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In This Edition, Poncle’s Matteo Sapio on:
- Vampire Survivors spin-offs and tie-ins
- Opening studios in Japan and Italy
- Working on over 15 projects
During last week’s London Game Festival, I spoke with Matteo Sapio, the chief strategy officer at Vampires Survivors developer Poncle.
We were speaking in front of a live audience, and it was one of the most revealing interviews I’ve done since launching The Game Business. During out chat, Sapio announced:
That Vampire Survivors has now surpassed 27 million players
Poncle is opening studios in Japan and Italy
It has over 15 projects in active development (and even more in earlier stages)
It is licensing out its engine to other brands and studios to build ‘Survivors’ games based on popular IP
It has paused its third-party publishing plans
“Vampire Survivors came from a solo developer,” Sapio explains. “It was Luca Galante, who made a game for him and his friends. Vampire Survivors exploded, and in two or three months, it sold more than one million copies. Luca’s yachts are video games. So instead of buying a yacht, he made the Emerald Beyond DLC [for Vampire Survivors] with Square Enix, which we released for free. Things grew organically from there.”
The Poncle strategy
Poncle is working on three types of games.
First, there are spin-offs to Vampire Survivors. This includes the deck-building card battler Vampire Crawlers, which is out this week.
“We [are using] the famous Vampire Survivors IP to experiment in new genres,” Sapio tells us. “We love card games, but we are not very good at card games. They’re complicated. So, we made the game that we wanted to play.”
Second, Poncle is working on original IP. Sapio says the company is currently developing two entirely original properties.
And third, there will be a range of new ‘Survivors’ games based on other IP. These are Vampire Survivors-like games set in other universes. Some will be developed by Poncle, whereas others – such as the upcoming Warhammer Survivors – are in collaboration with other studios.
“A lot of people came to us and said: ‘Let’s do a collaboration with Survivors’,” Sapio begins. “Survivors seems very simple, with simple graphics. But it’s actually quite complicated.
“If we have knowledge of the IP, we will [make the game] ourselves. But a lot of times we don’t. If you have an IP, for example Warhammer 40k, which has decades of story and lore, we don’t want to risk disappointing the fans. So, we made an engine called the Vampire Survivor Engine, which is a kind-of template with all the Vampire Survivor juice inside, and we then we’re giving it to people that we consider the IP guardians.
“We are a fan of Survivors games. Luca has 3,800 hours on Steam in Vampire Survivors. We want to play these games. With Warhammer 40,000, [developer] Auroch is the best guardians of the IP, so we gave the engine to them. We look forward to playing it. Obviously, we are giving them any help they need.”
Poncle has already worked with other IP via DLC for Vampire Survivors. It partnered with Square Enix on the Emerald Beyond DLC, featuring characters from the SaGa series. It’s also teamed-up with Konami to bring Contra and Castlevania to the Vampire Survivors world. And Sapio says that indie developers are proving attractive to IP owners.
“When you have big IPs there is a lot of responsibility, because player expectation is incredible,” Sapio says. “There’s so much money and expectation that it creates tension. But with indies, there’s the possibility to steam off a little bit of this tension. They spend less money, they manage the risk better, and they can even risk a little bit more. And when you have an important IP, indie people will give their life to do their best. And in the end, if the game doesn’t work, you still have ideas and passion. This is something IP stakeholders are taking advantage of.”
“If it doesn’t work anymore, it’s okay. We had a lot of fun. We made a lot of money.”
But is there really enough room for numerous Survivors titles?
“With Vampire Survivors, it’s been three years,” Sapio answers. “We want to close the game. We try to. We put in adventures, we put in time limits, but people want more. So, we continue to invest in the evolution of the genre.
“There are a lot of Warhammer people that never played Vampire Survivors. Vampire Survivors is big, but it’s still a niche. It’s still indie. We released the trailer for Warhammer Survivors, and we had 300,000 views in two days. There’s a lot of people that don’t know Survivors. That’s why I think there’s an angle, and that’s why [IP owners] want to work with us. But… if it doesn’t work anymore, it’s okay. We had a lot of fun. We made a lot of money.”
Opening new studios
Poncle is expanding as a result of all these games. The developer is based in the UK, but it’s now opening studios in Japan and Italy, too.
“We had interest from Japanese companies,” Sapio says. “They wanted to work with us. And you know, the Japanese like to deal with Japanese companies, in Japanese and with a Japanese contract.
“Then there’s the talent. In Japan, there are some unique views and unique creativity. We found nice talent over there. And maybe we could work with some Japanese IPs. So, we thought it would be efficient to have a base there. That’s why we are expanding. Obviously, we’re based in UK. We’ll be Italy, we’ll be Japan and then we’ll see.”
Sapio says that by opening smaller studios he hopes to maintain Poncle’s indie spirit.
“We are not talking about a gigantic remote studio. We are thinking about it like a federation of studios. Our idea is to have little teams of people - five, 10, 15 - working on different projects. The structure will be, we will have a designer, a bunch of producers, and this little team that’s agile and flexible. That is how we think we will maintain this spirit. Because what is the indie spirit? It is mainly freedom and taking risk with ideas.”
He continues: “We don’t want to be AAA or AA. We’re efficient with costs. We don’t take useless risks. We invest in people. So, with 15 projects, one can fail, one can go good, and you balance that.”
Sapio adds it is working with partner studios, too. For example, Vampire Crawlers is developed in collaboration with Nosebleed Interactive.
A third-party pause
One thing that Poncle isn’t doing is publishing third-party games. It launched its Poncle Presents publishing label and released two games last year (Kill The Brickman and Berserk or Die). But the firm has decided to pause this… for now.
“It was a learning experience,” Sapio admits. “We did publishing because we wanted to give back to the community, and to release games that maybe no-one else was able to release. Berserk or Die is a game that you play [by bashing] a keyboard. It was very strange. We wanted to help. But we found that we weren’t able to give the right support. We didn’t do the best for this game. So, we’ve paused a little bit. At the moment, profit is not a priority. We’re trying to build a community. And we will continue to do publishing in the future.
He adds: “We thought, a little bit naively, that with love and money we would be able to support these projects, but it maybe needs more structure.”
“We wanted to help. But we found that we weren’t able to give the right support. We didn’t do the best for this game”
Even without publishing, Poncle has hugely ambitious plans. After three years of Vampire Survivors, 2026 will see numerous new titles, including Vampire Crawlers, Warhammer Survivors and more to be revealed. I ended our on-stage interview with a question I always ask… where does Sapio see Poncle in five years?
“40 projects in parallel development at all times everywhere in the world,” he laughs. “I mentioned before about the federation of studios. If we can have this beautiful machine that is able to have so many projects that can go good and can fail, some are in collaboration, some are for money, maybe some moonshots… that’s what I want to see. We don’t want to do a gigantic studio working on a gigantic game.”
That’s it for us today. There are lots of stories, interviews and data coming from The Game Business this week. So, stay tuned to your inboxes. And remember, if you’re in LA at the start of June, why not join us at The Game Business Live?
Until next time, thank you for reading.
