Artifact Seeker: Prologue is a stylish taste of an upcoming 3D spin on Vampire Survivors

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SHOULD I PLAY ARTIFACT SEEKER: PROLOGUE?

Definitely play this if you’re curious about Artifact Seeker, an upcoming Vampire Survivors-style game that’s about defeating huge hordes of demons and monsters and collecting artifacts and power-ups for your character. There’s a complicated-looking progression system wrapped around the whole thing, but it’s actually still very simple: this is pretty much a Sega Dreamcast version of Vampire Survivors.

TIME PLAYED

I played just over two hours of Artifact Seeker: Prologue, which is the time it took me to complete three runs. The Prologue involved making my way through two boards’ worth of encounters and defeating two bosses. After each run, I returned to a town menu, where I could upgrade various buildings and spells and unlock new weapons and upgrades to use out on runs.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT ARTIFACT SEEKER: PROLOGUE?

• Arcade feel. The action is more colorful and bombastic in Artifact Seeker: Prologue than what I’d gotten used to in Vampire Survivors, and it feels much faster-paced, too. While it’s not a challenging game, there was so much going on all the time that it constantly felt exciting. Rings of creatures spawned around my location frequently, closing in only to be fried to a crisp by a chain lightning or fireball spell I had been leveling up. Elite enemies and bosses brought their own hordes and gigantic spell effects with them, so Artifact Seeker: Prologue always had a kaleidoscopic chaos going on.

• A cool selection of creatures. I ran into a wide range of enemies in Artifact Seeker: Prologue, ranging from bats and slimes to centaurs and demons. There was always something new crawling or flying or oozing my way, and even when I became too powerful for regular enemies to do much to hurt me, I liked that the makeup of the crowd always kept changing.

• Loads of upgrade options. Artifact Seeker: Prologue has a bunch of different skills and items to pick from, so every run was different. In one, I tried to pick as many fire-related skills as I could to match my fire-aligned elemental sword. In another, I played as a sorceress with an ice wand, but added a few poison abilities like acid rain to her loadout to keep the damage going. Other abilities I tried out would summon minions like golems or baby dragons, and there was always the opportunity to mix and match, as well as swap out abilities I didn’t like once I had a full slate.

WHAT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT IN ARTIFACT SEEKER: PROLOGUE?

• Lots of stats, no big picture. I wanted an easy way to look at my topline stats while I played, but there wasn’t a good place to do that. An item might give me a percent bonus to strength, but I never had a sense of what that translated to in terms of damage output. That made picking skills and artifacts somewhat arbitrary, and I tended to just select the ones I hadn’t tried before—that’s fine for a demo, but if I was going to spend more time with the full game, I’d want a clearer picture of what each item did.

• The power curve shoots up too fast. It never took me long to become overpowered in Artifact Seeker: Prologue, and overall the game would benefit from a bit more pressure and danger. Instead, I was walking around pretty much impervious to all but the biggest bosses by the end of the first chapter on each of my runs.

PLATFORM TESTED:

PC via Steam