Tech: V Rising review

Survival crafting video games are a dime a dozen these days, but my friend and I really liked our time with V Rising, developed by Stunlock Studios:

In V Rising, you play as vampires seeking to re-take your lands from pesky humans. At first, you're relatively fragile, but you gain new recipes as you defeat and drink blood from enemies, which then allows you to craft better gear, which in turn allows you to kill stronger foes.  It's a straightforward and satisfying loop that's a lot of fun due to the variety of abilities at your disposal.  Almost every enemy attack can be dodged, countered, or avoided in some way, placing more emphasis on player skill than raw stats.

The game's most unique aspect is the day/night cycle.  By day (which takes up about a third of the real-world playtime), you have to stay indoors or in the shadows, otherwise you get roasted by the sun. This adds a fun wrinkle to travel and combat...if you get into a fight too close to the dawn, you'll be dodging sunlight in addition to the enemy's attacks, which can make for some hairy encounters.

There are some puzzling omissions, both in terms of quality-of-life features (you can't craft from storage, which is really annoying in 2025) and game mechanics (despite an elaborate crafting system that allows you to create multilevel castle lairs, there are no base defense mechanics whatsoever). Still, very few games meld survival with ARPG fun like V Rising, so it's an easy recommendation.

Rating: 90/100