Video Game / Victor Vran

Victor Vran is a Action RPG for PC, by the Bulgarian studio Haemimont Games. Set in a Dark Fantasy world with some Überwald inspiration, the game puts you in the shoes of Victor Vran, a Demon Hunter possessing some demonic powers. After receiving a letter, Victor goes to the monster infested city of Zagoravia, looking for his friend Adrian, a fellow Demon Hunter, and ends guided by a mysterious voice.

Featuring heavy combat in isometric view (graphics are in 3D and the camera can rotate freely around the protagonist), the gameplay is superficially similar to the famous Diablo series and its followers, except it puts even more emphasis on mobility during fights, as the game allows to roll and jump. Jumping also make levels a bit more open (since you can jump over a wall) and serves to reach some secrets. The game also features five challenges for each map (they can be things finding all secrets, killing a number of enemies without being hit or before a timer expires, killing a boss, etc.), which grant experience at completion.

The game has no proper character class. Victor's abilities are only determined by his inventory.

The game was first released in Steam Early Access in February of 2015, and was then officially released in July 2015.

The released DLCs are:

• Tome of Souls Weapon (free): Adds a new weapon class (the Tome), which adds a straightr spellcasting gameplay to the game.
• Highlander's Outfit (free): Adds a new outfit with its own way to generate overdrive. Unlocking the Highlander's Outfit requires to perform a specific task.
• Cauldron of Chaos Dungeon (free): Randomized dungeon and challenges for high level (26+) players.
• Motörhead Through The Ages: A Motorhead-themed new campaign, three new outfits (inspred by Motörhead's members), new item classes (revolvers and guitars), and Motörhead-themed collectibles.
• Fractured Worlds: Five randomly-generated new dungeons, a new item type (talismans that must be crafted with Transmutation), and a higher level-cap (from 50 to 60).

This game provides examples of the following:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: Sort of. There are proper experience levels, which increase various stats when you get them; those are capped at 50 (60 if you own the Fractured Worlds DLC). And then? You get Renown levels, which have no cap but don't increase Victor's stats.^note Renown levels are displayed on their own: e.g. a level 65 player (with Fractured Worlds) has their level shown as "60(5)"
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Cloaca (a dungeon inside the bigger area of the Merchant Quarter) is a straight example: it's large, spacious, and relatively well-lit.
• Adventurer Outfit: The approprietly named "Adventurer's Outfit" consists in a waistcoat, rolled up shirt sleeves, a fedora, bags on the hips, a lamp on the shoulder, and a bundle of rope around the chest.
• Alliterative Name/Alliterative Title/Protagonist Title: "Victor Vran", which is both the protagonist's name and the game's title.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Items are automatically picked up when walking on them.
  • The game's pause menu has an option to immediately reset the level and another to teleport back to Zagore Castle.
  • While the game has platformer elements, there are invisible walls everywhere. What happens if you try to jump to a place you're not supposed to go? Nothing, you'll just see Victor's jump suddenly stopped in the air.
  • Sold items are stored in a separate shopkeeper's inventory and can be bought back without markup—although they do disappear when Victor leaves the map.
• As Himself: The bartender of the Pub at the End of Time is Lloyd Kaufman.
• Asteroids Monster: Essences (elementals) split into three smaller and weaker versions of them when killed. Chromatic essences are this turned to eleven: instead of splitting into weaker essences when killed, they split into three big essences, every one of which, in turn, also splits into three big essences, and so on for a few more cycles. One chromatic essence, basically, contains a small army.
• Badass Bandolier: Victor's starting costume includes a bandolier loaded with bullets and potions. In the opening cutscene, Adrian wears one which bears a couple of stakes.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Victor, especially in the Cavalier's Outfit◊.
• BFG: The mortar rifle weapon class. It's basically a cannon with a rifle stock, and fire grenades.
• Big Bad: The Voice, AKA Gabriel, the man who doomed Zagoravia by tricking the dying Katherina to accept a Deal With the Devil.
• Big Good: Queen Katarina, the sovereign of Zagoravia, who tries to protect what remains of her people after the demon invasion. It's reveal in mid-game she's the cause of the invasion - cf. Deal With the Devil -, but given the circumstances back then, it's not like she really had the choice.
• Bittersweet Ending: At the end, the big bad is dead but his plan was successful: Zagoravia has been devasted and the Order of the Hunters is almost destroyed. Victor is still cursed. On the plus side, Queen Katarina has been freed from her own pact with the dark powers and the ending cutscene's last shot implies that the Hunters will be recreated by Irene.
• Blood Bath: The Queen of the Damned bathes in the blood of her peasants.
• Bottomless Magazines: Victor doesn't need to reload his rifles. Averted with the revolvers, with are reloaded after some shots.
• Brick Joke: The game's opening cutscene and some levels in the streets shows that Zagoravia went to hell during the "Pumpkin Pie Festival" (banners can still be seen). In Dead Light Mine, the Voice promises a "pumpkin pie" to Victor if he finds the five hidden secrets, then, at completion, tells Victor that there won't be any, because "a rampaging maniac" smashed every other pumpkin in the city. The game includes a success consisting in destroying 100 pumpkins, and they can be found in the Onion Quarter (not too far from Dead Light Mine). Then, the Halloween 2015 update added a Pumpkin Pie rare drop, which unlocks the Secret Pumpkin Level.
• Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": The Mana Meter is called "Overdrive". The spells are named "Demon Powers".
• The Chessmaster: Gabriel. His plan was thought more than a decade earlier. First, he made the young Queen Katarina sign a deal with the devil in exchange of surviving the incurable plague she contracted. This deal protects her for thirteen years, at which point demons would take her; he taught her a spell to prevent them to locate her, knowing well it would make them turn against the whole city, which would in turn lure Hunters to Zagoravia, turning the city into a trap for the order. Thirteen years later, the plan has gone pretty well, at list until a Hunter named Victor Vran - who happens to be another of Gabriel's victims - came to Zagoravia...
• Chef of Iron: The Lifeless House Bonus Dungeon has the house's (undead) cook as a miniboss (it's a unique hammer-wielding skeleton with a special skin). One of the map's challenges requires to kill him in less than 45 seconds and without using potions.
• Choice of Two Weapons: Victor starts the game with a single weapon slot and receives a second one when reaching the fourth experience level. At this point, he can now freely switch from those two weapons (or change those two weapons at will when accessing your inventory). Choosing the demon powers works a similar way.
• Collector of the Strange: The Collector, a vampire boss living in the town, has a house harbouring an collection including paintings, coffins, snakes, sculptures, essences (live ones), and a cannon painted in red, among other things. The Voice states his collection includes weird animals, exotic curios, cat paintings, and eyes.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The game has three kind of shrines offering a short temporary bonus to Victor. While the shrine's shape (either an angel's statue or a kind of sculpture representing a circle including both the sun and the moon) doesn't matter, it emits a light which colours determines the shrine's effect: red for health (complete healing and health regeneration), yellow for overdrive (idem but with overdrive), and purple for a damage boost.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: The game has white (common) < green (uncommon) < golden (rare) < purple (legendary).
• Cool Crown: Queen Katarina wears one, as well as Tzar Borimir.
• Cool Train: The Orgasmatron boss is a train with a Snaggletooth-shaped locomotive, which drives along the rails of its area while firing the cannons on its side.
• Creepy Cemetery: You go through several of them (the actual Cemetery map, the royal crypts at the end of the Royal Gardens, and the graveyard adjacent to the Onions Quarters). All of them are infested with undeads.
• Critical Annoyance: When Victor's health is too low, the screen's edge is surrounded by a red blur while a Heartbeat Soundtrack is played.
• Crosshair Aware: Some enemies with ranged zone attacks have their targeted area marked with some circles or lines. For example:
  • The essences throw rocks, which landing area is marked with a circle.
  • The undead soldiers (skeletons with uniforms and rifles) display a cone which progressively narrows, to represent them aiming before the shot.
  • Vampire!Adrian randomly makes some fireballs falling down on the fight's area, their landing zone being marked with circles.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Victor is first introduced as a mysterious demon hunter with demon powers. It's eventually revealed that he is a fallen prince who made a deal with the devil to save his people from an invasion, then had to choose exile to save his land, because the price to pay was that the places he stay for too long end cursed.
• The Dead Can Dance: Cf Involuntary Dance.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • It's eventually revealed to be the cause of Zagoravia's destruction. When she was younger, Queen Katarina contracted an incurable disease. Gabriel, the only healer able to help her didn't do it with medical means but by making her sign a demonic pact with her own blood. It granted her complete recovery, but they will come back to get her thirteen years later. To avoid this, Gabriel taught her a spell making the demons unable to locate her. It had an unexpected consequence: since they couldn't find her, the demons turned against the whole population.
  • Victor received his demon powers this way. He was a prince. His lands where threatened with an invasion which would have been impossible to vanquish. He made a pact with dark powers and received his demon powers, which he used to repel the invaders. It ended cursing the land he was ruling, forcing him to leave as a wanderer to make sure he would taint any land by residing in it too long.
  • It ends to have some importance in the story. A part of the plot consists in looking for Queen Katarina's pact to cancel it. It's also revealed that Gabriel (under a false identity) is the one who also proposed the pact to Victor...
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Dying will just teleport you to the latest checkpoint while emptying the overdrive meter. It doesn't cost XP, gold, items, and doesn't break the uncompleted challenges of the map (unless they're incompatible with the acts of dying or suffering damage, of course; timer isn't reset for timed challenges, though). Dead enemies don't respawn and injuried enemies aren't healed.
  • Downplayed during big scripted bossfights, as the boss and his followers are healed and resurrected if Victor is killed before being able to slay the boss.
• Dem Bones: Various kind of skeletons serve as mooks, including unarmed mêlée fighters, riflemen, wizards throwing fireballs, spinning swordmen, etc.
• Demon Slaying: The activity of the Demon Hunters (though they also kill undeads, vampires, etc.).
• Diagonal Cut: Adrian does this to several monsters in the opening cutscene.
• Disaster Dominoes: The lava spiders explode when they die. Said explosion deals more damage than their total hitpoints, and they are usually met in groups, turning them into a big firework. A common challenge in maps with spiders is to use the lava spiders' post mortem explosion to kill a number of enemies.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: The plot of the Fractured Worlds DLC consists in finding the parts of a broken artifact named the Astrolabe, which is said to be able to grant you your greatest wish (Victor intends to use it to cancel the curse he got from his deal with Gabriel in his backstory).
• Do Not Run with a Gun:
  • Downplayed with standard mêlée attacks (Victor stops walking right before performing a blow, but the attack animation makes him walk forward), played totally straight with the firearms. Some special attack make you move when performing them, too.
  • Averted with the revolvers, which allow to move (slower) while firing.
• Doom Magnet: Victor himself is this as a result of his own demon pact. He's long since resorted to Walking the Earth so that nobody stays near him long enough to get hurt.
• Dual Wielding: Adrian fights with two swords during the opening cutscene and during his own bossfight. It's impossible to do in the proper game, though.
• Eldritch Location: The Demon World, which looks like rocks covered with a yellow-reddish sand hovering over some void, and linked with floating cobbstones. It is filled with gargoyles and essences.
• Elite Mooks: They're called "champions" ingame. They're visually identical to they're regular counterpart, save for a golden circle around them, but are a lot more powerful. Activating the Hex of Tyranny increase their number.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Victor is several times called "Vicky" by the Voice. Later, he calls him "Hatman" (suggesting to use it as a vigilante name).
• Encyclopedia Exposita: The Codex is mostly an ingame manual (it describes the different weapons' attacks, the crafting recipes, etc.), but it also includes descriptions of monsters (including bosses) written as they were notes from Victor's diary; those entries appears when Victor kills one for the first time.
• Exploding Barrels: The mines contain some powder barrels. When hit (with any kind of attack), they begin to burn and eventually explode. Given the long delay before explosion and the tiny area affected by the blast, it is unadviced to count on them to wipe the surrounding enemies.
• Expy:
  • To Gabriel Van Helsing. Both are mysterious monster hunters proficient in fighting, and both wear badass leather suits with a cool hat.
  • Ironically, his backstory also have similarities with a specific Dracula variant: in Dracula Untold, the title character is a prince who was forced to make a deal with the devil to save his people from an incoming irresistible invasion. Receiving powerful unholy powers, they defeated the invaders but got cursed. That's also Victor's past.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Zagoravia is set in the fantasy equivalent of 18th or early 19th century Eastern Europe: beside the Slavic sounding city's name, several NPCs have Slavic sounding names, Patriarch Casimir (the cleric in Castle Zagore) is dressed like an orthodox priest while "Patriarch" is actually an orthodox religious title, and the player occasionally meets the ghost of a man named "Tzar Borimir". "Zagore" was the name of a region in Southeastern Bulgaria, and the country had several Tzars named "Boris" and "Boril".
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: While the game doesn't have traditional classes, the outfit you choose after the prologue changes Victor's stats and how he gains Overdrive.
• Firing One-Handed: Victor handles his guns with one hand when using a special attack. The standard attack animation shows him firing from the hip while holding the gun with a hand around the grip and the other under the barrel.
• Flaming Skulls: The Pyromancer skeletons have their whole head (as well as their two hands and part of the forearm) engulfed in flames. They attack with homing fireballs.
• Forced Tutorial: The whole prologue (in which Victor must reach Castle Zagore) is an unskippable tutorial in which the player learns the basics of the game (attack, special attacks, demon powers, jumping, etc).
• Foreshadowing: At one point, Victor hears Tsar Borimir having a He Who Fights Monsters speech, and wonders if the man was a Hunter. It's revealed later that he indeed was: he founded them.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Revisiting a map after leaving it makes all the enemies respawn, including the bosses. How could Vail the Immortal survive the destruction of his phylactery? Vail's codex entry notes that liches usually have several phylacteries hidden in various safe places, and thinks that Vail is no exception. After the destruction of the phylactery in his hideout of the Mausoleum of Bone, Vail most likely reappeared near another phylactery, then ordered his minions to take it back to his main hideout. That's why Vail respawns each time after being defeated.
• Giant Spider: One of the enemies' types. The weaker have the size of a medium dog, but there are also some which are bigger and larger than a man. The Codex explains they're actually demons.
• Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: While not seen in proper game due to the limited resolution, the Codex entries show that skeletons have some kind of magical flames glowing in their empty eye-sockets.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Damyan the Alchemist wears googles on his hat. Irene has them around her neck.
• Guns Akimbo:
  • The revolver weapon is actually a pair of identical guns. Default attack is continously shooting a single target with both guns at the same time.
  • One of the Succubi enemies wields two Uzis.
• Ground-Shattering Landing: Happens when hitting the "attack" button while jumping, which makes Victor land while knocking back the surrounding enemies.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Sometimes, wounded skeletons lose the bottom half of their body but keep crawling and attacking. They actually move faster in this state.
• He Who Fights Monsters:
  • Discussed. While following a trail of dead bodies in the Sobbing Halls, Victor mentions that, the day he won't feel anything while seeing a corpse, he'd know that he has become as bad as the monsters he hunts.
  • Tzar Borimir quotes the actual lines in Frost Tooth Cave: "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you".
• Healing Potion: Are among the objects that can be equiped in the "usable items" slots.
• Hedge Maze: Occupies the south-eastern corner of the Royal Gardens area.
• Hidden Eyes: All of Victor's outfits hide his eyes, either by Eye-Obscuring Hat, In the Hood or goggles.
• Hub Level:
  • Castle Zagore in the main campaign, where reside merchants and questgivers. Also, while the levels are interconnected, you can directly teleport into any of them (once unlocked) from Castle Zagore.
  • The Pub at the End of Time has the same role in Motörhead Through The Ages.
  • The Locus in Fractured Worlds.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Victor can store dozen of weapons, potions, spare clothes, etc on himself, and access them at will, despite not even seeming to wear a backpack. In the stash, each item occupies a single slot (consumable items stack).
• I Call It "Vera": Literally. There is an unique gun named "Vera".
• Impossible Item Drop: The game features the classical example "naked and unarmed skeletons drop gold or weapons when killed".
• Incredibly Lame Pun: There're Essences (elementals) of Rock in the game. When killed, they split in three smaller boulder-like essences, which can attack Victor by swiftly rolling. Their name? Essences of Roll, of course.
• Interface Spoiler: Near the end, Victor goes to another dimension - the Demon World - to retrieve Queen Katarina pact with dark powers. Since going to hell or a similar place as a final dungeon is something common in videogames, the fact that the pact isn't there is a twist. It could have been less predictible if, at this point of the game, the northern quarter of the worldmap wasn't still unlocked...
• Involuntary Dance: Going too close to the dancing skeletons makes Victor stuck in a dancing animation identical to theirs (which is... the Gangnam Style dance), which makes him unable to attack (though he still can move). The effects disappears after a couple of seconds if he manages to go far enough (easier said than done, since they follow him).
• Justified Tutorial: Downplayed. While most of the tutorial isn't justified (it is just Victor travelling through a Zagoravia district while offering basic control explainations), the part about weapon's special attacks and demon powers happens in a ruined barracks, and consists in hitting training dummies.
• Licensed Game: The Motörhead Through The Ages DLC.
• Lightning Gun: They're a whole weapon class, with low damage but a very high rate of fire, as well as an overheating meter. Their default attack is a homing continuous ray of lightning which spreads to close enemies.
• Mana Meter: Called "Overdrive", the ways to fill it depend from the outfit currently worn by Victor (hitting things, being hit, performing critical hits, or just constantly); whether it slowly drains or not when not fighting depends from the outfit, too. Using demon powers depletes the whole starting mana meter; items and level-ups can increase it lenght.
• Magic Knight: Victor is a fighter who also know how to use some spells.
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: The Voice isn't that helpful. While it occasionally gives lore informations on a boss or a place, most of his lines consist in taunting or mocking Victor, and that's not counting his occasional attempts to lure Victor into traps. It's eventually revealed that the Voice is Gabriel's.
• Mook Maker: Spider nests, which create spiders unless they are destroyed.
• The Musketeer: As mentioned before, Victor can wield two different weapons and switch between them at will. The available weapons include swords and firearms. A Victor with a sword and a rifle is heavily featured in promotional material; the inventory interface of the starting outfit also represents him with a gun in the hand and a sword on the back.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: There's a boss named "Apocalypse".
• Never Bareheaded: Each of Victor's outfit includes either a hat or a hood.
• No-Damage Run: Downplayed. Some maps feature a challenge requiring to kill a specific number of enemies without being hit a single time.
• Notice This: Area transitions and objects which can be interacted with are surrounded by a kind of fog. A bag of gold icon is floating above the merchants. Similarly, NPCs with dialog options (especially if you have to talk to them to advance in the plot) have a scroll and a quill over their head.
• Our Founder: The statues standing everywhere in the city represent Tsar Borimir, Zagoravia's founder.
• Our Gargoyles Rock: They have the classical appearance of "winged demon-shaped stone monster" which can petrify itself to stand more damage while being forced to immobility. They exist in two flavours: tough monster which attacks with ranged elemental missiles but doesn't move, and less resilient mêlée fighter using its claws.
• Our Liches Are Different: Vail the Immortal, a tall blinded skeleton wearing a robe and wielding a staff, is a typical lich: defeating him requires to find his phylactery (unstead of wandering aimlessly in the lair, you can kill his body once, and follow his soul to the phylactery), destroy it, then eventually kill Vail.
• Our Souls Are Different: Using the scythe's special attacks relies on a system of charges, which the abilities describe as tiny shards of soul ripped from the target by the scythe's blade.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Exist in two flavours.
  • Thralls are ghoul-like men dressed in black with a bandaged face and fight unarmed. The Codex describe them as servants of the proper vampires.
  • Proper vampires are nobleman wearing noble clothes and hovering above the ground. They can shortly turn into a kind of mist when hit (becoming invicible) and have plenty of life-draining abilities. Whether they fight with bladed weapons or ranged attacks depend on their subtype.
• Overheating: The electric ranged weapons have a meter filled when sustaining fire. When it is full, Victor must stop fire for a couple of seconds in order to be able to use it again.
• Perma-Stubble: Victor's facial hair.
• The Plague: A dialog explains that Zagoravia was once struck by an epidemic of a deadly disease named "the Red Plague", which symptoms include weakness, loss of hair, and red stains on the skin. Queen Katarina caught it when she was younger, and her Deal with the Devil was made to save her life.
• Post-End Game Content: Finishing the story unlocks special harder challenges. There also is an arena named the Bottomless Pit which offer challengs meant for the post-endgame, though it is not unlocked by completion of the story but automatically, when Victor levels up to level 36.
• Pumpkin Person: Most of the Secret Pumpkin Level's monsters are normal monsters (skeletons, gargoyles, spiders) with a Jack-O'Lantern head.
• Purple Is Powerful:
  • Purple is the color of "bonus damage" shrines.
  • Some monsters have an ability which gives them a temporary shield against incoming attack like if they received more hit points; said buff is represented by a purple life meter (instead of red).
  • The highest tier items are marked in purple.
• Rewarding Vandalism: You can destroy crates, jars, shelves, tombs, etc. They sometimes contain gold or other useful items.
• Rocket Jump: One of the mortars' special attacks consists in doing this with a mortar's grenade. The intended uses is to provide a fast escape if Victor is totally surrounded by enemies.
• Royal Rapier: Rapiers are their own weapon class. It is fast and has a high armor-piercing value. Its moveset involves a forward dash and a stab that induces bled.
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: While the guns look like flintlock pistols thanks to the isometric view (there is no way to zoom in with the ingame camera) and their icons in inventory, some other artworks may suggest that they're actually sawn-off muskets. One of their special attacks even has a shotgun effect.
• Scenery Gorn: The World of Wars level is a World War Two battlefield including a ruined city.
• Schmuck Bait: That huge pumpkin sitting in the middle of a park in Zagoravia High District? Go ahead, touch it. What could possibly go wrong?^note Its basically what the Voice says when Victor finds said park Activating the pumpkin triggers a long fight against four champions (two at the same time, then each of the two remaining spawn when the previous bosses are killed) and a crowd of mooks.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Exists as a gameplay feature. After leveling enough, Victor gains five "Hexes", which can be enabled and disabled at while. Each of them increases experience gain's rate and item's drope rate, while making the game harder (stronger enemies, faster enemies, more unique enemies, Victor's health is continually depleted, etc.); their effects stack. Some actual ingame level-related challenges require to have some Hexes activated.
• Shock and Awe: One of the available weapon classes is a gun shooting lightnings.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: After Victor understands that the Voice is Gabriel, the Big Bad, the Voice stops joking or subtlty mocking Victor, instead insult direct insult and obvious threats.
• Shoot the Medic First: Vampire!Adrian puts wards in the area when fighting against you. You have to destroy them, because they make him immune to damage while healing him. The final boss also does this.
• Short-Range Shotgun: One of the special attacks with a firearm basically turns it into a shotgun, hitting short range targets inside a cone-shaped area.
• Shout-Out: So many they have their own page.
• Sickly Green Glow: The Plague Essences are bright green boulders surrounded by a bright green fog.
• Sinister Scythe:
  • Scythes are a proper weapon class. They are fast, powerful, and hit several enemies with a single blow. One of their special attacks makes Victor spin while dealing damage around him very quickly.
  • Some wraiths throw scythes to attack. One type has scythe blades attached to its arms.
• Soul Jar: You must destroy Vail the Immortal's phylactery to vanquish him.
• Steampunk: The game has black powder rifles, rifle-sized mortars, occasional outfit with goggles, and electric ranged weapons, combined with 18th or early 19th Eastern European-like urban visuals and clothes.
• Take Your Time: "Screw the people besieged in the castle, I really need to complete those challenges and to amass various loots!"
  • It becomes especially blatant when Apocalypse appears. At a point during the story, a powerful monster attacks the palace. Victor normally arrives just in time to save the day; there is an objective requiring to go back to Castle Zagore, except nothing forces the player to do it (you can still grind or try to complete challenges). Don't worry, when you finally go confronting it, Apocalypse will still be waiting on the palace's balcony.
• Tarot Motifs: As a gameplay mechanic. Destiny Cards (items looking like mystical tarot cards) are a kind of special items which grant specific buffs and bonuses when equiped in the relevant slot. The cards can be dropped by killed enemies, or receives as a reward at level-up.
• There's No Kill like Overkill: An actual game mechanic. A killing blow that would put the enemy's health massively in the negative is considered an "Overkill" attack. Overkill attacks are required for some challenges, and it does have a benefit in putting down permanently certain enemy types that would normally resurrect once.
• Timed Mission: One of the challenge's types consists in killing a number of enemies before the timer (which starts when you enter the level) expires. Failing this has no other consequences than starting the same challenge again the next time you enter the area.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Downplayed.
  • Promotional materials features pictures of the bossfight against Vampire!Adrian, though it hardly spoils said character's fate by itself, since he looks very different of his opening cutscene's appearance (different clothes, different hats, and his face was initially hidden), which doesn't make him identifiable until you reach this part of the game.
  • A gameplay sequence from the bossfight with lord Gabriel is shown in promotional materials, though it isn't much a spoiler: it doesn't mention the character being the final boss, and it doesn't name it.
• Überwald: Sort of. While the game is set in a construct world, the events happen inside a city with a kind of Eastern Europe-sounding name, several characters have Slavic/Germanic names, and involves classical monsters like skeletons, giant spiders, ghosts, vampires, gargoyles, etc. The protagonist is a Van Helsing expy.
• Unfriendly Fire: Several monsters have special attacks that harm anything they hit. Many of the map challenges are based on maneuvering enemies so that they kill each other.
• Vampiric Draining:
  • You do this to your targets when you are under the effect of the vampire's blood potion.
  • The Vampire destiny card grants this buff to attacks with weapons.
  • Vampire!Adrian and lord Gabriel each use a vampiric heal ability during their own bossfights, which is activated when they places some wards in the area.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: "The Voice", a mysterious entity guiding Victor (and occasionally mocking him) inside his head.
• Walking Armory: Downplayed. Contrary to a lot of games with a Choice of Two Weapons feature, the protagonist's body visually carries both his currently used weapon and the one stored in the other weapon slot (a gun on the hip, a sword on the back, etc.). On the other hand, it only concerns the active weapons, while the rest of the weapons stored in the Hyperspace Arsenal remain hidden.
• Wall Jump: It's possible to do this, which is especially useful to find secrets.
• We Buy Anything: Merchants are specialized (weapons and consumables, higher-tier weapons, destiny cards), but each of them buys all kind of items.
• We Can Rule Together: Vampire!Adrian does this to Victor before the bossfight (and keeps on proposing it during the actual fight) – which involves converting him to vampirism. It turns out that Adrian summoned Victor to Zagoravia with this in mind.
• Weird Moon: Main menu and loading screen show a night sky with a huge moon right behind a castle.
• Weird West: Motörhead Through The Ages has the appropriatly-named "Weird West" level, which consists in a desert which cacti, an Indian village, farms, a typical frontier town, giant scorpions, and the classical skeletons from the original game (here dressed as banditos and Indians). Its sub-areas include a mine and a train station.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Going to the Demon World to retrieve Queen Katarina's pact with the devil, then giving a beating to the demon tasked with keeping them... All for nothing, as he reveals that the pact is being kept on the mortal world, by Gabriel himself.
• Your Vampires Suck: At one point when entering in a Zagoravia's part full of vampires, the Voice tells that those vampires aren't too dangerous, since they don't sparkle in the sunlight.

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