King Krieg Survivors

Genre: Arcade / Roguelike

Players: 1

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Review:

King Krieg Survivors, elsewhere simply titled King Krieg, is an Arcade-style game and Roguelike released in 2023 on PC and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024. And since this is a game with the word “Survivors” in the title released after 2022, attentive gamers will no doubt be predicting that this is yet another game in the string of titles to follow in the footsteps of Vampire Survivors, with players moving their character around hordes of enemies while automatically attacking, an emerging subgenre being referred to as “Bullet Heaven”.

The term “Bullet Heaven” doesn’t really fit King Krieg Survivors, though. While players can have a good amount of projectile fire carpeting enemies, often both the number of projectiles and the number of enemies is far more modest than you’d find in Vampire Survivors. To its credit, King Krieg Survivors does try something out of the norm for the genre, with its magic system allowing players to combine and create new, unique spell types. The problem is that this system is never properly explained to players, making it largely ineffective unless you know what you’re doing or luck into a good combination.

Then there’s all the other areas where this game compares poorly to Vampire Survivors, and since this game does invite direct comparison, I think doing so is only fair.

Firstly, you only ever play one character, the titular King Krieg. You can select different upgrades for him in between runs, but the effect this has seems to be negligible. There’s little variety in enemy types as well, with enemies that dumbly move toward you, enemies that move toward you faster, and enemies that move toward you until they get in range and then very slowly lunge at you.

Upgrades you get during runs come at a regular but somewhat slow pace, but most of these upgrades are only stat upgrades, and it’s rare for you to encounter a wizard or defeat a boss that gives you an actual new weapon for your arsenal. It’s not like this is all that necessary for your survival anyway – all you need to do is carefully move through each wave as it spawns, and then circle them while pelting them with attacks as they all huddle together. There’s little skill or strategy involved here.

There’s also little in the way of hidden secrets and surprises. Where Vampire Survivors frequently made you eager to see what new feature or character you were about to unlock, here you’re just going through the same motions over and over again.

At the very least, one area where King Krieg Survivors fares well is its presentation, which uses 2D pixel art visuals with some decent spell effects, backed by an electric guitar-filled metal soundtrack (though unfortunately I don’t have any samples to share with you. However, I do have to add one criticism here – the game’s text is so tiny it’s virtually unreadable in handheld mode.

However, there is one last comparison to make between this game and Vampire Survivors, and it’s the one that really kills this game – the price. At $6, King Krieg Survivors is somehow even more expensive than Vampire Survivors, despite that it’s a second-rate copycat that doesn’t play as well. So why play this game when you can spend less and play a far better game? I suggest you don’t.

tl;dr – King Krieg Survivors is an Arcade-style game and Roguelike clearly trying to copy the success of Vampire Survivors, and while this game does attempt something unique with its custom magic system, and its metal-inspired soundtrack is good, it is otherwise inferior to Vampire Survivors in every way, including its price. As such, there’s just no reason to play this when you could be playing Vampire Survivors instead.

Grade: C-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Laziest Copycat

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