The success of Dark Souls spawned a whole sub-genre known as Souls-like, and I feel that is fair; I also feel that games which do little but try and leech off the success of better games should be designated as “Soulless”, and Plumber Survivors would not only be part of that genre, it would be competing for the throne.
Everything about it, from its poor visuals, small maps, and terrible character models to the fact it advertises itself in English but loads Russian by default, forcing players to stumble around menus to find the language filter, to its reliance on bathroom humour and dismal marketing which is best summed up “hehe, he is dressed like Mario haha!” with a few extra emoticons added for flavour did little but convince me that Plumber Survivors was a lazy attempt to cash in on the success of Vampire Survivors, using the word parody to cover the fact that almost effort had been made to make Plumber Survivors a good game in its own right.
Image credit Plumber Survivors - Published and developed by IRON GAMES.
Pictured: The official thumbnail used to market the game on YouTube and advertise it to influencers on sites like Keymailer.
Don’t get me wrong, the gameplay loop isn’t terrible, but it feels like every other knockoff Vampire Survivor clone you have ever played.
However, unlike many of those titles, it appears that Plumber Survivors is essentially a store-bought starter kit project, with a store-bought user interface using store-bought assets, held together with some AI artwork and a handful of maps that look like they were thrown together in 10 minutes by a high school student or substandard map generator.
Image credit Plumber Survivors - Published and developed by IRON GAMES.
While Plumber Survivors has missed its launch date (August 1st), and I do not yet know how much it will cost, there is more to life than money, and even if it’s dirt cheap, playing Plumber Survivors feels like a waste of time.
Unlike games such as Vampire Survivors, which continue to receive updates frequently, Plumber Survivors is likely to die within seconds of launch and is unlikely to receive any updates beyond the developer throwing together whatever is left of the store-bought assets already purchased and not yet in the game to reduce his losses on what will be one of the worst-selling indie games of 2024.
Image credit Plumber Survivors - Published and developed by IRON GAMES.
Plumber Survivors is a action rogue-like video game developed and published by IRON GAMES, it was released on 1 August 2024 and retails for NA.
Plumber Survivors is available exclusively on PC.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Plumber Survivors is unrated and contains:
Image credit Plumber Survivors - Published and developed by IRON GAMES.
Plumber Survivors is not a terrible game, but a soulless one. Honestly, I would be very surprised if the developer isn’t forced to stop working on it without moments of launch, as frankly, its not good enough to survive and feels like a lazy attempt at cashing in on Vampire Survivors by referring to this mess of Unity Store assets and basic programming as a parody, instead of calling it what it is, a soulless attempt to cash in on the rightfully earned success of a much better game (Vampire Survivors).
Overall, I won’t be playing it any further, and I cannot recommend it to anyone, as frankly, it is just not worth buying at any price; however, if it ever ends up in a budget bundle, such as a dozen games for a $1 type deal, then it may be worth playing, as while it is very generic, it manages to be somewhat enjoyable in the way that all but the very worst action roguelikes manage to be somewhat enjoyable, and while Plumber Survivors is very generic, there are worse Vampire Survivor clones out there, and I have played a fair few of them!
