Vampire Survivors is the sleeper hit of 2022 (despite being released in 2021), appearing on numerous "Best Game" lists (and it'll probably join our best Android games list, too). It's a bizarre creation that feels better suited to a 2000's Flash game website rather than Steam, but it's addictive, exciting, and challenging, and in a surprise announcement, it's now available on the Play Store for free.

The roguelite RPG known as Vampire Survivors is now available on iOS and Android as a free ad-supported release. If you have somehow missed the hype, Vampire Survivors is a top-down auto-shooting game that offers a straightforward objective: survive. As you move your character around the screen, it'll automatically attack the hordes of creatures encroaching from all sides. You can't win, but you can gather enough gold to unlock a new upgrade or two, and there are new survivors to unlock as well, adding more depth and strategy as you advance.

This is where the addiction lies. It's an incredibly satisfying game to play, and the rush you receive when you open another treasure chest invokes the same dopamine rush as opening loot boxes (but for free!) It's challenging to put down and brilliantly fun.

Vampire Survivors is free to play and includes advertisements, but the ads aren't intrusive. When you die, you can watch a video to revive, and you can also watch another video to earn bonus gold. These videos are entirely optional and aren't necessary to unlock new items. The mobile port defaults to portrait mode, which may be jarring to those used to the landscape mode of the desktop and console versions. But you can head to the second page of the options menu to switch to landscape. Unfortunately, any screen that isn't 16:9 (i.e., most phones) will have black bars (pillarboxing) on either side of the game during gameplay.

Unobtrusive ads are a welcome sight.

Vampire Survivors supports the best Bluetooth controllers, which we recommend using as your finger can easily get in the way of approaching enemies. While the game runs at a steady 60 fps, older phones may struggle as the enemies pile up on the screen during longer runs. Entities number in the thousands late game, exponentially taxing the hardware. How Long To Beat estimates it'll take 33.5 hours to unlock everything, but you'll probably be playing a lot longer than that.

Vampire Survivors will quickly find its way into our roundup of the best free Android games and is even a top contender for game of the year. It's fun, addicting, and doesn't suffer from the same pay-to-win mechanics that plague so many free games on the Google Play Store.