Before selling millions of copies, Vampire Survivors creator says he’d “given up on the idea of success,” and he’s not interested in making something just to be successful

Every so often you get one of those games, the type of game you’ve never heard about, and then suddenly it’s the biggest game on the planet. While we’ve had the likes of Balatro and Lethal Company in the time since, not many have become as much of an overnight sensation as Vampire Survivors, which brought an entirely new genre along with it. Well, as it turns out, the secret to its success was its creator making a game without success in mind.

Speaking to Edge Magazine, Luca Galente said, “I had given up on the idea of success a long time ago. Vampire Survivors is the first game I made just for fun. That might be the key ingredient for its success.” Which is a lesson that the developer hasn’t taken lightly, adding, “Whatever I’m going to do next, and however I’m going to keep working on Vampire Survivors, will be for fun. If I move away from that idea, and if I start thinking about competitors that I need to keep an eye on, or that I need to investigate the market and make stuff specifically for them… that’s not what I want to do. It’s just not going to work.”

“I don’t want to start having to look around in order to try to maintain the success. The success was an accident. It’s fantastic; it’s beautiful – I’m very grateful to the players for that. But again, it should not be the aim. Otherwise, we enter a completely different world – which I’m not keen on, honestly.”

Vampire Survivors just had a massive 2024, which featured big expansions crossing over with Contra and Castlevania. But things aren’t stopping there, as developer Poncle has teased that 2025 will be the game’s “biggest, chaotic-est, surprising-est, and other made up word-est year yet!” with a new expansion teased.

Galente recently revealed that Vampire Survivors was “lucky” to survive, with it being one of the indie games that’s been cloned by cheap knock-offs.