Delve Survivors Asks What If A Survivors Game Took Its Time?
The survivors-like genre (it’s really more of a sub-genre, but whatever) has a speed problem… or rather, a speed addiction. Every clone and derivative of poncle’s Vampire Survivors wants your twitchy thumbs dodging a thousand bats at 3 AM while your coffee goes cold, your Mountain Dew goes flat, or while the lettuce on your Jumbo Jack goes limp.
Japanese developer iDiOSLAB looked at this terrible waste of late-night junk food and asked the one question nobody dared: what if the monsters waited their turn?
Their answer is Delve Survivors, a turn-based survivors-like dungeon crawler that trades panic for patience. Enemies only act when you do, which means every step is a tactical choice instead of a reflex check. One wrong move and your run is over, as the press kit helpfully warns, but at least you get to savor your own terrible decision-making…. So, it’s a Fatal Labyrith-like survivorslike sub-sub-genre? No, that makes it a Roguelike-survivorslike… Sort of.
Delve Survivors co-creator Ryan Wolf says the team wanted the condensed RPG thrill of a survivors-like game with elements real exploration and strategy layered in, and honestly, that pitch sells itself, amirite?
An expanded demo for Delve Survivors is now available via Steam Next Fest (through OCT 26) and includes four dungeons, three playable classes (warrior, archer, and magi, for the magically inclined), hundreds of items to cobble into unique builds, and online leaderboards so you can embarrass yourself publicly.
There are also three levels of difficulty: “casual” for the gaming journalists laid-back players, a “casual rogue” mode where only your gear is on the line, and “hardcore” with full permadeath for the self-flagellating, hurt me plenty crowd. For the truly dedicated masochists out there, there’s also Hellgate, a late-game dungeon built to put even the most carefully crafted builds through the wringer.
The full version of Delve Survivors hits Steam PC in November, with Nintendo Switch 1 and 2 versions planned for early 2027. It’s already available in Japan, so now all we westerners have to do is wait… our turn. I get it. It’s like a turn-based release. Very meta of you, iDiOSLAB.
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