Sanguivore: Twenty Below — My View

This is the second of two pieces about the Early Access title Sanguivore: Twenty Below, if you haven’t already read Martin’s fantastic article, then you might want to get yourself acquainted there first. As mentioned previously, there were two intrepid GameGrin team members trying to escape vampires on that fateful night that we sampled Sanguivore: Twenty Below for the first time, and I was the second, so here is my take on the game.

While Martin spent a lot of time in a coffin, I spent much of my time hiding (and inadvertently freezing to death) in a dumpster. This serves to illustrate the lack of power that we had to contest with the vampires. This isn’t like Left 4 Dead where you can go all-guns-blazing into combat and fight your way to safety; instead, you’ll be relying on your wits, awareness of your surroundings, and a lot of hiding. As someone who gets lost going in a straight line, it’s safe to say that isn’t my forte, but I gave it a go nonetheless. 

I also fell in love with the idea of videogame meets escape room, and doubly so when we got to play it. Unlike other attempts to translate that escape room vibe into a game, this isn’t just a digital equivalent, but instead a living version of one. Whilst Sanguivore has that same feeling of working as a team to achieve a singular aim, it doesn’t try to recreate the room concept note for note, and in my opinion it works all the better for this. Ultimately Blood Eater Games has extracted the best of both worlds and come up with a unique and compelling formula as a result. 

As mentioned, the vampire was much more of a sophisticated sort. If this was Vampire: The Masquerade, I’d assume they were Ventrue. With his dapper outfit and prose-like speech, it was very much like being chased by a crazed poet laureate and represented once again a slightly different way of portraying an often-seen enemy in videogames.

Weirdly, it turned out that the biggest foe we faced was a toilet cubicle. I was the first to realise that if you go in one particular cubicle then you get stuck behind some scenery, and when everyone else in turn came in to check, it was confirmed that this is indeed something that needs ironing out in a future build. Remember, of course, that this is a very early build of the game we were playing and it’s only just now entering Steam’s Early Access programme, so a few glitches are to be expected. Crowding into a single toilet cubicle like a bunch of sixth-formers having a sneaky vape between classes is the only major bug that we saw though, so overall, it’s in a better state than many pre-release titles. In fact, it’s probably less buggy than some AAA releases I’ve seen over the years!

Key items to use for escaping are spread throughout the maps, with many of the locations being semi-randomised. There are several set locations they can spawn in, so as to avoid spawning in obscure places, but each playthrough will be significantly different. There are a whole bunch of ways to complete each map too, so there should be plenty of replayability.

Overall, this is definitely one to watch for me. It’s a pretty unique spin on a couple of established concepts, which brings something fresh and unique to the table. We can expect to see 2-4 full maps in the new year, along with more collectibles that add cosmetic changes to the game.