Vampire Survivors Releases Castlevania DLC, New Patch Notes

As a seasoned gamer with decades of gaming under my belt, I must say that the latest DLC pack for this game is nothing short of a musical feast! With 36 covers, they’ve truly outdone themselves, and I find myself humming tunes from my childhood all day long. The balance between homages, reinterpretations, experimentations, and remixes is just spot on.

The fresh DLC extension for the game ‘Vampire Survivors‘ titled “Ode to Castlevania” has made its appearance, enriching it with content inspired by Konami’s ‘Castlevania’ series. This new addition can be purchased now for $3.59 (originally priced at $3.99 but currently offering a 10% discount). Although this price is slightly higher than the previous game expansions, it seems that the value will justify the cost. Poncle Games has disclosed the details of the expansion via patch notes, giving players an overview of what’s new today: fresh playable characters, a novel map, new tunes, and new weaponry. If you were hesitant about purchasing this DLC, these updates should provide you with a clearer understanding of its worth.

Today’s update summary from Poncle indicates that while each platform version varies slightly, they are striving for complete uniformity, or full parity. Players on Nintendo Switch should be aware that a patch is scheduled within approximately two weeks to rectify some late-game problems. The severity and frequency of these issues remain unspecified in the developer’s notes. Furthermore, the update details when players can unlock the “Ode to Castlevania” content based on their progress in the main game.

Full patch notes from the game’s official Steam page can be found below:

Patch 1.12 – The Castellated One

At long last, our long-held aspirations have been realized: Castlevania has joined forces with Vampire Survivors! A big thank you goes out to Konami, poncle’s team, our collaborators, and everyone who supported us throughout the process!

And remember: it’s big. IT’S BIG.

20+ new characters
40+ new weapons and evolutions
30+ new music tracks
1 HUGE CASTLE
More info on the store page above and on the old post:

How to jump into Ode to Castlevania

Reach Level 20 in the first stage to unlock Inlaid Library and therefore Stage Selection.
At the bottom of Stage Selection, choose “Ode to Castlevania”.

Problems after getting Ode to Castlevania

Right Click the Steam icon -> Exit Steam
Wait a few seconds.
Restart Steam.
Go to Downloads, see that VS is getting updated to the latest version (1.12)

Gameplay in Ode to Castlevania

All characters from Ode to Castlevania have the ability to find special pick-ups, in any stage. Initially this is limited to Wall Chicken (that is the big brother of Floor chicken of course) but 3 more types of pickups will be unlocked while progressing through the Ode to Castlevania stage.

All characters have at least 1 unlockable Weapon Selector, that can be chosen from Character Selection by clicking/pressing a button on the character’s icon at the bottom of the screen. All Weapon Selectors have to be unlocked; to do that, every weapon in a specific Weapon Selector has to be unlocked first

There are a lot of bosses in the Ode to Castlevania stage, but you’ll have to actively seek most of them instead of waiting for the right minute for them to appear. You’ll find new icons on the map to help you navigate the stage.
Evolutions are straightforward and work just like in the base game: find the right passive to pair with an active weapon (some might require the passive to be at Max Level).

The music of Ode to Castlevania

You’ll find 36 fresh cover versions, along with over 50 original Castlevania tunes, to select from in the VS playlist on YouTube. Unfortunately, two of these covers won’t be available until November 7th for certain reasons.

Initially, we thought people would be enthusiastic about the Castlevania covers, but the level of excitement exceeded our expectations! Originally, we planned for 24 covers, but when musicians had extra time, we requested more, resulting in a total of 36 music covers. To ensure variety, we aimed to mix homages, reinterpretations, experimentations, and remixes. The rule I set for track selection was to include tracks that have an official version suitable for the game, but there were several other tracks that would have been fantastic in these new styles. In hindsight, starting earlier could have allowed us to do even more! I’m happy with every track on the current list and hope everyone finds a new favorite, especially some of the lesser-known tracks we chose for this collaboration! A big thank you to Daniele Zandara, Filippo Vicarelly, Evelyn Lark, and KEYGEN CHURCH for creating this fantastic soundtrack!

More FAQs

Although the main content of the DLCs is typically clear-cut, as collaborative projects, they do exhibit some variations. For instance,

there are no Steam achievements and

In the paid version of the Soundtrack on Steam, you won’t find the music covers; however, they will continue to be published on YouTube as we’ve always done. For further details, kindly check out our FAQs here: poncle.games/ode-to-castlevania-faq

Patch 1.12

Advanced Music Selection
There are so many tracks in the game, especially if you have some DLC packs, that the little menu was really struggling to be functional anymore. And it comes from someone who knows the order of the music tracks by memory… so we have added an advanced menu to easily navigate through different albums and music tracks to chose from
MEGA SEAL
After buying any of the Seal Power-ups, you’ll also unlock the Mega Seal panel in the Collection menu. This panel lets you easily seal the content of a whole DLC, or even of the whole base game. Who needs weapons anyway?
Pause Menu Map ZOOM
You can now zoom in and out on the pause-menu map. 2024 ho!
Pause Menu Arcana Info
You can now get a reminder of what your chosen arcana do. Affected weapons are also highlighted. Another big step for humanity.
New Passives in Preview mode
In order to complete the evos for Ode to Castlevania, we needed 2 passive weapons from the future to be available today! So, while the patch to properly unlock them will arrive sometime next year, for now it will be possible to access these 2 new passives, Parm Aegis and Karoma’s Mana, through the Arma Dio’s selection menu.
Memory usage improvements
Several optimisations have been made to reduce memory usage, that should help the late-game running better on console and mobile.

Other platforms

To ensure the game launches concurrently across all devices, we made minor adjustments to the patch versions. This implies that the game version may vary slightly among platforms, and we’re making efforts to bring them in line as swiftly as feasible.

2024-10-31 19:40

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