by Either way, Poncle’s Vampire Survivors is one of Steam’s biggest surprise hits in years, maybe even longer. The content-rich roguelite quickly garnered an impressive amount of buzz last year after debuting on Steam in late 2021 and eventually becoming one of the best-selling games on the service. But when Poncle’s Luca Galante started working on the project in his spare time, he only hoped to get 100 people to play the game on Itch.io, a goal that wasn’t initially achieved.
“I just wanted to get a few players to help out with feedback and suggestions as I kept adding content to the main game, and laugh together at the silly references,” Galante tells GameSpot. “I was hoping for about 100 people to play it and comment on itching, but that didn’t happen.”