Warhammer Survivors review – swapping vampires for grimdark spacemarines

Vampire Survivors gets an official clone in one of the only games to features both Warhammer 40,000 and the fantasy based Age of Sigmar.

There are few games with sufficient heft and popularity to spawn their own genre. Doom managed that feat, as did Dark Souls, but it happens less and less in the modern era. Balatro had a decent crack at it, inspiring a good few games based on layered stat multiplication, but far bigger than that has been the influence exerted by Vampire Survivors, a game that combined twin stick and bullet hell shooters to create something fundamentally new.

Since its early access release on Steam in 2021, Vampire Survivors has been ported to consoles, mobile, and Meta Quest’s VR headset. It has also precipitated numerous clones, some of which are closer to its well-defined model than others. Warhammer Survivors is one that doesn’t fall far from the tree, borrowing, amongst other things, its name, blocky faux 16-bit sprites, level layout, upgrade system, and, of course, its gameplay.

Given the high quality of Vampire Survivors that’s no bad thing, and it certainly proves more successful than the recent Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, which added mining and a range of sub-objectives, but somehow ended up feeling like less than the sum of its parts. Warhammer Survivors sticks to the established template but does so with consistency and panache.

Even after decades of video game adaptions we’re still unclear what, if any, connection there is between the Warhammer 40,000 and fantasy universe. We think that there is none but either way this is the only game we can think of (and there have been so many we may well have missed one) that features both. Although the two are treated as essentially separate games, with the characters from each universe never interacting.

We started off with the Warhammer 40,000 setting, the initial Ultramarine coming with a chainsword as his default weapon, its intermittent horizontal stabbing motion certainly taking some getting used to. Fortunately, it’s rapidly joined by various other armaments, both directional and area of effect, each of which can be upgraded multiple times, depending on the three or four options presented to you each time you level up.

Some of the weapons are used across both universes but only the ones that are meta references to the business of building and painting Warhammer miniatures, as dice roll across the landscape, to explode amidst hordes of enemies, or glue is used to fortify your character. Other weapons and abilities are unique to one universe or the other, but the broad strokes of the gameplay are identical, no matter which universe you play in.

Like Vampire Survivors, your time is spent avoiding the swarms of enemies herding themselves in your direction, positioning your character to let whatever weapons you’re carrying exact maximum damage, before circling back to collect the experience points left by defeated enemies. Weapons aim themselves, and many simply fire in random directions, your only input being to avoid the horde and occasionally choosing power-ups.

While that limited interaction could easily feel paltry, it’s kept fresh by the constantly shifting constellations of enemies, whose ebb and flow introduces new threats, mixing in larger bosses with the mass of cannon fodder. Your arsenal grows along with it and there are some hilarious, franchise-appropriate armaments to wield, from the previously mentioned mechanised sword to the Storm Eagle Rocket, a weapon of mass destruction that instantly vaporises everything onscreen – while sadly also razing the experience points normally left behind.

Along with unlockable characters, guns, and maps, and the addition of followers whose powers you upgrade along with your own, you can buy permanent upgrades that work across all the characters you unlock. This gives extra impetus to each run, knowing that along with the intrinsic rewards of exploration and building ridiculous damage bonuses, you’re also gradually strengthening your heroes for future runs across the vast maps.

Most of these levels have one-off collectibles to discover, usually several minutes’ walk from your starting position. They give you access to new features in the game, like mapping secrets and power-up chests, or cataloguing the game’s armoury. That’s where things really start to get interesting, because like Ball x Pit, Warhammer Survivors doesn’t just let you earn and upgrade weapons, you can also create new ones that fuse their abilities.

Gaining access to more of the game’s arsenal lets you learn new potential combinations, with certain guns mixing with passive abilities to create completely fresh weaponry. It means you begin discovering a wealth of possible builds, letting you adapt your approach for different level layouts and enemy combinations. All of which works very well, but all of which is also present in Vampire Survivors, which does give the game the feeling of an old-fashioned total conversion.

Working your way through each run, the chaos gradually crescendos along with your increasingly screen filling attacks, their firepower growing to engulf more and more of the swarm that constantly threatens to overwhelm your soldier and their entourage of followers. Combined with the overarching sense of progress, as you open up new maps and heroes, there’s a compelling and long term sense of momentum.

What there isn’t, is anything close to a new idea, which is a shame because Warhammer does fit the Vampire Survivors template very well and could’ve been a launch pad for some new features. It may be derivative, but its execution makes up for those similarities, its gameplay and meta game of upgrading and unlocking proving enjoyably addictive. It’s amazing just how much interest and involvement you can wring out of a single stick interaction, but Warhammer Survivors is proof that less can sometimes be more.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £6.49
Publisher: Auroch Digital
Developer: Auroch Digital
Release Date: 10th November 2026
Age Rating: 7

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