Scarlet Tower is a decent attempt at cashing on the success of Vampire Survivors; however, that isn’t necessarily bad if said title improves upon the formula; unfortunately, in the case of Scarlet Tower, it does not.
Singleplayer.
Taking inspiration from a popular game is nothing new. Some genres owe their existence to “copying someone else’s homework”, most notably the battle royale genre, which can trace its roots back to a series of popular mods of Minecraft and, more recently, mods for Arma II and Dayz mod (Arma II) by Brendan Greene, the creator of PlayerUknown Battlegrounds.
Vampire Survirors is a genre-defining title that will undoubtedly spawn a flood of both low-budget and AAA spinoffs for many years to come, and some overlap of mechanics is to be expected; however, in the case of Scarlet Tower, this cuts a little close to the line, with dozens of similarities including but not limited to:
While none of this is illegal, to me, it feels like cheating, as it builds a title off the hard work of a fellow indie developer who had already done all the legwork in perfecting mechanics for what would become the first game of a new genre.
While Scarlet Tower mimics Vampire Survivors in many ways, the way the characters move is not copied from the latter. All characters in Scarlet Tower suffer from “boat controls,” which make narrowly avoiding enemy swarms and area-of-effect attacks far more difficult than it needs to be.
To give credit where credit is due, Scarlet Tower is a much prettier-looking game than Vampire Survivors. I could see an eventual sequel to Vampire Survivors opting for a similar aesthetic, with larger, more detailed sprites and a more comprehensive UI.
Scarlet Tower looks fantastic, and if not for the fact Vampire Survivors was already on the market, I would give Scarlet Tower a much higher rating, as it is a very good game, albeit one whose good points are mostly (legally) copied from that of another title.
I have said many times before I am a Christian and view magical lore and in-game depictions of religion as mostly harmless nonsense; however, I feel that Scarlet Tower’s insistence on upending over 125 years of horror lore by forcing players to replace traditional holy items with unholy variants to be needlessly offensive.
While I believe Holy Water is a load of nonsense (no offence to Catholics intended!), it’s well-established in the horror genre. By forcing players who use certain builds and wish to fully upgrade their holy water to replace it with antichrist blood, the developer has (perhaps unintentionally) set out to offend over 2 billion people.
By all means, include dark items for those who wish to use them, but force players to use “evil” items and powers unless they either avoid certain otherwise mundane items and focus only on selecting holly weapons exclusively if they wish to complete the game, Pyxeralia has made Scarlet Tower unpalatable for many people, myself included, which is a shame as frankly while its not the most original game, its pretty fun for a Vampire Survivors clone.
Compared to the leading title in the genre (Vampire Survivors), Scarlet Tower is not even a blip on the radar; with an all-time high of fewer than 900 players and a daily average of around 100 players, it is unlikely ever to surpass Vampire Survivors which daily peaks at around 4.5k players on Steam alone, not including its massive Xbox and PC game pass community which is believed to number into the millions.
Scarlet Tower offers players multiple ways to improve each playable hero. This is a huge improvement over Vampire Survivors, where upgrades were less catered to an individual playstyle and more generic.
Scarlet Tower rewards players who face the more dangerous foes of the nighttime hours with unique rewards, including relics, NPC’s and currency available at no other time of day; this is a great system and is one of the few mechanics in Scarlet Tower that differentiate it from Vampire Survivors.
Scarlet Tower is a action rogue-like video game developed and published by Pyxeralia, it was released on 31st October 2022 and retails for $4.99.
Scarlet Tower is available exclusively on PC.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Scarlet Tower is unrated and contains:
While Scarlet Tower improves upon Vampire Survivors visually, in all other areas, it lacks the polish and attention to detail that made it a cult classic.
Because of this, I find it difficult to recommend Scarlet Tower over Vampire Survivors, which is quite frankly a better game, despite Scarlet Tower’s more eye-pleasing visuals, intuitive UI and in-depth progression system.
