If you’re looking for something to sink your teeth into this weekend (apologies), you could do far worse than take a look at developer Stunlock Studios’ acclaimed vampire survival adventure V Rising – which is free to play on Steam for the next few days.
V Rising launched b ack in May after two years of Steam early access development, presenting players (and their equally elegant friends) with a rich, more-ish game of isometric survival, where the goal is to assert your vampiric superiority across a gloomy, gothic open-world.
It’s got a bunch of neats twists on the survival formula, all playing into the whole vampire thing – including a blood-sucking mechanic that gives you specific abilities depending on the creatures you drain, and progress that involves sticking to the shadows during daylight hours (lest you sizzle to ash). Its most exciting feature, though, is that you get to building your own looming gothic castle – and who hasn’t ever wished they had one of those?
“V Rising is one of the most generous survival crafting games I have played,” Eurogamer’s Robert Purchase wrote in his 4 out of 5 star review back in May, “and at every turn, it finds a way to realise the vampire fantasy I came to it for. There’s no escaping the inherent crafting and Gear Score grind present in it, of course, but there are ways to mitigate it – and there’s enough imagination and depth throughout to sustain your interest in it.”
And if any of the above has got you curious, V Rising is free to download and play on Steam right now until Monday, 16th September at 5pm in the UK/10am PST – after which, it gracefully sinks back into its coffin and you’ll need to pay to continue playing. If you do find yourself sufficiently impressed, though, there’s currently 30 percent off V Rising and 20 percent off its cosmetic DLC (including its Castelvania-themed Premium Pack) until 24th September.