The developer of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun now has two games planned for 2026: a Boltgun sequel and a Vampire Survivors clone.

Smash hit indie video games typically invite a lot of copycats looking to ride on their coattails. Just look at how many Balatro clones came out, after that exploded in popularity, or how many Wordle imitators there are.

The same thing happened with roguelike auto-shooter Vampire Survivors, which has already had a Castlevania tie-in but is now slated to get a Warhammer themed clone, called Warhammer Survivors, next year.

However, this clone is entirely official, as Vampire Survivors developer poncle is actively involved with it.

At the moment, poncle is described merely as a ‘partner’ on Warhammer Survivors, with the trailer only mentioning that the game uses the same engine as Vampire Survivors.

Development and publishing is primarily being handled by Auroch Digital, which was responsible for the retro-inspired shooter Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun.

Warhammer Survivors is a very different beast, though, since it is essentially Vampire Survivors but with Warhammer characters instead, right down to the same style of pixel art graphics.

Interestingly, the game won’t limit itself to just one corner of Warhammer’s expansive universe, doubling as a crossover of sorts between the fantasy themed Age Of Sigmar and the sci-fi Warhammer 40,000 settings – which we don’t recall ever having happened before in a video game.

It sounds like there’ll be an extensive list of playable characters to choose from, though only six have been revealed so far, including Boltgun protagonist Malum Caedo.

As a reminder, poncle was originally just a solo developer, whose real name is Luca Galante, but the success of Vampire Survivors has since allowed him to enlist a team of over 25 people.

We spoke to Galante last year about Vampire Survivors’ continued success and when we asked about plans for his next game, he said, ‘It would have a higher budget but it wouldn’t be dramatically different in terms of scope, than Vampire Survivors.’ It’s very unlikely he was thinking of Warhammer Survivors when he said that.

Galante also expressed an interest in expanding poncle into a publishing business, though stressed that the studio wasn’t ready to be in such a position: ‘We are a publisher, but we just publish Vampire Survivors, right? We’re not ready to handle anything else yet.’

This isn’t the only Warhammer video game Auroch Digital has slated for 2026 either, as it’s also working on a Boltgun sequel for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

That same year will see the release of a new entry in the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War real-time strategy series, which was announced at Gamescom back in August.

Perhaps the biggest Warhammer game on the docket, though, is Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3, which was announced less than a year after Space Marine 2 came out and became one of the biggest single-player games of 2024. At the moment though there’s not even a hint of the year of release.

It doesn’t sound like Poncle is actively involved with this game’s development (Auroch Digital)

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.