Vampire Survivors developer Poncle "still investigating" online co-op, cross-save beta due next month

11.01.2024 - 20:15 / eurogamer.net

What with the launch of couch co-op, Adventures mode and a variety of other free content updates, a Switch version, a new engine, two paid expansions (including an Among Us collaboration), plus news of an animated TV adaptation, 2023 was a busy year for Vampire Survivors. However, creator Poncle isn't done yet, and it's now share a revised development roadmap (of sorts) for its perennially vampire-free minimalist survival RPG, which includes an update on cross-saves and a potential online co-op mode.

All this comes in a new goodbye 2023/hello 2024 post shared over on Steam, which begins with a recap of the year just gone and a thanks to players before moving onto matters in Vampires Survivors' near and not-so-near future.

That includes a word on the progress of online co-op support for the game, which Poncle confirmed it was «investigating» back in September last year. A little over three months on and the studio says it's «still investigating» the feature, explaining that to «retro-fit online multiplayer in a game as simple as this, but with so much content, is still a huge challenge.»

The good news is Poncle says it's «got help now», but while «things are looking promising» the studio warns it's «still too early for us to be able to make any promises». Expect further progress updates as work continues, «until hopefully we can confirm it's actually going to happen.»

As for cross-saves, Poncle explains the much-requested feature has been in testing «for a while now». So why the hold up in getting cross-saves out to the public? That, it says, is due to the work it's needed to do to ensure the feature complies with data protection laws around the world. Still, it sounds like the bulk of that work is now behind it, seeing as the studio says it's hoping to launch cross-save support for Steam and Android — albeit in public-beta only — sometime in February.

Cross-save's arrival will coincide with Vampire Survivors' 1.9 content update — previously codenamed Honey Moon, but now being referred to as Space 54 — that'll also include some performance and quality of life improvements. 13 other names are featured on the accompanying (and wonderfully uninformative) Chaos Roadmap — including House, West Woods, Laborratory, Those People, First Blood, and The Lycaeum — and Poncle says, «the vast majority of these are free content updates of Whiteout-size».

And that's still not quite everything! There's the aforementioned Vampire Survivors animated TV series — which Poncle will be sharing more about as 2024 continues — and a new initiative the developer is calling The Vampire Survivors Experiment. This will see the studio «teaming up with other indie devs to work on some Vampire Survivors-adjacent experiments»,