Warhammer Survivors bukan hanya klon Vampire Survivors, tapi juga bertujuan menjadi perayaan dari yang terbaik dari kedua dunia | Pratinjau IGN

There are few things more rewarding than the tide turning in your favor in Vampire Survivors. Starting as a weak soldier with one small attack and a fear of even the smallest foe, you soon become a literal weapon of mass destruction and turn a bullet hell of enemies into your own personal bullet heaven.

And you know what can make that feeling even better? Doing it with some trusty allies from the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar universes while using weapons pulled not just from the lore, but those inspired by how we engage with the tabletop game. Yes, we’re talking about the very dice we roll and paint we use to bring our miniatures to life. That, my friends, is Warhammer Survivors.

Warhammer Survivors Honors Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar’s Tabletop and Video Games

Warhammer Survivors is a standalone game developed and published by Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun’s Auroch Digital in partnership with Vampire Survivors’ Poncle, and it initially feels like returning home to the original title. However, you’ll quickly start to notice that it does enough things to stand tall on its own.

I spent a few hours with the demo you can download right now on PC via Steam and Xbox ahead of its November 10, 2026 release date, and I was able to check out both the Warhammer 40,000 side of the game and the Warhammer Age of Sigmar side. You read that right, there are two separate games included with their own unlocks, stages, achievements, and more.

We’ll start in Warhammer 40,000, as I first jumped into the armored shoes of Boltgun’s Malum Caedo, who starts with the Chainsword that is the weapon of choice for those within the Imperium of Man. However, in Vampire Survivors fashion, you quickly level up and gain access to new Weapons and Passives that make you increasingly more powerful.

As I teased before, you’ll find Boltguns and Lasguns and even Whirlwind Batteries that rain down missiles from above, but it’s the tabletop-inspired items that got me the most excited. If you are entrenched in the Warhammer universe, you’ll be very familiar with Nuln Oil, a very popular shade of paint. In Warhammer Survivors, this becomes a weapon that targets groups of enemies and damages them by splashing them with flammable oil.

Another fun weapon is the D6 Dice, which is inspired by the same dice that fuel its tabletop games. In Warhammer Survivors, these are represented by massive dice that come flying in off screen and will explode depending on what number they land on.

So not only are these giving a nod to the tabletop experience in a clever way, but they are giving it some serious gameplay ramifications, as enemies drenched in this Nuln Oil are even more susceptible to fire damage. This is all taken to greater heights when you learn there is an actual Hobby Table stage that has you playing on a workstation and that there’s a Paint Pot system that unlocks characters when certain combinations of colors are used. These little touches are so clever and don’t feel forced, they feel earned and welcome and add to the entire experience, just like the ally system.

In traditional Vampire Survivors, players are facing an endless horde of enemies by themselves and an array of weapons that fly in every direction away from and around them. In Warhammer Survivors, you get to bring some NPC friends along for the ride, and it’s awesome.

If you played Vampire Survivors’ Ode to Castlevania DLC, you’ll have a base understanding of how this works as they had a similar Familiars system, but you’ll be able to recruit other characters from the Warhammer universe to help you out on your run by choosing to select the weapons they would normally wield in the canon.

As an example, I may have started as Malum Caedo, but I was able to quickly add Trooper Bartosz Kozlowski to my crew (after I rescued him on the map from a circle of enemies and unlocked him as a playable character!) by choosing the Lasgun weapon. He followed me around and shot las bolts at the nearest enemy, and even more Astra Militarum troops joined as I leveled up the weapon. It honestly gave me the slightest link to Mass Effect 2, as I looked forward to recruiting all my allies for this epic war each run presented me with.

As for the runs themselves, they lasted anywhere from five minutes to over 20, and I enjoyed how there were always things to chase after. One of these objectives, which is represented by a question mark, is how you find characters like Trooper Bartosz Kozlowski or The Legend of Catachan. The latter character was the biggest challenge of the demo for me as he was surrounded by a circle of Warriors, who all used their Synapse Emitters to make any enemies within a close range of them even more powerful. Conquering that and unlocking The Legend of Catachan with a fun Super Smash Bros.-esque “Joins the battle!” screen was definitely a victory worth celebrating.

There are also a handful of objectives to accomplish that will unlock even more Weapons, Passives, and more, and it was a pleasant surprise when five or more of them unlocked after one run. These types of games just know how to give you that dopamine rush that keeps you coming back for more.

This was only the demo, so we’ll see how the full game plays out, but after rescuing the two characters and getting most of the objectives after a couple of hours, I did feel a bit of tedium start to set in. My biggest problem with Vampire Survivors was always feeling that the start could be very, very slow, as you are so weak and doing the same things over and over again, and I felt this a few times during my hands-on.

For example, to unlock The Legend of Catachan, I had to walk for nearly two minutes northeast to find him, and the grind started to show its ugly face after the fourth or fifth try as the movement is slow at first and you aren’t so powerful. There is supposed to be so much content in the full game - 40+ characters, 75+ weapons, 15+ stages, and countless objectives - so it will hopefully mitigate that somewhat, but it just reminded me of one of my few annoyances with Vampire Survivors.

Vermintide and Stormvermin and Clanrats!

For the last part of the story, we’re going to leave the Tyranids of Warhammer 40,000 and hop over to Warhammer Age of Sigmar and the ruthless Skaven. The two campaigns play the exact same, but it was fun jumping into a new universe and being able to unlock things all over again and take on a new foe. These enemies kept me on my toes, and the rat-like Vermintide may have been the most surprising. While I’m used to hordes and hordes of enemies descending on me every run, the Vermintide would, once in a while, swarm in horizontal lines on top of it all. This caused me to shift my strategy every time and actually gave the feeling of a bullet hell as I was weaving in and out of the rodent procession.

I also had my best run of the demo in Age of Sigmar as Neave Blacktalon, as this is when the stars aligned and the chests from stronger green-highlighted enemies were very much in my favor. These chests are all RNG-based, but when they shine on you, you can unlock upgrades for up to five Weapons or Passives, and it feels so great. What it also does, however, is get you closer to evolving said Weapons.

Neave Blacktalon starts with her Tempest Axes, and she can evolve them into Whirlwind Axes that are infused with lightning if you choose to unlock and level up the Sabaton Passive that makes your character faster. When you unlock one of these combinations, you feel as though you go Super Saiyan as your power level just dramatically increases.

This is also tied to one of my other frustrations with Warhammer Survivors in that it can be a bit tricky to really understand what goes with what without looking it up or getting lucky. For newcomers, this is a big hurdle because these are the key to longer, more successful runs. I’m all for trial and error and figuring things out, but this was a similar issue I had with Vampire Survivors. I didn’t feel like I got the game for a decent amount of runs, and I just wish the onboarding was a little better because I almost fell off before it clicked into a spectacular place.

However, once you do get it, you are in for just as much of a treat as Vampire Survivors. Does this do enough to convert those who may have not liked Vampire Survivors? Probably not. Is it shaping up to be a must-play for fans of Warhammer? Absolutely.

And everything I’ve discussed here is only scratching the surface. There are Extremis Bosses like the Norn Emissary that are the most challenging foes yet and turn this bullet heaven back into a bullet hell for a short time. There are Relics that can unlock different game modes, like one that does actually go faster and provide more EXP, and another that makes things even more daunting for the hardest of hardcore.

Warhammer Survivors is shaping up to be another great adventure for fans of both Vampire Survivors and Warhammer, and I’m excited to see how the full game unfolds and adds to the fun I experienced in this short demo. It’s not doing anything groundbreaking, from what I can tell, but it has added meaningful additions that really honor the source material in a unique way that benefits gameplay. All I know is that all I want to do is jump back in for one… more… round… and that’s one of the highest compliments you can give any game.

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