How to Make a Game Like Vampire Survivors (With AI)

Vampire Survivors looks impossible to put down and surprisingly simple to build. You move, monsters pour in, your weapons fire on their own, and every few seconds you pick an upgrade that bends the run in a new direction. There is no aiming, no combo system, no ability rotation. The entire game is built from a handful of systems that all feed each other.

That simplicity is exactly why it is one of the best genres to make yourself. The rules are clear and well understood, none of them need tricky physics or networking, and the fun comes from tuning numbers rather than writing hard code. This guide walks through the five systems that make a survivors-like work, then shows how to build each one with AI by starting from a template instead of a blank project.

{/* IMAGE: Hero graphic showing a survivors-like scene, player surrounded by enemy hordes with auto-firing weapons and XP orbs. 1200x675, illustration. */}

The five systems that make a survivors-like

Strip Vampire Survivors down and you are left with five systems. Get these working together and you have the genre. Everything else is theme and polish.

System	What it does	Why it matters
Auto-attacking weapons	Fire on a timer toward enemies, no input needed	The hands-off combat that defines the genre
Wave spawner	Spawns escalating enemy waves over time	The rising pressure that creates tension
XP orbs and leveling	Enemies drop orbs, orbs fill an XP bar	The core feedback loop that drives every run
Upgrade draft	Each level offers a choice of upgrades	The decision that makes every run different
Weapon evolution	Maxed weapon plus passive becomes a new weapon	The long-term goal that rewards smart drafting

The trap when building this from scratch is that you spend your first week wiring up the boilerplate (spawn loops, orb collection, the level-up screen) and never reach the part that is actually fun to design. That is the part a template solves.

Start from the survivors-like template, not a blank project

The single biggest time saver is starting from a template that already has the loop running. On Summer Engine, the survivors-like template ships with wave spawning, XP orbs, the level-up UI, weapon slots, damage numbers, and screen shake already wired together. You open it and you have a playable game on the first run.

That changes how you work. Instead of building systems, you change one thing at a time and play the result. Swap the theme. Add a weapon. Steepen the spawn curve. Add an evolution. Each change is a short conversation, and you can play after every one.

Start from the survivors-like template here.

If you want to see what else you can start from, the full template library covers RPGs, platformers, deckbuilders, and more. But for this genre, the survivors-like template is the right launch point.

Step 1: Get the base loop running and reskin it

Open the template and play it once before you change anything. You want to feel the baseline: how fast enemies arrive, how often you level, how the weapons fire. That baseline is your reference point for every tuning decision later.

Now make it yours with the theme first, because theme is the cheapest change and it makes the project feel like a real game immediately. Describe the world you want:

Reskin this as a sci-fi survivors game. The player is a lone marine, the enemies are alien swarms, and the starting weapon is an auto-firing plasma rifle instead of the whip.

The AI swaps the sprites, renames the weapon, and adjusts the starting setup. You play again. The loop is identical, but now it is your loop. This is the rhythm for the whole build: small change, play, decide, repeat.

{/* IMAGE: Before and after of a reskin, default fantasy theme on the left, sci-fi marine theme on the right. 1200x675, illustration. */}

Step 2: Tune the wave spawner

The spawn curve is the heart of the difficulty. Too gentle and the run is boring. Too steep and players die before they get a build going. Vampire Survivors gets this right by starting slow and ramping into screen-filling chaos around the ten-minute mark.

You tune this in plain English:

Make enemies spawn slowly for the first two minutes, then ramp up sharply. Add a tougher enemy type at minute five and a swarm event at minute ten that floods the screen.

The reason to do this through conversation is speed. Spawn tuning is iterative by nature: you change a curve, play a run, feel that minute six is dead air, and adjust again. Doing that loop in short prompts is far faster than hunting through code for the right constant each time. If you want exact control, you can also open the editor and edit the spawn values by hand. Both paths edit the same project.

Step 3: Build the upgrade draft

The level-up screen is where a survivors-like becomes a game about decisions. Each time you level, the game offers a few upgrades and you pick one. The pool you draw from is what gives each run its identity.

Start by defining your upgrade pool:

When the player levels up, offer three upgrades chosen from this pool: a new weapon, a damage boost, a fire-rate boost, extra projectiles, a movement-speed boost, and a magnet that pulls XP orbs from farther away.

Then tune the feel. Two knobs matter most: how many choices you show per level (three is standard, more choices means more agency but slower runs) and how the pool weights weapons against passives. A pool that is too weapon-heavy leaves players underpowered because nothing gets to max level. A pool that is too passive-heavy makes runs feel samey. You find the balance by playing, which is exactly why fast iteration matters here.

Step 4: Add weapon evolutions

Evolutions are the long game. In Vampire Survivors, taking a weapon to max level while also holding a specific passive transforms it into something dramatically stronger. The whip plus Hollow Heart becomes the Bloody Tear. That promise of a payoff is what makes the draft choices feel meaningful three minutes before they pay off.

An evolution is just a rule. You describe the recipe:

When the plasma rifle reaches max level and the player also has the Power Cell passive, evolve it into the Plasma Storm, which fires in all eight directions and pierces enemies.

The AI wires the unlock check and builds the new weapon behavior. Repeat for each weapon you want to have an evolution. The design work here is yours and it is the most important creative decision in the whole game: which combinations are worth chasing. A good evolution chart is what players screenshot and share. Aim for combinations that feel obvious in hindsight but take a run or two to discover.

{/* IMAGE: A weapon evolution chart showing base weapon plus passive equals evolved weapon, three rows. 1200x675, illustration. */}

Step 5: Add the juice that sells the chaos

The survivors-like genre lives on feedback. The same run feels twice as good with damage numbers popping, screen shake on big hits, XP orbs streaking toward the player, and a satisfying sound when a weapon evolves. The template includes the basics, but this is where you push:

Add a brief screen shake when an evolved weapon fires, make XP orbs fly toward the player faster as the magnet upgrade stacks, and play a rising chime when the player is about to level up.

None of this changes the underlying systems. It changes how the systems feel, and feel is most of what makes a survivors-like addictive. Spend real time here. It is cheap to add and it is what players remember.

Step 6: Find your one twist

A baseline survivors-like is fun, but the genre is crowded. What carries a game is one idea that the baseline does not have. The good news is that the loop is so simple that almost any twist reads as fresh.

Pick one and lean into it:

• A deckbuilding layer where upgrades come from a drafted hand of cards instead of a random three
• Manual aiming on one weapon while the rest auto-fire, giving skilled players an edge
• Co-op where each player specializes in a role and shares an XP pool
• Destructible terrain you carve through as you kite enemies
• A god-blessing system where between-run choices reshape your whole build

You build the twist the same way you built everything else: describe it, play it, tune it. Because the foundation is already solid, you can afford to spend most of your effort on the one thing that makes your game stand out.

What you get for free, and what costs money

Summer Engine is free to use. The survivors-like template, 2D, the conversational build flow, the editor, and export to a real desktop build you can put on Steam or itch.io are all on the free tier. You can build and ship a complete horde survival game without paying.

Paid plans exist for heavier AI usage and faster turnaround when you are iterating a lot, which the survivors-like genre encourages because so much of the work is balance passes. But none of the core systems in this guide are behind a paywall. If you are starting out, the free tier is the right place to build your prototype and your first release.

Build it

The survivors-like is one of the most rewarding genres to make because the gap between "nothing" and "playable" is small, and the gap between "playable" and "addictive" is all tuning, which is the part AI speeds up the most. Start from the template, get the loop running, then change one thing at a time until it is yours.

Start from the survivors-like template or open the AI game maker and describe the survivors-like in your head. If you want to play the genre before you build it, our roundup of games like Vampire Survivors is a good place to find ideas worth stealing.