Vampire Survivors Studio Poncle Is Opening Two New Studios and Has 15+ Projects in Development

Two days after Vampire Crawlers launched to strong reviews, Poncle — the UK-based indie studio behind Vampire Survivors — dropped an announcement that reframes everything about what this studio is becoming. In an interview with The Game Business at the London Games Festival, Chief Strategy Officer Matteo Sapio revealed that Poncle is opening new studios in Japan and Italy, has 15+ active projects in development, and has built a custom engine it's now licensing to other studios to create officially supported Vampire Survivors-style games set in external IP universes.

What started as a solo developer's passion project has become one of the most ambitious indie expansion stories in years.

The Numbers First

Poncle wants to be clear: 15 projects does not mean 15 brand-new games. The studio clarified in a response to Wario64 on X shortly after the initial report that the 15 includes existing titles, DLC, free updates, and co-developed projects alongside new releases. Even with that caveat, the pipeline is extraordinary for a studio that was, until recently, primarily known for a single title.

Vampire Survivors itself has now surpassed 27 million players — a number that would be remarkable for any AAA game, let alone an indie that launched at under a pound and spent its first year in the Steam charts as a beloved word-of-mouth secret.

Three Types of Games

Sapio laid out Poncle's development philosophy in clear terms. The studio is building three categories of games simultaneously:

Spinoffs from the Vampire Survivors universe. Vampire Crawlers — the deckbuilding dungeon crawler launched this week — is the first. "We are using the famous Vampire Survivors IP to experiment in new genres," Sapio said. "We love card games, but we are not very good at card games. They're complicated. So, we made the game that we wanted to play." More genre experiments are planned.

Original IP. Two entirely new games set in new universes are confirmed to be in active development. Sapio didn't share details, but the implication is clear: Poncle is working toward franchises that exist independently of Vampire Survivors.

Collaborative Survivors-style games in external IPs. This is the most commercially ambitious category. Poncle has developed the "Vampire Survivor Engine" — described by Sapio as a template containing "all the Vampire Survivors juice inside" — and is licensing it to other studios with expertise in specific IP. The model: if you have an IP with deep lore that Poncle doesn't know well enough to do justice, you partner with a studio that does, give them the engine, and build a game together.

Warhammer Survivors is the confirmed example — a Vampire Survivors-style game set in the Warhammer 40K universe, being co-developed by Auroch Digital and targeting a 2026 Steam release. The template is already working: previous Vampire Survivors DLC collaborations with Square Enix (SaGa series) and Konami (Contra and Castlevania characters) demonstrated both the appetite and the execution quality.

Why Japan and Italy

The new studios aren't random geography. The Japan expansion was specifically driven by interest from Japanese companies wanting to collaborate — and, as Sapio explained, Japanese business culture works better when the counterpart is a Japanese company. "The Japanese like to deal with Japanese companies, in Japanese and with a Japanese contract." The studio is also targeting Japanese-owned IP for Survivors collaborations, making a Japan-based team a practical necessity for those conversations.

The Italy studio follows similar logic — European talent and potential IP partners.

Crucially, these are not large studios. Sapio was explicit: "little teams of people — five, 10, 15 — working on different projects." The goal is a federation of lean, agile teams rather than a single sprawling studio. "What is the indie spirit? It is mainly freedom and taking risk with ideas. We don't want to be AAA or AA."

Publishing Is Paused

One thing Poncle is stepping back from: its third-party publishing label. After releasing Kill the Brickman and Berserk or Die under the Poncle Presents banner, Sapio described it as a "learning experience" where they found they couldn't give external developers adequate support. Publishing is paused — not cancelled — while the studio focuses on its internal growth. Sapio said Poncle will return to publishing when the structure is right.

What This Means for Players

The immediate implication is simple: if you liked Vampire Survivors, or Vampire Crawlers, or the idea of bite-sized, mechanically deep games at accessible prices, Poncle's pipeline is one of the most interesting in the industry right now. Warhammer Survivors is the next confirmed project to watch. Beyond that, two new original IPs are in development at a studio that has proven it can execute at a level far beyond what its headcount would suggest.

The indie success story continues. But it's getting a lot more complicated.

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