Surviving as a vampire, drinking blood, and building your own castle: That’s the gameplay of V Rising. It seems to be successful. Only one other survival game has more players on Steam, the genre giant Rust. V Rising does a few things significantly better.
What’s happening right now in V Rising:
- On May 8, V Rising was fully released on Steam. The 1.0 release brought new features, and much has been added since early access. It is also expected to release on PS5 in 2024.
- V Rising has been playable for almost 2 years: It first entered early access in May 2022. Back then, it was an absolute hit.
- Now player numbers are back to nearly the same level as they were 2 years ago, and the reviews are really strong.
This is the state of the game: Currently, V Rising is the second-largest game on Steam based on the maximum number of players playing simultaneously (“Peak”). It is ahead of giants like Fallout 76 and the spring hit Palworld:
- V Rising had over 132,000 players at its peak and an 87% positive review rating.
- Rust, the only larger survival game, had 153,000 players during the same period (via steamcharts).
- The gap to the following titles in the genre is significant: In 3rd place, Palworld has 90,000 players, followed by Fallout 76 (72,900 players) and DayZ (62,900 players).
In active users, V Rising even occasionally competes with Rust – which is quite astonishing, as both games heavily focus on PvP, at least on official servers. Rust is known for requiring newcomers to have quite a thick skin.
V Rising places a similar focus. To progress in the endgame, you need special items that can be stolen by other players, and there are often fights. However, a good portion of the players seem to be interested in very different things.
- You can find V Rising here on Steam
“As if ARK: Survival Evolved and Diablo had a baby”
Looking at the reviews, players particularly praise V Rising’s building system. In no other survival game can you build such amazing gothic castles that truly look like a vampire’s.
Overall, the vampire vibe is well received. Unlike many survival games, you don’t have to immediately fend off dangers – you are the danger. You can only hunt at night because sunlight burns you, humans are your prey, and they are so afraid of you that their heroes have made it their mission to get rid of you.
For gameplay, this means: You can hunt bosses from whom you gain new skills, learn spells, or acquire recipes for more buildings in your castle. And if you find particularly useful humans with good blood, you can simply keep them as a blood bank… or turn them directly into vampire servants.
V Rising uses an active combat system, which the developers, Stunlock Studios, are quite proud of. The Swedes are known for action games like Bloodline Champions and Battlerite, where skills and active combat play a significant role. Hence the focus on PvP.
Some fans believe that V Rising is so good that it is “shameful” for AAAA productions to show how a great game can be created with simple means. The biggest drawback is that you have to start a new character for a coop round if you switch servers. One way or another, V Rising is among the best survival games you can currently play.
