V Rising 1.0 Q&A – Stunlock on the Future of the Hit Vampire Survival Game

Nearly two years ago, Swedish indie developer Stunlock Studios (mostly known for the action MOBA Battlerite) released a vampire survival game called V Rising on Steam Early Access. The game quickly rose to the very top of Steam charts, selling over a million units in just over a week since launch.

Just a few months later, V Rising had registered over two and a half million players. Over time, some users moved on to more recent releases, but Stunlock Studios slowly but steadily kept adding to the game, with the first major content update (Secrets of Gloomrot) hitting roughly on the game's anniversary.

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Now, V Rising is just about ready to leap out of early access, adding major features like a new endgame region, Dracula and his army, a crossover with Castlevania, proper gamepad support, and much more. With two days left until version 1.0 is out on live servers, here's our interview with Stunlock Studios reflecting on these two years of early access, what will be in version 1.0, and what might be coming afterward. Also, come back tomorrow to read our full review of V Rising.

Now that the early access phase of V Rising is coming to an end, what were the main surprises you encountered throughout these two years, both positive and negative?

Oh, big question. The whole process of developing an open-world survival game for the first time has had plenty of surprises that span the spectrum of experience, from surprisingly difficult challenges to discovering puzzle pieces that fit into the picture just perfectly. I think if I tried to get too specific, this would be the whole interview, so I’ll just say that there were plenty of unexpected boons and battles and many good and hard lessons have been learned that we’ll carry with us forever as a studio.

Did the game's early success lengthen or shorten the amount of time V Rising was in early access?

It’s hard to say, but the breakout