Achilles, Hector and other mythical monsters. Achilles: Survivor game review

Vampire Survivors unexpectedly for many gave rise to a whole new subgenre of games that flooded Steam and other platforms. And although none of the clones received as much attention as the original game from poncle, among vampire-like there are very interesting projects, such as 20 Minutes Till Dawn, Archons, Conquest Dark, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Halls of Torment or the Ukrainian Ocean Keeper: Dome Survival. Well, you can add Achilles: Survivor from the Dark Point Games studio to this list.

Dark Point Games, like many other seekers of success in the wake of the Vampire Survivors craze, created Achilles: Survivor based on another of its own games in the same ancient Greek setting – Achilles: Legends Untold. This is a full-fledged action/RPG, which was released in November 2023, has mostly positive reviews and moderate sales at the level of 60-100 thousand copies. By the way, the release of Achilles: Survivor provoked the return of players to Achilles: Legends Untold.

So the setting is the same, some assets are possible too, plus some heroes. Although in Achilles: Survivor there are much more of them. Not only Achilles and Hector, Paris and Pythia, but a bunch of other "survivors", including quite unexpectedly mythical beasts, for example, a cyclops, a huge spider, a rooster, a skeleton, a minotaur, etc. Each hero has his own basic skill, his own tasks-tests and his own branch of improvement in addition to the main one. There are warrior heroes, magician heroes, robbers and... architects.

Because, perhaps, the main feature of Achilles: Survivor is that in addition to surviving, dodging, and choosing improvements, you need to mine stones on the battlefield and build auxiliary buildings. Traps, turrets, support buildings, etc. That is, a kind of Tower Defense is added to the standard Vampire Survivors gameplay.

It's impossible to build a real defense line, because the building slots are randomly placed, and there's always a shortage of stones. But you can take a break near the turrets and traps, and each of the buildings gives nice bonuses – increases health, critical strike probability, status effects, skill effects, summons assistant warriors, and so on.

This really diversifies the gameplay and requires tactical thinking. Which hero is better suited to which buildings, which skills work better in combination with which buildings. Winning builds are built on the synergy of the hero, skills, buildings and the favor of the gods (these are improvements that are saved between races).

Some buildings, skills and improvements still need to be opened by completing tasks at each level. And sometimes it is very difficult, because in turn it requires choosing the appropriate hero and build. Even to open a new zone you need to collect a certain number of laurel wreaths at the previous location, that is, complete all tasks at three levels. Which is not so easy. And the most powerful favors of the gods generally require passing levels on Hard difficulty. To open everything in Achilles: Survivor you need to spend more than 40 hours.

Achilles: Survivor is a very enjoyable game to play. All the upgrades are clear, the skills and weapons give a nice feedback, the characters are diverse, the tasks are difficult. Like all good vampire-like games, the game is very addictive.

Before leaving Early Access, Achilles: Survivor received an update with a fourth zone and 7 more levels, an endless mode, new enemies (exploding runners are pure evil!), as well as a new breakdown of heroes by class with separate improvements for them. It became more interesting.

Achilles: Survivor looks pretty good for its genre, where most games use pixel graphics. It does run on the Unreal Engine, after all. But there is a downside to that. It seems like the game isn't very well optimized, because it loads the graphics card at the level of some Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which is, of course, a bit too much for a Vampire Survivors clone.

In everything else, Achilles: Survivor is a very good representative of the genre. One of the best vampire-like this year. Pay attention. Especially since until August 12, 2025, the game can be purchased on Steam with a 20% discount for only 231 hryvnia. Happy hunting to those who survived!