Vampire Survivors wins BAFTA GOTY, Chris Judge tells gamers to chill

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/bafta-winners-include-goty-award-for-vampire-survivors/1100-6512855/

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts, aka BAFTA, has announced its winners for its 2023 Game Awards. Games such as God of War Ragnarok, Vampire Survivors, and Tunic are all walking away with awards.

Vampire Survivors was able to secure the win for the Best Game, beating out other titles such as Cult of the Lamb, Stray, and Elden Ring. Other games, such as God of War Ragnorok, left the show with six awards in categories such as Animation and Audio Achievement. Meanwhile, Elden Ring earned its team a pair of rewards for Multiplayer Game and Original Property.

Late last year in December, during The Game Awards, Elden Ring won Game of The Year, Best Game Direction, and a handful of other awards. In comparison, God of War Ragnorok won awards such as Best Narrative, Best Music and Score, and a few others.

The BAFTA Games Awards took place on March 30 at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, and it was live-streamed on the BAFTAs Twitch channel. It was hosted by Frankie Ward alongside various Twitch streamers.

Below is a list of all the winners in their respective category:

Best Game

Vampire Survivors

Animation

God of War Ragnorok

Artistic Achievement

Tunic

Audio Achievement

God of War Ragnorok

British Game

Rollerdrome

Debut Game

Tunic

Evolving Game

Final Fantasy XIV Online

Family

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

Game Beyond Entertainment

Endling - Extinction is Forever

Game Design

Vampire Survivors

Multiplayer

Elden Ring

Music

God of War Ragnorok

Narrative

Immortality

Original Property

Elden Ring

Performer In A Leading Role

Christopher Judge (God of War Ragnarok)

Performer In A Supporting Role

Laya Deleon Hayes (God of War Ragnarok)

Technical Achievement

Horizon Forbidden West

EE Game Of The Year

God of War Ragnarok

Never heard of Vampire Survivors. But the fact that it beat @hardwenzen’s Elden Ring must mean something.

Thoughts, SW?

Thank you Sony!

You never heard of vampire survivors?? Its a $5 game and on top of that its free on gamepass. It's got a mobile game vibe and far too addictive, so I stopped playing it. I'm looking for deeper and more meaningful experiences. I heard uncle Phil 100% the game.

Belden ring deserve to get rekked though.

@blaznwiipspman1: oh shit it’s on GamePass?

Lol imagine not knowing vampire survivors, which is actually a game that's better than ER and GOW arguably.

Game came out in 2021 of March.

@SolidGame_basic: well deserved, I made a thread about this game here of vampire survivors vs elden ring I like this game more than Elden Ring. It got about 40% of the vote in that thread. Vampire survivors is true gaming, no bs

Only tried a bit of Vampire Survivors on Game Pass but it was pretty fun and I can definitely see why it’s so addictive.

1.0 came out end of last year

Agree with everything except Forbidden West winning Technical Achievement.

Even after they fixed the blurriness GoW looked better

Bro, we were just talking about this game like two weeks ago lol

Vampire Survivors is indeed crazy addictive. Told myself I wouldn't play it, but I didn't listen.

I like how one dude with the shittiest assetts you can find makes a better game than AAA developers using billions of dollars.

Great to see a gamepass day one win GOTY and another day one tunic get a few awards.

And it's Free with Microsoft rewards.

Xbox.. for the players

@ConanTheStoner: lol name rings a bell now but I didn’t know anything about the game itself. Damn dem graphics look 1990ish!

VS seems like the typical game which people take addictiveness as a sign of quality. But maybe I'm wrong.

@navyguy21: GOWR looks phenomenal but I agree with BAFTA and the graphics experts at Digital Foundry that Horizon Forbidden West looks better.

Best looking console game by far. It rivals $4000 PC graphics.

@kathaariancode:

It's probably the most purified dopamine loop I've experienced in a game, won't deny it. But it is a well designed and just plain fun game when you get down to it.

Been about a year since I've played, assuming it's probably changed a lot since.

Yeah the guy who made the game was just screwing around with asset packs, never expected anyone to really play it. He was caught off guard when it took off. Basically looked like a bunch of classic Castlevania sprite rips lol.

I remember him saying he'd replace all the sprites, don't know if that ever happened tho.

Looks aside, it's a huge success. Already spawned a new subgenre, plenty of imitators, some successful.

Kind of funny how all the new genres in recent years have come from modders and no name indies.

@Mozelleple112: lmfao. Damn I'm coughing from laughing so hard. You think your 9 tflop graphic game is best console graphics. You're wrong, ps5 doesn't have that power, the 12tflop beast that is the Xbox. MSFS20 is far better looking than anything on ps5. Forza horizon 5 is the same and even halo infinite looks better than that ps4 looking game you call forgotten worst.

@blaznwiipspman1: so the SXS is roughly 30% faster than the PS5 yet Horizon Forbidden West graphically shits on every game it has?

Insanely talented group of developers at Guerilla Games.

it just seems like an overly simplified, overly stripped down version of Diablo. I get why it has a certain charm, and I get that a lot of people who just spent 9 hours performing back breaking labor don't need the most complex games in order to have fun.

I would argue it looks 1980ish but the game is fun and addictive

I watched some gameplay footage of Vampire Survivors and it does nothing for me. No desire to play it at all.

@SolidGame_basic: of course you haven't heard of it, because you don't have an Xbox!

It's a highly addictive, 2d roguelike shoot 'em up.

Never heard of Vampire Survivors before... Any particular reason why that won over Elden Ring?

What's the subgenre called? Bullet hell roguelite?

Still pretty fresh, don't even think that's settled yet.

Definitely some roguelite elements to its structure, though emphasis on the lite lol.

Keep seeing people try to call it a shmup, which is wack, there's no aiming or shooting involved.

At least bullet hell makes sense considering the swarms.

You're basically trying to become the most efficient AOE machine you can be and survive the waves until the timer runs out. So the gameplay itself is purely about positioning. Which seems simple enough, just dodge enemies. Though you have to put yourself at risk to gather resources necessary to upgrade and survive the increasingly dense waves and tougher enemies. Aside from that risk/reward positioning game, all about making the right upgrade choices.

Kinda reminds me of that game Loop Hero. They don't play the same at all. But they're both automated takes on something that looks familiar, just ultimately with different win conditions and more about the macro choices.

lol working from home today.. must resist temptation to flip Xbox on lol...

The game with one button makes so many games with massive budgets and scope look really bad by comparison.

Gaming is about having fun, not pixel counts and frames per second.. Always nice when a game comes along to remind us of that.

@Mozelleple112: no, the Xbox series X is 30% faster, plus rdna2 which means it's 50% faster. And it shows because no game on the ps5 even holds a candle to halo infinite, let alone msfs20, or forza horizon 5.

Be gone cow.

A hallmark of how much gaming sucks nowadays.

I love both, I got hooked on Elden Ring and then got hooked on Vampire Survivors, insanely good games, vastly different approaches.

game comes off more like its compulsive than good. You move, left, right, up, down. Congrats that's the gameplay. You don't actually worry about attacking, the game does that for you, you make binary ass rpg decisions that are about making numbers go higher, and prioritizing targets is minimized.

Comes off less interesting when you think of how top down shooters work or even twin stick shit like geoemetry wars 2, where on top of moving around stuff, you gotta actually be aiming right and taking stuff out, prioritize certain shapes, put yourself in harms way to gather gems, you know play a game game.

Idk maybe its secretly genius, but I see that game, and I only see what's shallow about it.

@R4gn4r0k: Yeah, I dislike Diablo 3 for the same reasons. I feel like I'm just getting audiovisual feedback for doing nothing. Which I get can be said from games in general but here seems more grotesque.

It does seem overly passive at this point. Like I could play Diablo IV... I can just think of a number of different games that give me the same satisfaction but way better, and are way deeper.

I guess we have just moved on from those games.

Nah, at least from what I've played, doesn't really go beyond what you described.

Only real challenge is making sure you're stacked for the next wave. Keeping your AOE output above whatever the mid enemy happens to be throughout the run. And if you've done well in the early to mid run, pretty much sorts itself out throughout the rest since you'll be a walking magnet for XP. Then due to the permanent upgrades you can unlock, becomes even easier. Can max out your build well before a run is over.

And yeah, far as target priority goes, hardly a thing. When they roll out a tank, I go straight for them, but only because the XP and treasure drops.

Admittedly I've only played 4 stages + some bonus stage, but can't imagine the game really deviates much from there.

It seems to feature a lot of what I hate about modern games. Constant interruptions with loot/unlocks/upgrades and time wasted in menus/GUI. I agree that the gameplay is very shallow and the depth comes in the bullshit that I dislike. It just screams out mobile trash to me... and that is without me shitting on the graphics. LOL

Tried it out yesterday. It has a fun gameplay loop, but gets repetitive quick.