Vampire Survivors' New Contra DLC Has Castlevania Fans Baffled

thegamer.com:

Vampire Survivors is an indie title that is ripe for collaboration, and developer Poncle clearly thinks so too. Earlier this week, during the first Triple-I Initiative showcase, it was announced that Vampire Survivors is collaborating with none other than Konami to team up with one of the publisher's biggest and most beloved franchises. Yep, you guessed correctly, it's Contra.

Poncle's decision to ask Konami for a Contra collaboration has absolutely bewildered people online, most of all the Castlevania fans out there who thought that the two would've been a match made in heaven. Thankfully, most people are playing it off as a rather elaborate joke on Poncle's part, who seems to have deliberately avoided the obvious Castlevania collab purely for the fun of it.

In fact, some people think Poncle is actually just staying true to a running joke it has about the lack of vampires in Vampire Survivors. Despite the title, you can't actually play as a vampire, and none of the enemies you come up against are vampires either. There are several references to mysterious vampire entities in the game, but if you want to play or fight one of the bloodsucking creatures, you're out of luck.

Poncle choosing Contra over Castlevania in a collaboration with Konami is extreme dedication to the bit, which is made even funnier by the fact that a Castlevania collaboration was announced with a different indie title during the exact same show. V Rising - Legacy of Castlevania was revealed earlier this week, which clearly shows that Konami is willing to hand out the license, and that Contra was 100 percent a deliberate pick. We now need Silent Hill and Metal Gear collabs to really drive the joke home.

We should just be grateful that Vampire Survivors is getting a Contra crossover in the first place, as baffling yet strangely fitting as it is. Vampire Survivors: Operation Guns is launching on May 9 later this year and will add 11 new characters to the game, as well 22 new weapons, and