changing money, and you love to see it.

And yes, of course there have been other 3D VS reimaginings, not least last year’s FPS incarnation Vampire Hunters, but it’s so interesting when something catches the zeitgeist in this way. It’s even more satisfying when the resulting game is a bunch of fun to play, too. Even if poncle might feel like he’s owed a couple of bucks as a result.

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September 23, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Your new Vampire Survivors obsession is Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor – and it’s a feast of a game

by admin September 17, 2025

I still can’t quite believe Vampire Survivors popularised a subgenre. I’m not mad at it – I adore it. But who would have predicted such a simple-looking and simple-playing thing would inspire such a following? A game in which all you do is move an auto-attacking character around while avoiding the swarms of enemies chasing after you. A game about choosing the right upgrades. It became an obsession! So the copycats and variations followed. But their job was harder: they couldn’t simply recreate it. This brings us to Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, released in 1.0 today, a variation on the theme. And I’m pleased to say it’s marvellous.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor

This shouldn’t come as a surprise because Deep Rock Galactic, the group-based co-op mining and ‘survive against hordes of aliens’ shooter that blew-up a few years ago was also marvellous. And would you believe it, the concept translates perfectly to the Vampire Survivors idea. You are a dwarven miner sent to dig gold and precious minerals while avoiding hordes of enemies. Kill the baddies, mine the goods, earn XP to level-up and unlock weapons, and repeat until you kill a boss and escape. So much is familiar. Yet there are differences, and it’s here Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor earns its applause.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor in action.Watch on YouTube

Number one: mining. This serves as the core theme of the game but it also adds an important mechanical purpose. Along with auto-attacking, the dwarf you control also auto-mines. Run towards a rocky pile to steadily bash it down, which you will need to do to collect the gold and gemmy things which serve as currency in the game and, therefore, determine what you can spend on upgrades between levels. This makes them very important. But you also need mine simply to plough new routes through the level around you, which is essential for escaping overwhelm by surrounding swarms of enemies. Tactical burrowing for the win.

Mining becomes the primary consideration each time you start a level, then, as you search quickly for gold and minerals before swarms begin to amass and mining becomes riskier. Bashing rock with a horde at your back is dangerous in case you get boxed in, so you’d best do it early. Mining therefore gives urgency and purpose to the game.

The nonchalance! But look closely and you see that blur of things on the left of me? Those are enemies. Dozens and dozens of enemies. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor does a good swarm. They’re frequent and crunchy.

Difference number two: multi-stage missions. Unlike in Vampire Survivors, a run in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is broken into connected shorter stages – four, I believe. Each stage ends with a mini-boss battle and each multi-stage run ends in a boss fight. This condenses the action and allows it to build more quickly than in Vampire Survivors, where it can be a slow-burn and take 15 minutes before your screen fills with an exciting amount of enemies. The break between stages also plays an important part in the upgrade strategy of the game, as you buy new abilities, and underlines the importance again of collecting currency minerals to spend on them. Note that you do also earn a choice of power-ups by collecting XP when killing enemies during the level, as in Vampire Survivors.

This broken-up level approach allows Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor to have a more structured campaign than simply trying to survive for 30 minutes as in Vampire Survivors, which I like. It feels more snackable and encouraging, as you clear earlier challenges and move onto harder ones, and complete a few successful roguelike loops of the game, unlocking beneficial new upgrades and – in this case – gear to equip your dwarves with.

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There’s a lot here. The campaign has multiple sectors that contain multiple, multiple-stage levels, with harder ‘gate’ levels separating them. Then there are Mastery, Anomaly Dive, Vanguard Contract, and Lethal Operation variations of them. And still that’s not all; there’s an entire, alternate Escort Duty campaign to change the primary objective when you play.

Mix this with a series of staggered character and level unlocks, and it’s a variation on Vampire Survivors that’s bulging with content and confidence – and some new ideas. Too much? Perhaps. It does feel dense with objectives and ‘things to do’ in a way Vampire Survivors felt blissfully clear of. But such is the responsibility of coming after. Such is the responsibility of needing to justify one’s challenge, one’s existence, and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor does that undeniably. The thrills of the subgenre Vampire Survivor unexpectedly created are in full effect here, and they’re as potent as they’ve ever been.

A copy of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor was provided by Ghost Ship Publishing.

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September 17, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Vampire Survivors’ developer created publisher to “share the luck” with other indie studios

by admin September 16, 2025

Poncle founder and Vampire Survivors creator, Luca Galante, has said the team established publishing arm Poncle Presents to “give something back to the indie community.”

In a recent interview with GamesRadar, Galante, who developed and published Vampire Survivors under the studio name Poncle, explained that the (now expanded) team established its publishing arm to share what it learned from the game’s development with other indie studios.

“Basically, we got very lucky with Vampire Survivors,” Galante told the publication. “The game has been so successful that – we definitely made some mistakes when it comes to putting the game out there, but we learned a lot, and wanted to try to sort of share what we learned with other indies.

“It was a way to try and give something back to the indie community, share the luck.”

Indie studio Poncle revealed its publishing division, Poncle Presents, in September 2024, emphasising that it would not operate as a “traditional publisher” but would work more as a label or fund to enable people to “make their games.”

Galante said he sees “a lot of publishers I don’t like” and uses these to “define what a good publisher should be.”

He went on to explain that he sees “a lot” of publishers that “exploit the platforms just to make money,” by putting out “games that are incomplete or in early access that actually never get completed.”

Instead, Galante believes publishers should “make genuine games, genuine products, something that has some real value” and understand “that not everything can be a breakout hit.”

This is the reason Poncle Present plans to “keep supporting games post-launch” regardless of how successful they are because “once you put the game out there, you have an audience, and as big or small as it is, that audience deserves to be treated fairly.”

The publisher has so far released two titles, both indies under $5: Doonutsaur’s arcade roguelite Kill the Brickman and Nao Games’ hack n’ slasher Berserk or Die.

Poncle Presents is primarily focusing on small teams that are “very transparent in what they do,” with Galante seeing a publisher’s role as “making the developers and the players happy” rather than simply a business.

While there are currently no plans for a Vampire Survivors sequel, Poncle announced in 2023 that an animated TV show based on the hit roguelike had been greenlit.

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September 16, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Vampire Survivors developer Poncle on what it takes to be a good publisher: “Not everything can be a breakout hit”

by admin September 14, 2025

Getting your game a publishing deal has never been an easy thing to do. Right now, it’s especially hard given that for many publishers, if it doesn’t seem like a guaranteed hit, it likely isn’t something they’ll take on. This is something that Vampire Survivors developer Poncle, or rather the actual person, Luca Galante, takes great issue with, and in a recent interview he spoke more broadly of his issues with publishers, and his thoughts on now being one.

“I see a lot of publishers I don’t like, and I think that’s my way to define what a good publisher should be, probably,” Galante explained to GamesRadar. “I see a lot of publishers that try to exploit the platforms just to make money, basically, because the video game industry is very obviously an industry that makes a lot of money. There is a lot of money to make. I see that these publishers will try and just exploit platforms for money.”

He went on to note how there are publishers who will put out simply incomplete games, or early access games that never get finished, and that for him, “what a publisher should do is, first of all, make genuine games, genuine products, something that has some real value, and then understand that not everything can be a breakout hit.” Galante also spoke of the importance of post-launch support, and for him this is “definitely a big thing from my point of view that publishers should be able to offer.”

As of now, Poncle has published two games, Berserk or Die, a beat ’em up where you have to mash your keyboard to beat enemies, and Kill the Brickman, a Brick Breaker-esque, turn-based roguelike game, both of which are cheap as chips (£3 and £4 respectively).

It’s these kinds of affordable games with smaller teams that Galante wants to lean towards in publishing, and in particular his priority is to find devs “that are very transparent in what they do, they want to talk with their community, and they have a real, genuine passion for making games.” Not only that, it’s important to him that these devs get to realise their vision by enriching it, as opposed to forcing in things like microtransactions or season passes.

Galante is, perhaps most importantly, fully aware with how lucky he got with Vampire Survivors, and that’s why he wants to publish other games. “We definitely made some mistakes when it comes to putting the game out there, but we learned a lot, and wanted to try to sort of share what we learned with other indies. It was a way to try and give something back to the indie community, share the luck.” Good luck indeed! At this point in time, every dev needs every ounce of the stuff they can get.

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September 14, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 to refund all PS5 Premium Editions following backlash over paywalled clans

by admin September 6, 2025

From next week, anyone who pre-ordered their Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 Premium Edition via the PlayStation Store will be refunded.

Community developer DebbieElla told players the refunds were coming as part of recent “adjustments”, and confirmed we’ll get “all the details” on the changes on 17th September.

We weren’t allowed to direct capture the preview build but we were supplied some b-roll to fit a video together with instead.Watch on YouTube

As we reported last week, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 publisher Paradox is rethinking its plan to charge for two of the six playable clans in the game following community feedback. The news came after publisher Paradox announced the release date for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, 21st October, along with pricing details for the game. It was then we learned the company intended to charge £20 extra to access two clans in the game, via a Shadows and Silk content pack.

According to developer, The Chinese Room, these two clans represented content developed beyond what was originally planned for the game after it inherited development of Bloodlines 2 from Hardsuit Labs. Consequently, The Chinese Room’s reasoning was this was additional content developed for the game, so it would sell it as such at release. But not anymore.

Now, in a Discord post, DebbieElla writes: “We are working hard on the adjustments that we promised, and we will be able to tell you all the details on 17th September. Making significant changes like this involves many moving parts, and we want to make sure that we get it right with this change.

“Anyone who pre-ordered the Premium Edition through the PlayStation Store will be contacted and refunded starting Monday 8th September. You’ll be able to pre-order your Premium Edition copy later again, before the release on 21st October. Please note that this is an intentional first step in our planned course of action leading up to 17th September to deliver the best possible experience for you at launch.”

The post closed on thanking players for their patience, and later messages from DebbieElla confirm this only applies to this particular edition sold for PlayStation – purchases on other platforms are unaffected.

Some are now hoping this signifies all clans may be available in the base game, but as one player points out, however, “taking the clans out of the deluxe editions is the easy part. The hard part is trying to figure out what else they can put in there”.

In his Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 preview a few weeks back, Bertie wrote: “[T]his is a sequel to a cult RPG after all, and one based on a major tabletop RPG to boot. In this case it feels valid to crave a little more role-playing, a little more texture and depth to the game’s people and conversations. And so for now, a question mark remains”.

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September 6, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Vampire Survivors’ free-roaming online mode is available to play in beta now, and there’s an official boardgame coming too

by admin August 31, 2025

Vampire Survivors’ long-anticipated online mode is finally here, sort of. Developer Poncle announced at the end of this week that online multiplayer has been implemented in the game’s beta branch.

Vampire Survivors has of course had multiplayer functionality for several years. But playing with pals was previously limited to local co-op. Getting Vampire Survivors to work online has proved quite the challenge, as broken down by the online mode’s developer Coherence in a fascinating blog from April. For example, each of Vampire Survivors’ multitudinous enemies rely on local physics interactions, making it very tricky to make those interactions concurrent across a network.

Online mode brings a few important differences to both regular solo play and local co-op. For starters, players are free to roam around the environment as they please when playing online, rather than being restricted to the screen area as is the case with local play. Moreover, players all level up simultaneously, meaning everyone needs to hit the XP cap before levelling can commence. And if you want to play any of the expansions in online co-op, you’ll all need to own said expansion before that is possible.

Alongside the online mode’s beta rollout, Poncle also revealed that a Vampire Survivors boardgame is in the works, just in case you want a turn-based version of Vampire Survivors that takes up a load of physical space. Poncle says it has “spent a long time making sure the board game ‘feels’ as much like Vampire Survivors as possible” with features including run-based play where you unlock new stuff, a built-in levelling system and key playable characters from the original game.

(Image credit: Poncle)

Finally, Poncle provided a sneak peek of Vampire Survivors’ next major update, which will introduce two new stages, two new weapons (plus evolutions), a “party mode” that enables solo players to be accompanied by friendly NPCs, and two new playable characters (spoilers follow). One of these rolls a dice every 30 seconds to provide various random bonuses, while the other causes “explosive props” to appear while moving around.

If you want to play Vampire Survivors online, you’ll first need to switch to the appropriate branch within Vampire Survivors’ properties menu on Steam. Fortunately, it’s a pretty straightforward process explained by Poncle in its announcement.

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August 31, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Good, the grubby paid clan plan for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is being “adjusted”

by admin August 28, 2025

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 publisher Paradox appears to be rethinking its plan to charge for two of the six playable clans in the game.

Community developer DebbieElla told the Bloodlines 2 Discord community last night (spotted by ResetEra): “We are listening to your feedback about the Lasombra and Toreador clan access, and we’re making adjustments ahead of launch to reflect this. We will share more information about what this means as soon as possible.”

The comment comes a week after Paradox announced the release date for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, which is 21st October, along with pricing details for the game. It was then we learned the company intended to charge £20 extra to access two clans in the game, via a Shadows and Silk content pack.

The Shadows and Silk pack can be bought alone for £18.69/€22/$22, or as part of a Premium Edition for £75/€90/$90, which also includes a cosmetic-focused Santa Monica Memories pack. For reference, the Standard Edition of the game costs £50/€60/$60.

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At a glance, this might not seem untoward. Plenty of games sell additional content at launch and bundle it with premium editions of a game. The base price of Bloodlines 2 even appears to have been adjusted because of it, so it’s cheaper than other full-priced games. But the problem comes from the content being charged for itself: the clans.

The clans in Bloodlines 2 are a core part of the game. Choosing one is equivalent to choosing your character class and therefore the playstyle you’re opting for. Clans also determine the storied group you belong to in the world and give you access to different clothing options and clan-specific non-player characters. Clans are not superfluous, cosmetic content.

What’s more, the locked Toreador and Lasombra clans are highly desirable. Toreador are a clan built around the iconic archetype of vampires as seductive, sexy beings, and come fitted with the power to enthrall their prey by, yes, kissing them. Lasombra, on the other hand, do their work in the shadows, and can manipulate shadows to tangle and hold enemies and teleport themselves. I tried both clans briefly in the Bloodlines 2 preview build I played and enjoyed them, especially Lasombra.

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Important caveat: you can access powers from another clan in Bloodlines 2, so you’re not locked to only doing things your clan offers. Every time you gain a higher tier of power, you’ll see other powers listed to the left and right of them that belong to other clans. You can unlock them but doing so is costly and complicated. You need to pay a higher skill-point cost for them as well as a price related to other ‘currencies’ in the game, which are usually earned by drinking special types of blood, and you need to find certain NPCs to teach these powers to you.

It’s a faff, in other words, so it’s more likely your experience of Bloodlines 2 will be unlocking your clan-specific powers first before branching into other clan’s abilities. Your clan choice, therefore, is an important one, and so the decision to paywall access to a third of them is notable.

The justification for doing it, as relayed by developer The Chinese Room to Rock Paper Shotgun at Gamescom, was these two clans represented content developed beyond what was originally planned for the game. The Chinese Room inherited development of Bloodlines 2 from Hardsuit Labs, remember – it didn’t originate it. So The Chinese Room’s reasoning was this was additional content developed for the game, so it would sell it as such at release. But if the content is developed during a game’s main development period, is it really additional? And if it appears alongside other content in the game, only with a padlock over it, is it really additive or withheld?

Portioning off parts of a game to be sold around release is nothing new. Paradox itself has a track record of leveraging paid-for downloadable content as a significant source of income for games it makes. It was expected, to a degree, here. But Paradox has chosen the wrong approach. Carving off core gameplay will never be an acceptable proposition, and its decision has tainted the upcoming arrival of an excruciatingly long-awaited game. Here’s hoping the “adjustments” being considered will turn this situation around.

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August 28, 2025 0 comments