Warhammer Survivors Preview – Pass the Nuln Oil?
by Stefan L · tsaYou basically know what to expect from Warhammer Survivors. It’s Vampire Survivors, down to the game engine, but with Warhammer wrapped around it instead instead, and with both Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000 represented, that means you’ll be battling everything from Skaven to Tyranids. Automatically. Just while you’re, like, walking around and stuff.
But, pleasingly, that’s not the half of what this game is actually trying to do.
One of the overriding elements for the off-beat tone of Vampire Survivors is just how weird and intentionally janky it is. Warhammer Survivors takes a different path, putting more reasoning and thought behind various elements of how it plays and works. Oh sure, there’s still some off-the-wall stuff as well, but even these are in keeping with the world of Warhammer in its widest sense. Nuln Oil, for example, is an off-screen splodge of damage that gets flung down onto the world, based on the real life shade of black paint that it is, or the exploding D6 dice that deal damage based on the number that they roll, or the level that’s styled after a hobbyists work table.
Broadly, you do have a more grounded lilt on the Vampire Survivors frame work. You see that with the characters and weapons. The Legend of Katachan will just yeet frag grenades at enemies as they’re coming closer – in the example we were presented, that’s the Tyranids on the Imperial Bastion stage – and as you’d expect, grabbing the little nuggests of experience from downed enemies will quickly start to level you up, giving you a selection of upgrades to choose between. If you pick a weapon that doesn’t make a canonical sense for that particular character to wield, though, a more appropriate character will appear and fight by your side.
Grab a Shield of Faith, and a Battle Sister will be there to wield that for you. The natural quirk here is that she’s following you around, so the radius and actions that she makes will be a little bit offset, forcing you to move just a tiny bit more deliberately.
It’s the same over in Age of Sigmar, where Gotrek Gurnisson brings his own mightly Zangrom-Thaz axe to the fray, having it swirl around him when he moves (and stopping if he’s stood still), and cleaving a path, but select the Blade of High Heavens as a further ability and another character has to come to wield it – a flying character, it’s worth noting, which means they can fly over obstacles.
It’s an interesting twist on the system from Vampire Survivors, and with many of the same elements to it – there’s upgrade paths for many weapons to evolve them into different forms, if you’ve got the right items – but it does also mean that your growing squad can get a bit busy. That’s especially true with a growing troop of lasgun-toting Guardsmen. Thankfully there’s a bit of a fade-out effect to help you still see what’s going on around you.
The enemies gradually grow in power, so the Tyranids progress from Rippers to Termigaunts and then Leapers as you level up, but there’s unique quirks and attributes for each faction. On the grand scale of things, you have the Orc Waaaagh, which builds up over time and triggers a much thicker horde attack. The Tyranic Synapse, meanwhile, takes leader Tyranids and make the lesser creatures nearby be frenzied. Kill that enemy and it will stun the underlings, as an added bonus. It can also be distinct features for special enemies, such as the Malevolent Moon going through four phases and affecting nearby enemies in different waves, such as moving more erratically during the Scowlin’ phase.
And it all builds up to a final boss, an Extremis encounter. Trugg the Troggoth King capped off the Age of Sigmar demo, a huge foe that angrily stomps after you, attacks with his Iron Shell Club, and can heal itself multiple times. It has the potential to be a real slog of an encounter… unless you’ve found the specific Master Rune in order to help, attacking him with weapons to target a weakness, and upgraded it with Relics.
Whether you win or fail, it will all feed into the overarching metagame of unlocks and progression. There’s the Paint Pots system found in stages or earned for completing certain feats, and these unlock further characters as you’ve got the specific colour combos. The Arcana Cards similarly appear as you’ve completed challenges, and then have special rewards. There’s also addition game modes, such as the Fast Attack mode, where the clock runs at double the speed, XP accumulation is boosted, and it all just rattles along much quicker.
Through it all, you do get the feeling of love for the hobby as a whole, embracing both the grimdark sci-fi and the fantasy settings, sprinkling a bit of quirky real world stuff on top, and then trying to take the Bullet Heaven template that Vampire Survivors established so brilliantly, and tailor it to the setting.
Warhammer Survivors is launching on 10th November, but you can check it out now with an updated demo available on Steam and Xbox for PC.