In V Rising you are a novice vampire on a mission to become the absolute boss of a gothic open world. You get a Diablo-esque combat system, the ability to turn into a spider, and an entire castle to jump around in while singing to the moon. I like this premise almost as much as the fact that V Rising is also a survival game, where you have to fell trees and master a crafting system just like a regular turnip farmer.
What do we hope for when our interest in a game is almost perfectly balanced by our disinterest? Here’s hoping the developers will treat us to a free-to-play weekend, where our perhaps unfounded reservations can be strategically offset by the endorphin rush of not having paid any damn money. The makers of V Rising, Stunlock, have now done this. The game is free to download and play on Steam from now until Monday, September 16 at 5:00 PM UK or 10:00 AM PST.
Here are some things that intrigue and entice me about V Rising, based on how it was described to me. First off, you actually have to worry about sunlight, a traditional vampire weakness that gets swept under the rug in many Hollywood adaptations — looking at you, Gary Oldman. You must drink blood regularly and it provides different benefits depending on your victim, encouraging you to develop a taste bud, rather than jumping up and emptying indiscriminately. You can do things like summon Death Knights and teleport around your castle, like in the Castlevania show (at least once it’s leveled up).
Still, it’s hard to look past the taint of the survival game, which seems completely at odds with the vampire premise. “To become a more powerful bloodsucker, craft leather pants and copper swords and increase your gear score a la Destiny,” Edders wrote in our V Rising 1.0 review. “Gaining power means building things until the thing you want to build requires you to build something else. And to build that something else, you need something else.”
This isn’t how Dracula did it, Edders! Vampires are supposed to be monstrously decrepit aristocrats! If Dracula wanted new leather pants, he would hug the tanner’s neck and turn him into a creepy minion. Please, Edders: tell me this is possible in the game.
If the non-free version piques your interest, V Rising is currently 30 percent off with 20 percent off the cosmetic DLC (including a Castlevania-themed DLC pack) until September 24. Find it Steam. I think I’ll try it myself, but I don’t make pants.