Not a new game, but after some major updates, a newly popular game, V Rising deserves to have its praise sung as a great game within its genre. V Rising is an open world survival crafting game where players play as the antagonist of the world, a vampire. As the story goes, humans destroyed almost all the vampires that inhabited their lands, and the player must seek their revenge on humans for their sins. However, there is a twist. The ruler of the land is not human, but the most notorious vampire to ever live, Dracula, who may or may not have orchestrated the annihilation of all other vampires. The story is cool and all, but that is not the main draw to V Rising. This post will discuss cool mechanics, gameplay progression, and other features that make V Rising a great game.

First and foremost, how players play V Rising is flexible. It can be played solo on one of three difficulties; privately with friends; or on public servers with PVP enable and little bit more of an intense experience. Each style of play has its pros and cons, but it is all fun nonetheless.

Gameplay progression is probably the most intriguing part of V Rising though. At the beginning of the game, players are put through a tutorial to learn all the key bindings and game mechanics. After that, they are thrust out into the world with a easy-to-follow, linear progression path to follow. Following this path awards new abilities and technologies that players can use to further progress and make their vampire stronger. In short, players must build a castle with materials they have gathered and defeat bosses to be able to refine their materials into higher quality ingredients for better gear.

While this seems straightforward, there is quite a bit of interesting nuance. For example, each enemy has blood type and quality. The type denotes what buffs it can give for drinking and the quality is how many and how strong those buffs will be. Another example, defeating bosses allows players to gain permanent magic powers, but players can only use two magic abilities plus ultimate and a dash. Therefore, players must figure out how to best build their character according to their playstyle. These little nuances could be discussed a lot further, but the game does a good job at explaining them, so we’ll leave it at that.

Moving onto game mechanics, blood type and quality were already briefly touched on, but it is perhaps the most important mechanic in the game. Another important mechanic is castle building. While actually building the castle is easy, laying it out in a way that is efficient and effective is tougher. Correctly laying out the castle can make crafting and refining more time efficient and cost less resources. Lastly, boss mechanics are unique and carefully made to match the theme of the boss. With over 50 bosses in the games, each boss makes for a fun and interesting challenge. Again, there are more mechanics that could be discussed but won’t be since the game presents them well.

Since V Rising is a game about vampires and blood, it is an important disclaimer that there is little to no gore or blood splattering in the game. Yes, there are red effects and the implication of blood in many parts of the game. However, the developers did a really good job at making this game the least gory it could be given the vampire theme.

Lastly, V Rising was developed and published by Stunlock Studios. It was fully released in May 2024. When this game was released, it had some issues with saving game progress which made it tough for players to want to get into. All these issues have been fixed, and everything is now well polished, with engaging gameplay, and overall, a great open world survival experience whether it’s played solo or in multiplayer.