Vampire Survivors releases ominous “Darkasso” update

Yesterday, a cryptic series of patch notes and social media posts released for Vampire Survivors hinted at a quiet update made to the game. Patch 1.11.1 contains a mysterious new stage with a boppin’ track, a new character, 9 new achievements, and 5 new arcana cards. The update is out now on all platforms except PlayStation, where it will release with the whole game on August 29.

The biggest part of this content drop, which we now know is called “The Darkasso Update,” is the experimental “Dark Arcana” cards, which come with bizarre effects. The Moonlight Bolero, as an example, spawns an additional stage boss every minute, who might carry special treasure chests that let you gain additional Arcana or Passive Weapon past your max capacity. In the patch notes, the devs are requesting feedback on these new arcana to inform further designs down the road.

As another part of this update, you can get new variations of Imelda Belpaese and the garlic-loving Poe Ratcho. To unlock these, you need to complete their respective Adventure Mode campaigns. If you’ve already beaten them, you may need to select “Adventure Mode” on the main screen to activate the achievements.

This entire update came unannounced, outside of the sudden cryptic messaging a day before its drop: It was never on any roadmaps or anything. It’s the kind of fun, weird updates you love to see from indie developers. And the fact that there’s more room for new Dark Arcana down the road is a great sign that we’ll be getting plenty more updates for this incredible game for a while.