Warhammer Survivors Review

Auroh Digital, Poncle, warhammer survivors

Ever since Vampire Survivors came onto the scene in 2021, the bubble for rogue-lite bullet hell games has ballooned, and many other developers have tried to put their own spin on it. When Warhammer Survivors was announced to be coming from Auroh Digital with the help of Poncle, the developer behind Vampire Survivors, I had quite a few questions: is the game going to be a 1-to-1 copy? Is this going to be able to not only live up to Vampire Survivors, but also change up the formula? These are all questions I’m going to do my best to answer in my review.

What Is A Survivors Game?

The survivors genre is a very simple one: you pick a character, pick a stage, and your goal is to survive for an allotted amount of time. Warhammer Survivors is no different. If you’ve played Vampire Survivors, or even most other games in the genre, you’ll be right at home here.

With Warhammer Survivors, you have two separate campaigns to pick from. There is the Warhammer 40,000 campaign, which features the iconic Imperial Knights. You also have the Warhammer Age of Sigmar, which is a more fantasy focused campaign. Both have a multitude of different characters to unlock, unique weapons, and cool looking factions to fight against. If you’re worried about needing to know Warhammer lore, don’t be. I had no knowledge of anything related to the series, and I have learned little even after my 25 hours throughout the game so far.

As for the actual gameplay routine, you pick your character and your stage. Your goal is now to survive the 25 minutes and eventually move on to the next stage. Enemies will drop XP, and on every levelup you can select an upgrade for your weapon, or a new weapon or passive to help you during your run. Mini bosses will show up every few minutes and drop a chest when defeated, containing gold and a random upgrade for any of your currently collected weapons and passives.

There are now two unique bosses that are added to each level in Warhammer Survivors. Around the 15 minute mark, a new mini boss will show up and boast unique attacks and a significant amount of health. These are generally tough to take down and easily ruined quite a few of my runs in the first few hours. There are also final stage boss named Extremis bosses. These show up at the 25 minute mark, and are unkillable unless you have a specific weapon upgrade unique to each boss. I really enjoyed both of these, but especially the Extremis boss, as it gave me reasons to go back and replay stages once I had unlocked more characters and weapon upgrades further along in the campaign.

Another new addition that I’m not super thrilled with is the addition of followers. In this game, not every character can wield every type of weapon, so instead, if you choose a weapon that your main character cannot wield, a different character will now join you on the battlefield. They cannot be hurt and are only there to wield the weapon that you chose. While this is a cool concept, the actual implementation is not great.

Whereas in most survivor games the attacks come from the middle of the screen where your character is positioned, here the attack will come from the follower, and you can no longer direct it directly from the middle of the screen. For some weapons like projectiles, this is fine; however, there are some weapons that are area based, and when moving around, they do not necessarily cover your character.

Another issue with the follower situation is that it is only half implemented, in my opinion. When you are choosing your character, they each have a unique skin and starting weapon. However, when you get a follower, it’s not always for their unique weapon. For instance, you might select the Bolton as your new weapon, which is the starting weapon for Brother Luca Amasius, instead of being carried by Canoness Aurora Veritas, who typically fields the flamer. As much as I don’t like the follower system with how awkward it throws the gameplay loop off, I wish the developers had fully committed to including the character with their weapon, instead of this half implemented system.

Presentation, Performance And Audio

Retro pixel art is always one of those topics where people are either going to love it or hate it, but I enjoy it. It’s the same art style I’m used to from Poncle already, so I don’t mind it one bit. The Space Marines look great; most of the enemies in the games have a few different variations between each type, and everything looks like it would fit into the level it’s on.

Sound design in this game is superb. A lot of the sounds are carried over from Vampire, but they work well here. All the weapons make sounds that make sense for what is being used; the animation for the chest pickup and sound is wonderful and gives you that hit of dopamine every time.

Performance was great across the board as well. I believe this is the first game I’ve reviewed where I spent more time playing it handheld on my ROG Ally X vs. my Series X. The game ran perfectly, with no hiccups or crashes encountered at all.

The soundtrack for the game absolutely rocks too. A lot heavier compared to what I’m used to in the genre, but it works with the IP, and it doesn’t distract from anything that is happening on the screen. This is something that I could totally see being added to my gaming music playlist, so I’m hoping to see it on music services in the future.

Leveling Up Between Rounds

One of the mainstays with the survivors genre is that you will die a lot. Every run however, gets you progress, as new characters can be unlocked, and currency can be spent to give you permanent unlock bonuses, such as more health, wider pickup radius, or even more projectiles to start off with. The system is pretty much the exact same as it is in Vampire Survivors, however, with one pretty big change.

The upgrade system is limited to a single campaign. That means if you stick to only the Warhammer 40K campaign to start, when you go to start the Age of Sigmar, you are going to see almost none of those upgrades. There is a final upgrade for each campaign that will apply to the other campaign as well, but with how much these upgrades cost, you’re not likely to see any of this until you’re around at least 15 hours in. I spent roughly 12 hours in 40K before giving Sigmar a shot, and I had zero of the final upgrades for any of the categories yet, and it was disheartening finding out that 12 hours gave me absolutely nothing here. I’m sure the devs did this to inflate the time played, but I did not enjoy this aspect and still don’t. I’m approaching 30 hours and still have multiple level up categories not even close to fully leveled.

Final Verdict

Warhammer Survivors isn’t going to light the genre on fire with innovation, but it doesn’t have to. The game is incredibly fun, full of content and cool characters, and enough replayability to earn a permanent spot on my system. The game is a wonderful companion game to Vampire Survivors, and is one I hope that developer Auroh Digital keeps expanding on, and is worth playing whether you’re a Warhammer fan or a survivors genre fan.