V Rising is all the rage right now and if you spend half an hour with it, it’s not hard to see why. It’s such an appealing idea it hits like Dungeon Keeper did all those years ago. Be the baddie! Okay yes please! Or in this case, specifically: be a vampire reawakened after many years to find the land they once dominated taken from them by snivelling humans, and now you’re going to take it back.
V RisingDeveloper: Stunlock StudiosPublisher: Stunlock StudiosPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on Steam Early Access for £15.49
You go about this gradually because you’re no Dracula yet, and doing so involves two interlinked systems: combat and building a bigger base. And that base, yes, is a gothic vampire castle pieced together bit by bit, one wall at a time.
In essence, then, it’s a base-building and crafting game, and when you mix in multiplayer, which is a huge draw here, it begins to feel a lot like games you’ve played before: Valheim, Grounded, Conan Exiles – there are lots of them. Except here, there’s less of an emphasis on survival and more on combat. The experience of playing V Rising is much more like playing an action role-playing game like Diablo, with a huge base-building and crafting element added to it.
Hunger and thirst, then, don’t really exist, although this wouldn’t be a vampire game without your having the ability to drink blood, which you can, except here it fills up a blood pool that you can draw on to heal yourself after fights – it’s more of downtime-reducing thing than everyday necessity for staying alive. There are also some interesting ideas revolving around types of blood, and the effect they have on you, when you drink them. Drain a humanoid rogue, for example, and you’ll get some rogue-like buffs for it. Or track and defeat special enemies, and feed on them, and you’ll unlock new abilities (and crafting recipes) to fight with.