Tales from the Backlog 38: Vampire Survivors

Make sure you're sitting down before you read further. Are you sitting down? What I'm about to write might shock you, so just, for your safety, take a seat. Ok. (Deep breath). I play a lot of video games, and I listen to a lot of podcasts about video games. I feel like I'm pretty close to the goings on in the video game world. Despite that, sometimes a game seemingly comes out of nowhere to take the gaming world by storm. Vampire Survivors was that game in late 2021, when suddenly every single one of those "what are you playing lately?" sections in video game podcasts was just full of talk of screens filled with projectile weapons, taking out hundreds of enemies at a time, collecting lots of shinies...so I did what any of us do, I filed it away in the "That Sounds Cool, But I Have Too Many Games Already" box and put it on my Steam wishlist, where it would be doomed to languish for years and years despite costing $3 full price.

Enter my good friend Chris Rettig, who spent that princely sum of $3 to gift me a copy of the game, and it probably took about one or two minutes before I suddenly understood why everyone was in love. Vampire Survivors is pure video game- no story, rpg mechanics, crafting systems, enemy movesets or character arcs. Enemies walk slowly towards you, your weapons autofire, and all you have to do is move your character around. Kill things, pick up shinies, level up and pick a weapon, and repeat while the hours melt away. This turned into a game where I would start a stream in the Tales from the Backlog Discord server with the intent of playing one or two rounds, then 3 and a half hours later I finally pull myself away, and it quickly became a game I spent more than enough time on to talk about on the podcast.

Joining me for episode 38 of Tales from the Backlog is the aforementioned Chris Rettig, a good friend and slinger of the best locally roasted coffee beans in the Eastern Hemisphere. Chris is a first time guest on this show, but he was a guest on my other show, A Top 3 Podcast on our Top 3 Standup Comedians episode. He's a big video game fan, and if you live in the Seoul, Korea area (which I know some of you do!), you owe it to yourself to check out Groove Coffee Roasters.

You can listen to episode 38 of Tales from the Backlog (Vampire Survivors) of Tales from the Backlog in the player below, or you can follow the links to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or search "Tales from the Backlog" in your favorite podcast app!