Vampire Survivors’ Balatro Update Is Out Today Alongside More Castlevania Content And Online Co-Op

Developer poncle has released a new update for Vampire Survivors that adds Balatro characters, weapons, and more, alongside additional Castlevania content and online co-op. It’s out today for PlayStation, Xbox, PC via Steam, and mobile devices, and will hit Nintendo Switch and Epic Games Store versions of the game this Friday, on October 31. 

Courtesy of an official partnership between poncle and LocalThunk and PlayStack, the Ante Chamber update is free for all players on all platforms, and it brings four new characters to the game: Jimbo, Canio, Chicot, and Perkeo. Plus, it adds four new weapons and evolutions in the form of Infernolatro, Gros Michel, Fibonacci Seltzer, and the Celestial Booster, and you can use these new weapons on the new stage available in this update, The Ante Chamber. 

“Enter the Ante Chamber, an extradimensional analogue of Balatro’s user interface,” a press release reads. “Battle buffoonish foes on a facsimile of Jimbo’s home turf accompanies by a new ally, the Outer Saboteur, a silly little sidekick that steals your coins to throw them at enemies.” 

Elsewhere in the Ante Chamber Update are “Survarots,” which are a new form of power creep that is currently being tested through Secretino in the base Vampire Survivors game, but something that all Ante Chamber characters can use. The press release describes Survarots as “vaguely similar to Arcana cards but are themed after characters from Vampire Survivors and provide different types of bonuses.” The Ante Chamber features Survarots as a sort of preview before this power creep makes its way to the base game. 

Update 1.14 also includes more content for last year’s Ode to Castlevania expansion. This expansion is getting 16 new characters, with poncle promising these ones are even more obscure than the last drop of characters, a new adventure (“the biggest poncle’s ever made”), 16 new weapons and weapon unions, and 12 new music tracks. This extra content is free to players who already own the Ode to Castlevania DLC, which you can purchase for $3.99. You can find more details about this expansion here. 

Another big aspect of today’s update is online co-op, which allows players to to roam freely wherever they want without being tethered to their co-op partner on the screen. To start an online session, select “Online” from the main menu and choose to host or join a game. If you host, you’ll see a room code in the top corner of the screen that you can share with friends so they can join. You can find more information about how online co-op works in Vampire Survivors here. 

Today’s round-up of Vampire Survivors news closes with the press release teasing two “BIG” updates to share very soon, one of which “will reveal where they plan to take Vampire Survivors next.” We’ll be on the lookout to learn what these two updates are. 

In the meantime, read Game Informer’s Vampire Survivors review.