Mini Review: Warhammer Survivors (PS5)

Warhammer Survivors launches today on PC, consoles, and mobile with day-one Game Pass access, and the consensus across early reviews is surprisingly consistent: this is Vampire Survivors with a Games Workshop skin that takes too long to earn its license. Auroch Digital, the studio behind Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, built the game on Poncle's original engine with direct involvement from the Vampire Survivors creator, so the DNA is identical — move, dodge, collect XP gems, pick from three or four upgrade choices at each level, repeat until the screen becomes an unreadable storm of projectiles. The twist is structural: two completely separate campaigns, one for Warhammer 40,000 and one for Age of Sigmar, each with its own progression, maps, enemies, and roughly 35 unlockable characters apiece. That sounds generous, but reviewers found the early hours nearly indistinguishable between the two realms because starting weapons, passive upgrades, and even the rebranded "garlic" equivalent (Shield of Faith) behave the same way.

The friction comes from weapon design. Vampire Survivors gave almost every weapon auto-aim so the player could focus entirely on movement; Warhammer Survivors arms several early characters with directional weapons like the Boltgun that fire only where the stick is pointed. In a genre built on kiting hordes, that means you constantly shoot at empty space while backing away from the swarm. Polygon noted it takes "a bit too long to find the fun" because the worst weapons are the ones you start with. The Wand Report and TheGamer both confirmed the same wall: the first hour feels like a reskin, and only after unlocking evolved weapons — heavy bolters, orbital bombardments, a literal tank — does the Warhammer power fantasy arrive.

The most distinctive system is the follower mechanic. Instead of letting one character equip every weapon, each hero is locked to a faction-appropriate arsenal. When you pick an upgrade marked with another character's portrait, that ally joins the run, auto-firing their own weapon and contributing their passive without taking damage or requiring micro-management. It captures the tabletop feeling of deploying a squad, and TheGamer called it "the most inventive way it captures the feeling of placing tiny figurines onto a board." But the same review warned that area-of-effect abilities like Shield of Faith become fiddly when your squad spreads out, turning the satisfying snowball into a game of "wrangle-the-squad."

Content volume is real: over 70 characters across both campaigns, including deep-cut factions like Black Templars, Sisters of Battle, Adeptus Arbites, and a Catachan jungle fighter who is legally distinct from Sly Marbo. Movies Games and Tech praised the enemy variety — Tyranids behave differently than Gloomspite Gitz — and the evolution tree that turns a lasgun into "Ordo Hereticus sanctioned pain." Yet every reviewer hit the same structural complaint: two full campaigns with shared early progression forces you to replay the sluggish opening twice. TheGamer described crossing the realmgate as "a bit of a slog" because you retrace identical upgrade paths before the campaigns diverge. For a genre defined by instant gratification, that friction is the difference between a weekend obsession and a Game Pass download you delete after the first map.