A Deeper Dive into Vampire Survivors’ New Couch Co-op Mode

Hi, Xbox Wire! You might have already seen it, the vampire’s out of the coffin (the equivalent of “the cat’s out of the bag” for those fluent in Vampire Survivors): Our game is getting a 4-player couch co-op mode on August 17! In a free update! Be the bullet hell with your besties!

In today’s post, we wanted to explain in more detail how the co-op mode will work, why we’re adding it to the game, and some new details of what you can expect when the co-op update hits.

Let’s start with what the co-op update will look like. Imagine this: A dog, a tree, and an old man smelling of garlic and death itself meet in a dairy plant. And they turn the whole screen into a wild bullet hell! What sounds like a joke will soon just be a normal stage in Vampire Survivors – well, normal for Vampire Survivors standards, and hopefully fun to play!

With the co-op update, you can continue your save file and add additional co-op players on the character select screen before starting a level. Have up to 3 local friends join you and play the whole Vampire Survivors saga, including all characters, weapons, updates, DLCs, achievements, and more. Basically, the whole game gets a fully optional local co-op mode!

Now that the basics are out of the way, here are a few more detailed gameplay insights into the couch co-op mode for readers familiar with the game:

• Each player can select one character, and that character can only be selected once. Having 4 Poes, O’Soles or Sigmas on screen would simply make the universe implode. Much like in single-player, once you’ve played a stage, you can select new characters.
• Levelling up works slightly differently in couch co-op. The XP bar remains the same, but players will level up in turns. If one of your companions has met an early end, then their level up is moved along to the next player.
• Speaking of meeting early ends, in couch co-op, if one of your trusty companions dies, they turn into a coffin. Over time they will revive, but make sure you keep the coffin clear if you can, who knows the results if enemies swarm it…
• You’ll be able to select weapons as you level up as always, but the amount of weapons you can have depends on how many friends are playing. This means for maximum survival time you’ll have to decide who picks which weapon, but for maximum chaos you could shut your eyes and select anything!
• There are no couch co-op specific achievements! We wanted to make sure you can unlock achievements in co-op mode playing with friends if you prefer, but you don’t have to. You can always play the whole game in single-player just like before.
• The game still takes place on a single screen, so you will have to tactically agree with your teammates on where to go next and which spots on the map are best to fight your battles.

There is also a new item:

• We’re happy to reveal: The Friendship Amulet! This item can appear on the level-up screen and will level-up a random weapon for each player. Players will have to decide if they tactically (or selfishly) pick a level-up for a weapon of their choice or give the whole group a round of random level ups.

Lastly, we want to answer the question of why we’re adding the co-op mode to begin with. The answer is surprisingly simple: We named the game Vampire Survivors but felt a bit awkward that it’s a game for only one Vampire Survivor; with co-op, we can finally honour the ‘s’ at the end of Vampire Survivors!

On a more serious note: co-op was a frequently requested community feature and high up on our list of things to try out, mostly because we think it’s super fun! Some of our favourite games are local co-op games. We think games you play on a sofa with your friends can make for the best gaming memories, so we wanted to make it work despite any challenges that would arise (and rise up, like a vampire in the night, they did)!

In turning a single-player experience to a couch co-op one, we had a lot of gameplay questions to answer, so we hope you feel we’ve picked the right conclusions and that you enjoy the new mode! We’re always listening to feedback from the community, so find us on Twitter or Discord and let us know your thoughts. We’ve already heard a lot of players asking for an online mode, but that’s an order of magnitude or two more complicated to make right now. Maybe we’ll look into it when we have more time. Or maybe we are already?

There are still a few things we’ve not spoken about that you can uncover when the co-op update launches on 17th August. But we can already tell you that there might be a few ways to get a little revenge on your friends (it’s called co-op mode, but we are never against some friendly trolling).

Vampire Survivors is available on  Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows PC (with Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass) today. Couch Co-op arrives on August 17 as a free patch.

Vampire Survivors

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Vampire Survivors is a time survival game with minimalistic gameplay and roguelite elements. There’s no place where to hide, all you can do is try to survive a cursed night and get as much gold as possible for the next survivor, before Death inevitably puts an end to your struggles.