From their humble beginnings in the 1980s, the painted tabletop battling worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 have brought delight and dice-based dismay to millions over the decades. Video games were a tougher nut to crack, with far more ups and downs in quality, until the last few years really cemented the 40K setting in particular as one that’s perfect for high quality AAA gaming.
So anyway, here’s Warhammer Survivors. It’s a bit like Vampire Survivors – actually, a lot like Vampire Survivors – but bends the kitschy glitchy retro aesthetic fun to feature the heroes and pervasive villainous horrors of both Warhammer: Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000.
It is, in a lot of ways, very successful in this adaptation. You’re dropped into the middle of a map themed after one of the Age of Sigmar realms or classic 40K worlds in crisis, and then just sort of wander around a bit. Your character will do all the hard work of firing their guns, swishing axe blades and emitting auras as often as they possibly can, and you just need to meander between the enemies that are taking the shortest possible route to get to you. Collect the colourful skulls from fallen enemies to earn XP, level up and you get a choice of new weapon, weapon upgrade or a character buff, and then just…. carry on doing that.
Eventually, if you can survive long enough and keep increasing your power to match and overcome the increasingly over-the-top enemy waves, you can discover the combos of weapon and upgrade that evolve into delectable screen-clearing effects. Those Chainswords now burst forth with flames upon them, the Boltgun becomes a wild and barely controllable spray of a Heavy Bolter, Sea Wind aura now grabs enemies and pulls them in, the Nuln Oil becomes a ground-cracking sludge. That first souped up weapon often begets another, and then another, turning you into an absolute juggernaut until you face off against and try to survive a level-ending boss.
The problem, unfortunately, is that Warhammer Survivors really drags through those opening stages of a run. Everything moves a bit too slow, and many characters and weapons come with borderline unusable weapons in their initial form. Even the trusty Boltgun is little more than a peashooter until you’ve levelled it up a few times – and getting that option relies on RNG. It’s exacerbated by the level design, which generally drops you into these utterly vast stages where fixed upgrades are several minutes away from you.
More annoyingly, the second stage for both 40K and AoS also leans into a side-scrolling design that just really hampers your ability to dodge and evade the hordes of enemies coming at you. The fact that Warhammer Survivors is basically two games bolted together with largely separate progression between 40K and AoS means that you will need to endure this early difficulty spike twice.
It also undercuts all of the great ideas that Auroch has come up with for expanding the Survivors-like formula and the ways it pays homage to Games Workshop as a whole. As you unlock weapons in a run, your chosen character can only equip those that are lore accurate for them, but you’re not restricted in your selections by this. Instead, any inappropriate weapons will just be introduced with a follower character to join you. It’s a great time building out a squad of Lasgun-toting guardsmen, adding a Sister of Battle to provide an aura of faith to shield you all, and these characters slightly lag behind your movements, adding a further little something to consider for how you use them.
Each faction that you’re battling has its specific quirks, such as Tyranid demi-bosses having empowering auras, while the Gloomspite Gitz have a moon that goes through different phases. Levels also build up to an Extremis Boss, from Ghazghkull Thraka to Vizzik Skour, the Prophet of the Horned Rat. Similar to Vampire Survivors, these will basically just stomp you in a heartbeat once they arrive, but each one also has its own trick unlock that lets you genuinely fight and defeat them.
And despite the pacing issues, I do still quite like this game. It’s clearly a love letter to all things Games Workshop, knowingly drawing upon its most famous characters, incorporating things like D6 dice rolling across the screen and Blast Markers as pick ups, featuring the once ubiquitous gothic ruins across the 40K maps. I also really love building up a squad of characters through the weapon system, and finding those nooks and crannies in the map where you can sort of just funnel enemies into a meat grinder.
