Warhammer Survivors review – another roguelite delight

While much of the industry has spent the last couple of months fixated on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake and GTA 6, I’ve had my eye on something else entirely: Warhammer Survivors. You see, I’ve spent far too many hours of my life playing Vampire Survivors, poncle’s breakout indie bullet-heaven game, and when I heard the developer had partnered with the good folks at Auroch Digital to create a Warhammer-themed version of the game, I knew I had to play it. Well, now I have. I’ve played a lot of it. And I am not disappointed.

First, a bit of context. Warhammer Survivors feels like two games in one, as it splits the universes of Warhammer 40,000 and the Age of Sigmar at the starting menu. This means you can’t load up characters from 40K, such as Malum Caedo, in an Age of Sigmar map, or vice versa. There are a couple of crossover weapons, passives, and objectives, as well as one unlockable stage, but for the most part, it’s two separate experiences.

Much like Vampire Survivors, the core loop of Warhammer Survivors consists of dropping into a stage, beating enemies, leveling up, picking up new weapons and passive items, and surviving for as long as you can. That’s the basics, but above that, there’s a layer of meta progression, as you’ll earn gold from each run, and you can use that gold to both unlock new characters and boost your attributes – health, damage output, etc. – to give you a better chance of making it deeper into a run on your next attempt.

I should admit here that I’m not massively into Warhammer, so I don’t recognize too many of the characters or weapons, but there’s plenty of variety, and I can appreciate that. The best compliment I can give every different weapon and character combination I’ve tested in Warhammer Survivors is that they all feel like they’d be just as at home in the original game. Not only that, but all basic weapons have their own evolutions, and this is where the chaos really kicks in. If you can survive long enough to evolve just one or two of your weapons, you can quickly become magnificently overpowered.

While the game doesn’t have much in terms of story, it keeps you engaged by way of the objectives menu, which essentially serves as a long to-do list, rewarding you with everything from new weapons to additional stages to gold. The meta-progression here is very much akin to most Survivors-like games, including the original, and it works. There’s more than enough to keep you busy for tens of hours, especially if, like me, you’re something of a completionist.

The pixelated visuals are – and forgive me for sounding like a broken record here – very similar to Vampire Survivors, but with characters from Warhammer lore instead. The stages are fine enough, though; they can get a bit stale after replaying them over and over again, which you’ll need to do, especially if you’re trying to complete all the objectives to unlock attacks, arcana cards, and other useful bits. It feels like a bit of a step backwards if you’ve played all the Vampire Survivors add-ons, which have much more varied maps. Still, it’s hardly dull, and there is a bit more variety as you unlock new stages.

So far, I’ve been largely positive about Warhammer Survivors, which makes sense, as I loved the original Vampire Survivors. However, I do have a couple of sticking points. My biggest issue is with the boss battles, which kick off at the 25-minute mark in certain stages. Whether you can actually take them on at that point or not is another question, though.

Bosses are locked behind specific weapon evolutions, which makes sense on paper, as it adds a bit more of a challenge. If you don’t have that weapon evolution, the game basically just kicks you out, not even allowing you the opportunity to scoop up any missed gold drops. It’s annoying to develop a great build and power through endless enemy waves only to technically fail the stage because you didn’t bring the right evolved weapon. In the late game, this happens all too often.

What I will say is that when you do finally figure out which weapon evolution you need to take on a boss, the sense of spectacle is much bigger than in Vampire Survivors. Each boss has a health bar and a variety of attacks, plus it’ll act differently depending on how much damage you’ve done. This is one thing I think is lacking in poncle’s original game, and it shows ambition from Auroch Digital. I’m not saying Warhammer Survivors’ bosses are bad, not by a long shot; it’s just the game design gatekeeping that surrounds them that I don’t like.

My second annoyance relates to objectives. Like Vampire Survivors, there’s a whole host of objectives to complete to unlock in-game items or rewards, but a couple in this game are too grindy and require killing 100k enemies with two different weapons. Admittedly, these two weapons are the only ones available across both universes, but I’ve played for over 20 hours, and I’m still nowhere close to completing either. Most of the objectives are great and push you to try out different characters and stages, but these two just feel insurmountable.

In terms of performance, I didn’t run into any issues playing Warhammer Survivors on my Steam Deck OLED. Even when deep into a run, with multiple weapons firing off at once and seemingly endless enemies headed in my direction, the frame rate was pretty consistent. It’s also not exactly a battery sinker, so you can get in a few hours of roguelite fun before you need to charge.

All in all, Warhammer Survivors is a riotous roguelite, offering real value for money at £6.39 / $7.99 in terms of the content and chaos on offer. It’s not perfect, with some frustration surrounding boss battle requirements and objectives that force you to grind like there’s no tomorrow, but the chaotic bullet-heaven core is engaging enough to keep me coming back for more, even after more runs than I can count on both hands.

If you can’t wait to play Warhammer Survivors, you don’t have long to wait. The game launches on Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, Android, and iOS on November 10. While you wait, be sure to check out our guide to the best roguelike games or our list of the best Steam Deck games.