As We Play

Every now and then, something releases that takes the gaming world by storm, seemingly out of nowhere. The survival game with a vampiric twist, V Rising is the recent release to take the charts by surprise, and even the developers weren’t expecting it.

As of this post, the game has sold over a million copies, which is a huge feat considering the fact that the game is still in early access and released on the 17th of May. On SteamSpy, the game ranks at number 5 on trending games with Steam Charts showing that at any given time, more than 50 thousand gamers are concurrently playing it, with the highpoint reaching above 100 thousand every now and then. In fact on the opening weekend, this peak was above 150 thousand, showing just how popular it currently is.

“The release of V Rising has been met with overwhelming support, and we really can’t thank you all enough for joining us on this journey… and it will be a journey. Opening into Early Access is the first step we’re taking on the misty road to the game’s full release.”

 Stunlock Studios

The chief reason for this seems to be that it’s a game that not only has the crowd-pleasing crafting elements but adds vampires to the mix, allowing players to terrorize mortals and build their own castles. Scouring through its steam reviews begins to paint a clear picture, that the mechanics of the game are addictive and it seems to already feature a breadth of content.

There are quite a few similarities with Valheim, another popular co-op enabled survival game, where players also survive and build in order to take on mythical bosses that grant players new abilities and powers.

One of the biggest reasons people often love the survival/crafting loop is that you are able to easily set small term goals that keep you engaged with the experience throughout. You will be given new recipes to craft the more you play, usually letting you harvest more resources needed for even more powerful items or make repetitive tasks easier.

If done well, it can be a very succinct time-sink, keeping you hooked until you’ve seen all you’ve wanted to. Every new recipe, upgrade and ability feels aspirational, and something worth chasing. Ultimately, as mentioned before, it’s very easy to set your own goals without the game specifically giving you objectives.

However, this does not mean that just any game with these elements is automatically successful, as there is still effort needed to carry the game itself, something which can be seen with V Rising, as according to the reviews, it already has tons of content and generally polished gameplay.

We are curious to see how the game will continue to perform going forward, but it will come down to the updates the developer releases. However, it’s still such a phenomenal feat selling more than a million copies barely a few weeks after launch, showing us that gamers are not done with crafting and survival games just yet.

We can’t wait to jump into the game properly ourselves and see what makes it so attractive to play. For those interested, the game is currently available via Steam’s Early Access program, and costs £15.49/$19.99.