Luca Galante

Luca Galante, who goes by poncle, is an Italian game developer and the creator of Vampire Survivors, the minimalist auto-attacking roguelite that spawned a whole genre of survivors-like games. Before making it he worked in the gambling industry, an experience that shaped the game's slot-machine-style treasure chest openings, and he had previously run an Ultima Online fan server.

Galante began building Vampire Survivors in 2020 while out of work, using the free JavaScript framework Phaser and roughly £1,100 worth of bought assets, art and music. After a quiet itch.io release, he put it on Steam in early access in December 2021 at a very low price. Within weeks it went viral, topping 70,000 concurrent Steam players in February 2022, and he quit his job to work on it full time. Poncle has said the game sold more than a million copies within its first few months.

The full version launched in October 2022 and won Best Game at the 2023 BAFTA Games Awards. The team later moved the game to Unity, released mobile and console versions, and added expansions including a Castlevania collaboration. Under the poncle company, based in the UK, Galante has since grown into a small publisher and studio group, with spin-offs like the deck-builder Vampire Crawlers and a live-action film adaptation in development.