Highlights
- Poncle expands to Japan and Italy as Vampire Survivors hits a massive 27 million players.
- The studio is juggling 15+ projects, including Warhammer Survivors and two entirely new original IPs.
- Poncle is pausing external publishing to focus on its custom engine and "bullet-heaven" collaborations.
Poncle, the independent studio behind the indie juggernaut Vampire Survivors, is rapidly expanding its global footprint. Driven by the immense success of its flagship title, which has now officially surpassed 27 million players worldwide, the UK-based company is opening two new localized studios in Japan and Italy. What started as a solo endeavor by creator Luca Galante has grown into a 25-plus person team, and the studio now boasts a massive production pipeline of over 15 active projects. It is a major corporate evolution for a developer primarily known for a single, wildly successful franchise.
During a recent interview at the London Games Festival with The Games Business, Poncle’s Chief Strategy Officer Matteo Sapio laid out the company's ambitious roadmap. Sapio revealed that the studio's extensive roster of upcoming games falls into three main categories. First are dedicated spin-offs to their hit franchise, such as the newly released turn-based roguelite deckbuilder Vampire Crawlers.
Second, the team is stepping outside of its established universe to develop two entirely new, original intellectual properties. Finally, Poncle has confirmed to be working on new roguelites that use the familiar Vampire Survivors mechanics but feature entirely different, established IPs. To make this third category a reality without overloading its own workforce, Poncle has developed a custom engine that it is licensing to trusted external partners. This framework allows developers to easily turn pre-existing IPs into officially supported, bullet-heaven roguelites.
We already know about one of these exciting collaborations: Warhammer Survivors, which brings the addictive gameplay loop into the Warhammer 40,000 universe and is slated to land on Steam sometime this year. The newly established Japanese studio will further support this licensing model, as the expansion was largely driven by local media companies eager to collaborate on similar titles, as per Engadget.
Steam
Pausing Third-Party Publishing to Consolidate Resources
To focus its capital and attention entirely on this internal scaling and its new co-development partnerships, Poncle has decided to temporarily pause its third-party indie publishing label, Poncle Presents. After previously helping release games like Kill the Brickman and Berserk or Die, Sapio admitted that the publishing side was a learning experience where they simply weren't able to give external developers the right level of support. By consolidating its resources, the studio can better manage its own rapid growth.
While rapid expansion always carries risks, much like we saw with the disastrous fallout of Embracer Group's 2019 spending spree, Poncle is actively avoiding the bloated AAA development route. Instead, the company intends to strictly preserve its indie spirit by forming small, highly focused teams of developers for each individual project to remain agile and flexible.
If you are wondering whether there is enough player appetite for multiple top-down, simple-control bullet hells, the recent success of similar games like Halls of Torment, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, and Soulstone Survivors proves the genre is thriving. There are a lot of reasons to have high hopes for Poncle's bold new chapter.
The just-released spin-off Vampire Crawlers is exceptionally good, proving the studio isn't a one-trick pony. By successfully blending the mechanics of Slay the Spire with a first-person dungeon crawler like Etrian Odyssey, all while capturing the distinct Vampire Survivors vibe, Poncle is showing that if they can maintain this level of quality, gamers are in for a long-term treat.
