As part of the Apple App Store Indie Week, several games have been announced and/or released on iOS, including Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky, which I’d definitely be interested in checking out when it drops later this month. Sloclap’s Sifu was also released today, but the real star of the show, in my opinion, is Poncle’s Vampire Crawlers.
Dear reader, I work a full-time job in a corporate office setting. While my work keeps me largely busy throughout the day, there is also a fair bit of downtime. Or, y’know, there may be times where I simply decide to play video games on my phone instead of actually working. As someone who used to scoff at phone games, I’ve come to realize that playing games on my iPhone is a lot more discreet than busting out the Switch 2 at work. No one’s going to bat an eye at you swiping away on your phone, but someone may call my manager down if they see me mashing buttons on a giant handheld console.
Anyway, I’ve played a ton of Mini Motorways and Balatro on my phone at work. Those games make the hours fly by. Vampire Crawlers, however, totally ate up all of my time when I got it on Switch 2 earlier this year while I was on holiday. Now that it’s on iOS, I think I may have found the third game to help round out my office mobile game trinity.
As expected, Vampire Crawlers runs pretty beautifully on mobile. The controls were simple and basic enough on PC and consoles that I was confident it would translate well to a smaller screen, though I will say that the camera movement isn’t quite as smooth as I’d like it to be. Strafing left and right seems impossible as a swipe on the screen would cause the camera to shift instead. Vampire Crawlers is also a fairly text-heavy game especially as you get further in and want to spend more time reading tooltips and upgrade info, and my iPhone 15 Pro’s screen feels just a tad too small to accommodate all that information and convey it comfortably to my aging eyeballs.
Still, I already have a hundred hours in this game. I know what I’m doing. I don’t need to rely that much on the tooltips. I could see this being a bit of an issue for newcomers, but the good news is that Vampire Crawlers‘ onboarding tutorials are also designed well enough to help you pick things up naturally as you play.
For 15 bucks, I think this is a pretty easy recommendation, especially if you, like me, are also looking for your next phone game distraction in the office.
Vampire Crawlers is now available on PC and consoles.
