How Vampire Survivors became Vampire Crawlers: Six lessons from building a game based on another developer's IP

Vampire Crawlers began with an early prototype from Vampire Survivors creator Luca Galante, then moved to Nosebleed Interactive to turn the idea into a full game. Andreas Firnigl says the project only clicked once the studio stopped treating it like a generic deckbuilder and started building around the specific rhythms, tone, and expectations of Vampire Survivors.

One of the biggest lessons was that understanding an IP is not enough; the partner has to see that understanding in the work. Nosebleed says it had to pause other tasks and tighten up names, stat transfer, and other details before Poncle felt the game was truly aligned. That kind of validation matters in external development, where trust can hinge on whether the first few builds feel authentic.

The team also leaned on people who had never played Vampire Survivors to keep the onboarding honest. That helped prevent the project from becoming too dependent on fan knowledge, which is a common trap when adapting an established game into a new genre. Nosebleed also found that some of its usual production instincts, like high-detail animation work, simply were not the right fit for this IP.

Regular face-to-face calls with Poncle and Galante shaped the game throughout development, including a late addition that became the Gems system. The broader takeaway is practical: when working on someone else’s IP, the important question is not whether a feature is familiar, but whether it serves the intent of the original experience while still giving the team room to build something new.