From Big Macs to Baftas: the incredible story behind the hit video game Vampire Survivors - eviltoast
Luca Galante went from flipping burgers in Thornton Heath to accidentally creating a gaming sensation in one of the few true indie developer rags-to-riches tales

cross-posted from: https://yiffit.net/post/860162

After years spent pursuing a career in game development, Italian coder Luca Galante had given up. Uprooting himself from a comfortable life in Rome, he flew to England in the hope of finally making his childhood dream a reality. Yet after countless rejected job applications, Galante found himself flipping Big Macs in Thornton Heath McDonald’s. Dejected, he gave up on his digital dream, leaving what he says might be “the worst McDonald’s in the UK” to code slot machines for a gambling company. Now, 10 years and one bedroom-made game later, Galante is the proud owner of two Baftas.

Archived version: https://archive.ph/RYbQn

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Seeing a throng of passionate players flocking around his prototype, Galante’s peers eventually encouraged him to release the game on Valve’s Steam storefront – and that’s when Vampire Survivors exploded.

    Thanks to a series of YouTubers raving about this exhilarating indie, the pandemic project suddenly topped the Steam Charts, with players racking up hundreds of in-game hours.

    Despite teams of hundreds working on FromSoftware’s Elden Ring or PlayStation’s God of War Ragnarok, it is this endearingly pure, fun-first gameplay loop that saw Galante’s bedroom baby beat billion-dollar blockbusters to the Best Game Bafta.

    Undoubtedly it will have irked developers at Sony Santa Monica and FromSoftware, who spent years crafting their intricate worlds and stories, to be beaten by a game that, by the admission of its own creator “literally makes no sense”.

    “After working a few years in the gambling industry, I found out that I could be happy even without living my dream … with Vampire Survivors, I could clearly see its potential, and it just felt fun to make with no end goal in mind, so I just kept going.”

    Now boasting an eye-watering 6m sales on Steam, an additional 3m downloads on mobile and with a Nintendo Switch version launching this month (17 August), Vampire Survivors has been a considerable moneymaker.

    I’m a bot and I’m open source!