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As a fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, Maniac is a game that intrigued me upon first glance. On the game’s Steam page, it’s described as “GTA meets Vampire Survivors”. Seeing as I’m also a fan of Vampire Survivors, that sounded pretty cool to me. I forget how I came across Maniac but I know it was shortly before it released. Developed by Transhuman Design and published by Skystone Games, Maniac was released for PC in March, 2024. I think I jumped on it shortly after it released mainly because it was selling for about five bucks as do a lot of games that follow in the footsteps of Vampire Survivors. That’s one thing I like about this genre so far. A lot of the games are cheap and if they’re well made, they’re fun and addictive and will provide hours and hours of entertainment.
The objective of Maniac is to cause chaos for as much money as possible or a high score. After selecting your character, you are free to roam about generic city land and steal vehicles, kill people, and destroy shit. There are multiple difficulty levels and game modes; Survival, Score Attack, and Playable Moments. Survival is the real meat of the game. The objective is to survive until a nuclear bomb destroys the city. Score Attack must be unlocked and the goal here is to survive for as long as possible. And last but not least, Playable Moments are user created challenges. There are multiple characters to choose from, most need to be unlocked, and each one comes with their own stats, weapons, and abilities and the money you earn from each run can be spent to upgrade their equipment and abilities permanently. All characters share many of the same upgrades so it’s their stats, weapons, and abilities that really make them unique.
There’s no deep narrative or much in the way of plot. Maniac is a simple game and one that’s great for killing time. I don’t think the “GTA meets Vampire Survivors” description is entirely accurate but the game does share some elements with Vampire Survivors. In my opinion, it feels more like the classic GTA games and maybe even the first Postal in some respects. As you kill people and cause destruction, you will attract authorities, indicated by stars or what I typically refer to as wanted stars, and as you accumulate more stars, more aggressive authority figures appear like police, military, etc. They set up road blocks and spike strips, arrive by vehicles, and even aircraft will be gunning for you. Unlike Vampire Survivors and other games of its ilk, there is no experience. Instead, there’s an arrow on the HUD pointing you to an NPC that will offer you upgrades, health, and sometimes weapons and equipment. So basically, you go from NPC to NPC to accumulate upgrades, helping you survive for longer. And these upgrades do stack on top of the permanent upgrades purchased in between runs. You don’t have to go to these NPCs, of course, you’re free to go wherever and do whatever you want but the upgrades do help you become more efficient and powerful and stay alive longer.
I found the game challenging at first and it took me a bit to survive long enough for the nuke to go off. I eventually discovered this was because I wasn’t focusing on accumulating upgrades during runs. I would become occupied just messing around. But once I did and started solely focusing on going from one NPC to another, I was surviving for much longer and was able to survive until the nuke went off with a majority of the characters on their first run on Normal. Also unlike Vampire Survivors and other games like it, you’re not really creating builds so to speak. At least not like how it’s done in those games. Each character’s weapons and abilities make them unique but that’s it. Weapons can be replaced with others found in the city or from the NPCs but the rest of the upgrades are shared and simply improve various attributes like damage inflicted, movement speed, vehicle armor, and other things like that, and they are the same as the permanent upgrades. They just stack.
You can only have a set amount of weapons and they are replaced when you acquire others and I really don’t like this. However many weapons slots are in your inventory, that’s the amount of weapons you can carry and use. Also, every character has multiple weapons that can be unlocked and upgraded but they can’t all be used during a run. For example, you can pay to unlock an assault rifle and then pay to unlock a rocket launcher, and the rocket launcher automatically replaces the assault rifle. You can’t switch between or use both during the run. You can refund upgrades to get that money back but it just seems odd to me that you can’t at least equip and use all of a character’s weapons considering this game is all about chaos and destruction and is in no way aiming for any type of realism.
Don’t get me wrong, Maniac is a fun game but I don’t think it offers the same kind of addictive quality as games like Vampire Survivors mainly because of the way it handles upgrades and weapons. As a result, it does start to get repetitive quickly. Granted, survivor style games can also get repetitive but the build variety is what keeps you coming back. At least I think so. In Maniac, you run around killing people and destroying things for money and most of the variety lies with the different characters and their weapons and abilities. Regardless, the different weapons, equipment, and abilities are fun to experiment with, the action is fun and shooting people and blowing stuff is satisfying. Blood splatters, explosions look cool, and you can even bring down buildings. It’s the kind of game that’s fun to mess around in and the longer you survive, the tougher things get. Authorities will be coming from everywhere, projectiles will be flying every which way, and explosions become commonplace. The city, itself, is basically a big playground ripe for destruction. You can hijack or steal any vehicles you see, including aircraft. Everything from motorcycles to taxis to trucks to helicopters to weaponized vehicles like tanks are all for the taking. You can do whatever you want and go wherever you want. Maniac is a game that gives you plenty of freedom.
Maniac showcases a colorful presentation with cool visual effects. I really enjoy the blood splatter and explosions. The city is destructible and any destruction remains for the duration of the run. Everything from destroyed barriers to buildings turned to rubble remain and it’s pretty cool to navigate around and see the result of all the carnage. The action is backed by some funky music and characters will often shout humorous one-liners during gameplay. The sound effects are alright and get the job done but I did notice certain sounds would often get cut off when there was lot going on. On the technical side, I did not encounter any major issues.
I had fun with Maniac. It feels like one of the classic GTA games but solely focuses on chaos. It throws you into a world and lets you loose with infinite ammo, plenty of people to kill and stuff to blow up. It seems like the developer was aiming to mix classic GTA with Vampire Survivors style gameplay but I feel it doesn’t quite capture the latter and as a result it feels more repetitive than addictive at times. But for five bucks, I don’t really mind. It’s definitely worth the money. That’s not to say Maniac has little replay value, either, because it has plenty. But if you’re looking for a survivors style game with tons of build options, that’s not really what Maniac offers. I think the game could benefit from even more upgrades, weapons, and equipment, just for the sake of more variety but what’s here already is pretty fun. Furthermore, it does come with a level editor for players to create and share their own cities.
I do recommend Maniac. It’s fun, cheap, and it will keep you entertained for a while. I do wish it offered a little more variety and depth but it still proves to be a good time. If you’re looking for another addictive survivor style game, you may be a little disappointed but if you’re content with simply killing mass amounts of people and destroying everything in an open-ended environment, then Maniac might just be the game you’re looking for. Definitely check it out.