Microsoft and Xbox just gave this Halo fan game their blessing — it's Vampire Survivors with Master Chief, and I'm having a blast

As video games are themselves a product of artistic creativity, it's not uncommon for the best ones to inspire its players to get creative themselves with things like mods and indie titles that are based on the original experience. To protect their intellectual properties, though, some publishers and developers tend to shoot these down with cease and desist orders. Microsoft, Xbox, and Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries), however, have just given one such project their blessing.

That project is Spartan Survivors, a fan game being developed by two people — Juan Guillot "JuanGGZ" Gonzalez and Gaetan Dezeiraud under the banner of Bathrobe & Dezeiraud Games — that is essentially a riff on the extremely popular roguelike Vampire Survivors with a Halo-themed coat of paint. First released on itch.io for free in late May, it's going to receive additional updates and is coming to Xbox, Steam, and mobile platforms later this year.

There have been some concerns that Microsoft and Halo Studios would reach out to the Spartan Survivors team to have it shut down, but it announced in a social media post on Tuesday that Halo's stewards have actually given the game the green light.

"Halo Studios reached out to us and...we have their blessing to keep moving forward with the game! Thank you for the support and appreciation, this will not be forgotten," wrote Spartan Survivors' devs. "To make sure the game will always stay compliant, they requested us to add a minor update to the legal disclaimer in the game's credits & the store pages. This will be available in our next update and we want to thank Halo Studios & Microsoft for their real sympathy toward us."

Notably, someone from Halo Studios also gave the team a quote expressing the developer's enjoyment of the game: "Really love to see the passion you and your team have poured into this experience — it really is fun and we look forward to getting further in our playthrough and unlocking more stuff."

Having spent a while playing Spartan Survivors before writing this article, I'm inclined to agree with that sentiment. It's got all the messy, chaotic, pixel graphics-based fun of Vampire Survivors and its blend of randomized upgrades with bullet hell mechanics, though instead of killing monsters of the night with magic and medieval-style weaponry, you'll be slaying Covenant and Flood aliens with iconic Halo weapons instead.

You also play as either Master Chief or the Arbiter (or one of many characters inspired by community members), and each of the game's levels is named after and inspired by missions from the legendary campaign of 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved. Several tracks from the beloved Combat Evolved soundtrack play over the action, too.

Spartan Survivors :: Announcement Trailer - YouTube

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Spartan Survivors is already a ton of fun as is, but it's set to get even better soon. Its next update — planned for some point near the end of this month — will include new in-game drops, boss enemies, and a new weapon, along with bugfixes, UI improvements, and support for weapon-specific cursors.

From there, its developers say they'll focus on bringing the roguelike on Steam and mobile, with an Xbox release coming at a later date in 2025. This post also made me think the team was planning a PS5 version, too — it would be hilarious if Halo's first foray onto Sony's console was in an unofficial game — but it's been clarified to me that that was just a joke, and that a PS5 release would require a dev kit; that is "out of scope for this tiny game."

I'm glad Microsoft and Halo Studios have chosen to support this awesome little game, and I highly recommend you give it a try if you have time to kill. Like poncle's hit game that inspired it, Spartan Survivors is addicting and a blast to play, with full support for both keyboard and controller gameplay. Check it out here.