Ever since I first played it on Steam Deck a few years ago during its early access period, I’ve been obsessed with Vampire Survivors from poncle. It has been ported to Xbox with an Xbox Game Pass launch, come to mobile, seen a Nintendo Switch release, and most-recently hit Apple Arcade with a PS5 release coming soon as well. Across so many platforms, DLC releases, collaborations, and free updates, I’ve wanted to chat with the team at poncle for a while now. I finally had a chance to talk to Geo Morgan (Lead Partnerships Manager) and the poncle team about various topics including working with different platforms, how Xbox Game Pass helped the game, Apple’s support, a potential physical release, my favorite coffee response yet, and much more.
TouchArcade (TA): A lot has changed for Vampire Survivors and poncle since the early access launch on PC. How has the team grown?
Geo Morgan and Poncle (GM): The team has grown a lot since launch! We’re over 25 folks now, across a large array of disciplines. We cross over a lot and we aren’t locked off as to seeing what each other are doing, we’ve got a channel in our workspace that ensures everyones kept up to date the best we can on all the fun things we get up to. It’s been quite exciting watching the team grow (for instance, I joined when there were around 12 people) and seeing all the work everyone does every day is inspiring.
TA: Since the PC release, Vampire Survivors released on Xbox, mobile, Switch, and is coming to PlayStation in the future. How has it been working on the game across all those platforms?
GM: The teams learned a lot working on all the current platforms, and it’s all invaluable knowledge. Each system has its own unique traits and requirements, so learning the best ways we can implement them all to Vampire Survivors has been great, alongside bringing the game to new audiences across a variety of platforms. We find it important to take our time and do the porting internally, so we can ensure a parity of content and experience for the players.
TA: Vampire Survivors is in Xbox Game Pass and is also coming to Apple Arcade soon. While it is too soon to say how it does in the latter, how has Xbox Game Pass been for the game?
GM: Our partnership with Xbox has always been fantastic. Game Pass as a whole provides such a brilliant service to people who just want to give a game a go, and does a great job at removing the barrier to entry to hundreds of games with ours being one of them. It’s been great for Vampire Survivors, as it’s a game that you “get it” after you play it.
TA: Having played the game through its early access release on Steam Deck, through updates, Xbox, and Switch in addition to iPhone and iPad, it has been great seeing how much performance has improved while everything gets more complex. What should we expect for the Apple Arcade version in terms of updates?
GM: Firstly, thank you for playing all the versions! All of our content updates (such as Whiteout, Astral Stair, Tiny Bridge, Space-54, Laborratory and more) will be available on the Apple Arcade version of Vampire Survivors+, and all future free content updates we do will also be available, one of which we may be working on at the moment alongside other things. So long as we deliver free content updates to all formats, it will reach Apple Arcade players. Any DLC that is created by us however, will be added to the Apple Arcade version.
TA: You previously told me the Among Us and Contra DLC was not included in Apple Arcade for licensing reasons. Does this mean cross save will not be available for Apple Arcade when it goes live on other platforms?
GM: On launch, Cross-Save won’t be available between the Apple Arcade and App Store versions, but it is something we’re investigating internally.
TA: How has it been working with Apple on Vampire Survivors+?
GM: Really great! The folks at Apple have been clear, super nice, and easy to work with, any questions we’ve had they’ve answered and any challenges we’ve faced in development they’ve been on hand for.
TA: poncle has been amazing at responding to player feedback across platforms. Has there been anything players ask for that you haven’t been able to implement yet?
GM: We read and consider literally everything, sometimes we are able to address feedback directly and some other times we just let it simmer and eventually influence our future decisions. A big problem we’ve been trying to address for years now, is how to manage platform Achievements so that we can make both players who want them, and those who don’t want them, happy! We haven’t found a solution yet obviously, but we keep talking to the different platforms and testing weird stuff.
TA: If you had no restrictions and unlimited budget, what game or IP would you get into Vampire Survivors?
GM: Our first list of dream collaborations had something like 30 IP’s on it, we won’t be getting into that list, but we hope to tick some more off as the game continues!
TA: Given the low asking price for the game and DLC, looking back, do you think you charged too little for the game? I sure feel like it, given how much I’ve gotten out of it on all platforms.
GM: Not at all! We hear “You charged too little” quite often but we feel for the production value of the game, that’s the price it should cost.
TA: Can we expect any content exclusive to the Apple Arcade release since it won’t have all the DLC available on other platforms?
GM: We’re not fans of exclusive content, we’d rather put that energy into trying to get the same content to everyone.
TA: Will you ever let players play as a vampire?
GM: What’s a vampire?
TA: For the upcoming PS5 release, are you going to implement DualSense haptics?
GM: When we launch on PlayStation 5, sadly there won’t be any haptic support for the DualSense, nor will the Active Triggers play a part, but traditional rumble will still exist. That’s not saying in the future we won’t add it, however, we’re always looking at all the platforms’ new features and seeing how we can implement them into Vampire Survivors.
TA: Will we be able to carry over our Apple Arcade save into the standalone App Store release and vice versa?
GM: This is something we’re going to look into, but for launch the capability to cross-save between the Apple Arcade and App Store versions won’t be active.
TA: Has the team considered doing soundtrack DLC to bring in new composers to have their own take on classic Vampire Survivors music as OST options?
GM: That’s an interesting one, I think the logistics would be terrifying though.
TA: What is your favorite aspect of the game right now and one thing you wish you could improve?
GM: The favorite aspect is still the reason the game was made in the first place, it offers a straightforward gameplay platform that allows us to make content easily. What’s to improve is how the huge amount of content is managed and how it affects platform Achievements.
TA: Any plans to do a physical release or artbook?
GM: Physical and other media is certainly something we’ve been thinking about for a while and we’re always actively talking about it. As a group of folks that all have collections of vinyl, retro video games, books etc, it’d be great to see our own game in the collection in some way! We’ve already got some merch available on different parts of the web, growing this is a constant working project.
TA: I think Vampire Survivors and Balatro are my two most played indie games in years. Any chance for a crossover between both?
GM: A lot of us (as you can see below) were deeply sucked into LocalThunks’ world of Jimbo and his mult-building joker friends, so it wouldn’t be something off the cards (couldn’t not leave a card joke) as we like to keep our ideas open and the outlets for them to become real open too. Nothing is ever truly off the table for us.
TA: What have you and the team at poncle enjoyed playing this year?
GM: A whole lot of answers to this one! Likely my favorite for the year so far is Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, but I know a few of the team played a lot of Balatro, Shadow of the Erdtree, Chained Together, Dave the Diver, Helldivers 2 & Animal Well, a few folks checked out SaGa: Emerald Beyond & Flintlock too. We’ve got a Final Fantasy XIV Online player in the team who’s deep in the new expansion with multiple characters, and Lethal Company has been a team favorite for a while.
TA: How do you like your coffee?
poncle: So, I felt this was a perfect question for our whole team, so here’s as many answers as I could get from the team:
Matt – Black.
Lee – Also black.
Kerri – The milkiest, sweetest coffee in existence
David – Out and about – Caramel Iced Latte with cream. Morning coffee – Black from a cafetiere (maybe sugar on the weekend)
Zak – Black filter coffee, ideally Hermanos Yellow Fruits as it tastes like Um Bongo mixed with unleaded petrol
Guru – Camomile tea
Geo – Black, no sugar, no milk, a small amount of cold water (any variety, instant, cafetiere, filter, I’m an animal, sorry)
Nickie – Green tea
Adam – Flat white
Owen – I’m a huge mocha stan, a chocolate fiend. If my coffee is too bitter I simply perish. I like my beans fresh and ground just before so I can pull back some level of control into my incredibly hectic life. I use an inverted Aeropress technique because I want to give the impression that I’m cultured even though I can barely put my T-shirts on the right way round each day. If I’m not paying upwards of £3.50 for a dinky little cup of coffee in an independent shop that features minimalist furniture and plays Lo-fi remixes of Charli XCX songs on repeat, then what even is the point? Frappuccinos from time to time though.
Lucy – Herbal Tea!
Julie – A nice oat milk latte from the pink Nespresso machine
Arran – Very black. Filter, espresso or americano
Luca – In a tiramisú
I’d like to thank Geo Morgan and the poncle team and also Jennifer Tam and Peter Nguyen from Apple for their time and help here.
You can keep up with all our interviews here including our recent ones with Shuhei Matsumoto from Capcom about Marvel Vs Capcom here, Santa Ragione here, Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman about PH3 and Falcom here, M2 discussing shmups and more here, Digital Extremes for Warframe mobile, Team NINJA, Sonic Dream Team , Hi-Fi Rush , Pentiment , and more. As usual, thanks for reading.
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