I have complicated feelings about modern vampire history. Violence is cheap. Tasty people abound. And skyscrapers provide ample shelter from the sun. The sanctity of human life does not mean much to creatures who want to kill humans over a simple meal. It can feel powerful to be so far away from mortals’ considerations of life or death, but such an environment can also feel deeply alienating. Fortunately, the new survival game V Rising solves my biggest problem with properties like Vampire: The Masquerade– that the creatures of the night, the so-called underdogs, are too powerful. To be an oppressed minority, the player must fight, and enter V Rising, you definitely do. The base-building survival game does not hold back in trying to kill you through exposure, hunger, or angry wildlife. It differs from the usual, VtM-like model of vampires as a player-centered power fantasy.
V Rising, which has torn up the Steam charts in recent weeks, is billed as a multiplayer vampire action survival game, but you can also play it in singleplayer mode. According to its Steam page, you can build vast castles, fight against holy warriors, and plunder villages. And if you watch the videos, the main feature is the beautiful castles and flashy magical attacks. Which I would not know anything about, because I’m still a fragile new vampire who just grinds for recipes and mines copper for gear. Contrary to what you see in the flashy promotional videos, you will not slow down your rivals right away. You start with almost nothing and have to scramble up in terms of both power and resources. Most of the game – at least in the first place – is about killing enemies for their bones, any pieces of paper in their pockets and their firstborn baby. Okay, maybe not the last one.
V Rising‘s real-time combat is fast and messy, but the other half of V Rising is a careful inventory management game. If I want to live in my own home without burning alive during the day, then I have to throw bones in the fog fire that shields me from the sun. If I want a roof over my head, then I have to constantly supply blood to my fortress. I can harvest the blood by slaughtering my victims, or I can build a rat farm to lure unsuspecting rodents into my home. If all the logistical decision making and supply management does not sound appealing to you, then you might want to give this survival game an approval. But the game felt rewarding to me because of the craftsmanship, not in spite of it.
Maybe I’ll eventually get there V Rising feels like a power fantasy. For now, the game uses every opportunity it can to remind me that vampires are deadly and that I have to fight for every second of life I have. Surviving the fantasy lands of Vardoran feels like an achievement because it’s really hard to gather supplies as a vampire. You can venture away from your fortress to gather more valuable materials, but there is a catch – if you have resources with you, you can not use fast travel points. And if you are shot by a sentient tree or cheated by a headstrong bandit, you will lose all your furniture in that place. Every piece of copper, every roll of cloth and every whetstone I collect can feel like a little miracle. Nothing is cheap, easy or disposable. You are a vampire, but the game also forces you to be working. Over time, I began to feel that my character was actually a natural part of the framework, rather than an intrusive outsider.
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There are ways to automate the work, like luring rats to your cave to get extra blood or raising skeletons from the grave so you can grind their bones into dust that can be remade. But some key resources can only be obtained by looting bandits or killing minibosses. Which means placing yourself in the grace of the sun. Often, I hurried back from a successful bandit raid, only to be caught unawares by daylight. But instead of just being shyly guarded over mine all night, as I do in real life, my vampire would almost instantly go on fire.
Despite its mortality, sunlight is my favorite mechanic in V Rising. The only way to avoid being burned alive is to wait patiently until night falls (boring) or crawl towards the nearest tree or pillar to get shade. At first I thought I could just stroll around a tree and wait a few hours in the game for the sun to go down. Nix. My character caught fire and I realized that the shadows were moving, just like they do in real life. This also meant that I had to be conservative in chopping down trees or extracting stones during the day so that I would not have to deprive myself of life-saving shade. I was constantly diving for coverage, but I enjoyed that touch of realism from the designers. It made the world feel scary and alive, rather than just a beautiful backdrop for me to plunder.
The fight feels even and that’s it technically possible to beat any enemy you encounter through careful dodging and range attacks. In practice, the real enemy is time. Breaking down enemy defenses is not always the best option if you only have about six hours to sunrise. Taking too long to get to a remote boss hole often means returning home before sunset or camping next to a cliff for a few hours.
One thing to note about the early game is that it is very easy on the storytelling script outside of interface text. You have fallen into the world and are expected to figure out the systems with almost no tutorials. Death is your most important teacher. If it’s something you enjoyed Elden Ring, then this may not be a problem. I think the most interesting stories are the situations that I stumbled upon by accident. Once I was badly injured by a carnivorous plant. To avoid sunlight while my health was low, I ended up building my first home base next to a deadly Treant. When I mostly saw it beat wild animals, I had no idea it was one of the strongest enemies from the early game. Another time, I was assaulted by a vampire hunter during my third showdown with a bandit who had already killed me twice before. And I can not forget the time I was able to harvest 800 pieces of timber at once because I had accidentally bumped into a necromancer who gas bombed (do not ask) the whole forest while he was trying to kill me. V RisingThe world’s world is full of opportunities and dangers that can kill you in wonderfully unpredictable ways or give you luck when you least expect it.
Despite the genes, V Rising manages to be fair about its challenges. You either learn to play conservatively, or you die very quickly. And no matter how good you are at its combat system, your victories will not matter if you can not safely bring everything you have gathered back to base. And it’s a fascinating formula that already is caught the attention of a million players. V Rising does not offer players a world where we are gods. It gives us an ax and tells us we’re going to work.