Ahead of update, Vampire Survivors creator insists 'graphically ugly third person devoid-of-narrative single player games will continue to be the foundation of our business'

Vampire Survivors is getting a new update soon. It's called the Chilling Update, not because it's scary (though you may think it is) but because it features a new map—called Ultra Whiteout—with lots of snow in it. Not only snow, but also floating skulls and angry-looking, snow-covered yowies. 

Also featured in the trailer is a new weapon called the Glass Fandango ("stronger with movement, Orologions, and against frozen enemies"), a new relic called the Antidote ("allows to buy the Defang PowerUp") and a new character called She-Moon, an enchantress who unlocks once Ultra Whiteout is survived for 20 minutes. As usual the update will be free, but there's no word yet on an exact release date: it's just "coming soon".

Vampire Survivors studio Poncle did an AMA on reddit to complement the announcement. It didn't yield many concrete details on the forthcoming update but it was a fun discussion. Asked if Poncle will ever make a "game / sequel" with Unity, creator Luca Galante (posting as poncle_luca) answered "lol no thank you!". 

On the topic of future games, Galante wrote that they'd likely be fairly similar to Vampire Survivors when it comes to scope. 

"We'll 'keep it simple' and gameplay focused," Galante wrote. "We might try a few things but we won't suddenly start building something with a completely different scope. We have plans, but they're pretty much like the updates plan for VS: we work on several different things at the same time, until one suddenly starts picking up speed organically because it feels like the right thing to do at that time, and so we focus on shipping that one."

He added: "I think it's a nice way to say we have no idea what we'll deliver next yet, but we know we'll deliver something." And then, summarising the tiny studio's plans in more prosaic terms, Galante added: "If we were corporate, I'd say that 'Graphically ugly third person devoid-of-narrative single player games will continue to be the foundation of our business'."

All questions related to vampires were met with obliviousness. The current roadmap runs until the end of 2024, so plenty more Vampire Survivors stuff is coming, apparently.