Summary
Vampire Survivorsrevealed the patch notes for its 1.12 update, alongside theOde to Castlevaniacrossover DLC. The collaboration betweenVampire SurvivorsandCastlevaniaresulted in one of the larger patches for Poncle’s hit indie title, which includes plenty of new characters and remixed songs from Konami’s iconic franchise for players to enjoy.
TheOde to Castlevaniaexpansion is the third crossover DLC forVampire Survivors, but it is not the first time that Konami and Poncle have worked together. In May 2024,Vampire Survivorscrossed over with theContraseries to launch theOperation Gunsexpansion. The DLC included fan-favorite characters like Bill Rizer, Lance Bean, and Brad Fang, and brought plenty of explosive firearms and weapons to mow down hordes of enemies. Weapons such as the Long Gun, Sonic Bloom, and Blade Crossbowcould also evolve into more powerful firearmsand give players more options for their character builds.
WhileCastlevaniacrossed over with games likeDead By Daylightin 2024, its collaboration withVampire Survivorswas one of the latter’s most requested projects.According to the patch notes,Vampire SurvivorsPatch 1.12 includes over 20 new characters, over 40 weapons and their evolutions, and 36 song covers from theCastlevaniaseries, including “Vampire Killer,” “Bloody Tears,” and “Requiem.” TheCastlevaniastage is the largest map inVampire Survivorsto date and features different biomes and power-ups for players to collect. However, Poncle stated that due to the sheer size of the expansion, an Adventure mode forOde to Castlevaniawas not included at launch, but left the door open to add one if given the chance. The download size forVampire SurvivorsPatch 1.12 and theOde to Castlevaniaexpansion is a combined 345 MB on Steam, with the DLC clocking in at approximately 282 MB.
Poncle noted that the Switch version ofVampire Survivorswill receive another update in two weeks to address some specific late-game issues. In addition totheCastlevaniacrossover expansion,Vampire SurvivorsPatch 1.12 will introduce some quality-of-life changes for all players to use. An advanced music selection menu, the ability to zoom in and out on the pause menu’s map, and optimizations to reduce memory usage were among the changes players will see once Patch 1.12 is installed.
Poncle added that more free updates forVampire Survivorsare in the works, as part of the Chaos Roadmap for 2024 and 2025. With the long-awaited crossover betweenVampire SurvivorsandCastlevaniafinally here, it remains to be seenhow this will shape the future of both franchises.
Vampire Survivors Patch 1.12 Notes (July 18, 2025)
Our dreams have come true and Castlevania is now officially part of Vampire Survivors. Thank you so much to KONAMI, the team at poncle, our partners, and all the fans for making this a reality at last!
Gameplay in Ode to Castlevania
The music of Ode to Castlevania
There are 36 new covers and a more than 50 original Castlevania music tracks to choose from. The covers are all available on the VS playlist on YouTube (minus 2 tracks that will be released on Nov 07 due to… reasons…)
As fans of Castlevania and its music ourselves, we were expecting people to be excited for the covers, but we actually couldn’t anticipate all that hype!
We had originally planned for 24 covers, but then asked all musicians to do more if they had spare time. That’s how we ended up with a total of 36 music covers!
Just as for the rest of the contents of the DLC pack, we tried to balance the covers between homages, reinterpretations, experimentations, and plain remixes.
The only real rule I’ve put in place to choose tracks was “tracks that already have an official version that would fit with VS, we can also include that version” (which is purely arbitrary, stylistic choice by me, Luca, sorry!) and so I know we ended up leaving out several tracks that would have been amazing remixed in one the new styles. In hindsight what we could have done is… start earlier to have the time to do even more!
I really couldn’t trade any of the current tracks for a different selection.
We can’t make any promises now, but we’d love to cover and add more tracks in the future if we’ll get the chance.
In the meantime I hope everyone will be able to find a new favourite, maybe among the more niche tracks that got picked for this collab! Thanks so much to Daniele Zandara, Filippo Vicarelly, Evelyn Lark, and KEYGEN CHURCH for this incredible soundtrack!
More FAQs
While most of the contents of the DLCs are straightforward, being a collab there are some differences. For example, there are no Steam achievements and the music covers won’t be available in the paid Soundtrack on Steam (but we will publish them on YT as usual), so please read the FAQs here for more info:https://poncle.games/ode-to-castlevania-faq
Patch 1.12 Quality-of-Life
Other platforms
to launch simultaneously on all platforms, we had to compromise a little on patch versions. This simply means that the game version will be slightly different across different platforms, but we’re working to get parity across versions as soon as possible.
A special note for the Nintendo Switch version: it is already scheduled to receive a patch in about 2 weeks to address some very late-game issues.
The file size of the expansion is around 260MB, which is a lot bigger than our average (all those music tracks add up quickly), so if you’re on mobile you might want to download through wifi.
What’s next
Due to the massive size of this update, our next patch will take a bit longer than usual to be released, but it will come with free content as always. We’ll try to make less updates, but bigger, so that there’s less achievements-related stress and a bit more stuff to experiment with. Which content update is next exactly? Just take a peek at the updated Chaos Roadmap to find the answer.
Hope to see you all on our yearly recap post later in the year, where we’ll also cover the usual suspects: cross-save, online, and experiments (everything is proceeding but still not ready for full launch atm).
(who am I kidding, the next Steam news post will be about hotfixes for this monstrously large expansion)
Thanks everyone for your support and hope you have fun with the absolutely surreal Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania!
Vampire Survivors
WHERE TO PLAY
Vampire Survivors is a time survival game with minimalistic gameplay and roguelite elements.Mow down thousands of night creatures and survive until dawn! Vampire Survivors is a gothic horror casual game with rogue-lite elements, where your choices can allow you to quickly snowball against the hundreds of monsters that get thrown at you.Hell is empty, the devils are here, and there’s no place to run or hide. All you can do is survive as long as you can until death inevitably puts an end to your struggles. Gather gold in each run to buy upgrades and help the next survivor.The supernatural indie phenomenon that lets you be the bullet hell!
