Level Up! Axe to level 8 or the new Duplicator passive

About this game

Developer: poncle · Publisher: poncle · Platform: PC (Steam) · Art style: Pixel art · Screen type: Character / Unit Detail

More Vampire Survivors screens in the Gallery

What to study

The level-up draft is the only decision Vampire Survivors regularly asks for, and the screen is built to be answered in seconds: a short stack of large cards, each an icon, a name, and exactly one sentence of effect. The two visible choices teach the system's whole grammar, an existing weapon pushed to 'level:8' with a flat damage increase, against a passive flagged 'New!' whose value is stated as behaviour, not numbers ('Weapons fire more projectiles'). Nothing on the panel shows the current build, a timer, or a cost; the game trusts the player to remember six weapons and pick by feel. Frame at about 0:19 in the Refreshed Trailer (Steam; manual extraction from the 1 fps fine pass). The trailer zooms into the panel, so a third offered card (Peachone) sits below this frame's bottom edge, disclosed in the elements and prep notes; the two cards in frame are complete and legible, and no other trailer shows a settled level-up draft at all (the Early Access trailer's one level-up panel sits under a title card).

Patterns

How the screen is arranged.

card-choice modal-panel detail-card

Components

Parts on screen.

Card

Screen inventory

• a single slate-blue panel headed 'Level Up!' in the game's pixel typeface, the run pauses and this panel is the entire interface; frozen gameplay is visible only as narrow slivers at the left and right edges
• the first offered card is an upgrade to something already owned: an Axe icon in a gold-bordered black tile, the name 'Axe', 'level:8' at the right, and one line of effect text, 'Base Damage up by 20.'
• the second card is a new passive, marked as such instead of being left to inference: 'Duplicator' with a yellow 'New!' flag, and its whole description is 'Weapons fire more projectiles.'
• two gold hand cursors point at the panel from both sides at the Axe card's height, the selection affordance is a pair of pointing hands at the panel edge, not a highlight box

Top 3 colors

#888885 39%#4e5161 28%#6a6254 15%

Top three palette colors by share. The remaining colors make up the rest.

Source and credit

© poncle, Vampire Survivors screenshot: Steam trailers (Refreshed Trailer / October 2022 - v1.0 Trailer / December 2021 - Early Access Release), poncle, shown for design study and commentary. PlayCraft is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by poncle.

Source tier 2 (publisher-released) · screenshot: Steam store page · Steam page

Source details

Fetched 2026-10-24. verified 2026-10-24: manual extraction manual-level-up-19.png @ ~19s in the Refreshed Trailer, MD5 e583299bc4ddcd57b5979105c58313c1, from the verified-clean curl-shim download (42,796,211 B, MD5 26acdab2ca3438c9689e401078017be9; full decode to null exit 0, zero error lines, decode-steam-1794680-Refreshed-Trailer.mp4.err), inspected visually at full resolution (1920x1080 native); the 'Level Up!' header, Axe / level:8 / 'Base Damage up by 20.' card and Duplicator / 'New!' / 'Weapons fire more projectiles.' card all legible, both gold hand cursors visible; no trailer quote or marketing overlay in frame; the trailer's zoom crops a third card (Peachone) below the frame, see elements

no published policy found (checked 2026-10-24); fair-use study use, takedown honored within 48h

Rights holders: see Copyright & takedown.