Pathfinder: Gallowspire Survivors

The pitch

Set in Pathfinder's Gallowspire — the legendary tower where the undead tyrant Tar-Baphon is imprisoned — Gallowspire Survivors puts the tabletop RPG's dark fantasy lore into a Vampire Survivors-style horde-clearing loop: pick a class, fight escalating waves, gather upgrades, take down bosses. It launched 4 April 2024 at a budget price, explicitly positioned as an accessible entry point rather than a full-scale RPG.

What the reviewers who liked it actually say

This is the tell worth leading with: the single most-upvoted positive review on the entire page — 27 votes, enough to be the first thing many buyers read — opens by calling the game "a meh out of 10 type of game. It doesn't do anything specifically poorly, but it doesn't [do much well either]." Another early positive review, from launch day, places it as "middle of the pack as far as Vampire Survival style games go." These aren't reluctant endorsements dragged down by review-bombing — they're the actual ceiling of enthusiasm this game generates even among people recommending it.

The specific complaints, and how consistent they are

Reading the negative-review corpus, the same handful of criticisms repeat with unusual consistency. "Boring" appears in 35 of the 100 most-helpful negative reviews. One widely-upvoted review sums up the core problem directly: "It doesn't really have a fun loop... this is just walk from chest to chest, fight the boss." Progression draws specific, detailed frustration — one review describes spending 1,000 gold to raise a health potion's healing from 22 to 23, calling it representative of upgrades that are "+1% to stuff" rather than meaningfully new options. The companion character comes in for its own repeated complaint: it "can't get any upgrades" at all, which several reviewers single out as a strange omission for a game built around build progression. Content scope draws the same verdict from multiple angles: "only 3 classes... and only 4 levels," with little reason to switch classes once you've found an effective one.

The Pathfinder connection is thinner than the license suggests

A recurring, more specific complaint is that the licensed setting doesn't run very deep. One detailed review argues "the only things that seem to link this to Pathfinder are... unimportant" window dressing, and another, examining the abilities more closely, concludes "the abilities and art aren't actually pathfinder[-accurate]" in the ways a tabletop fan would recognise. For a game whose main differentiator from dozens of other horde-survivors is the license itself, reviewers who came in specifically as Pathfinder fans are among the most disappointed in the corpus.

Support stopped early, and the numbers show it

BKOM Studios shipped two real content updates in Gallowspire Survivors' first seven weeks — Update 1.1 (30 April 2024, new secret modes and achievements) and Update 1.2 (20 May 2024, three additional game modes). Since then, the Steam news feed shows nothing but seasonal sale announcements. One reviewer's blunt summary from January 2025: "Game is mid at best, could have been better but it was abandoned shortly after launch. Avoid." The review-volume trend backs that reading up independently of anyone's opinion: 74 English reviews in 2024, 18 in 2025, and 8 so far in 2026 — a game whose audience has largely stopped engaging with it, not just stopped liking it. Achievement data tells a similar story: the median completion across 92 achievements is just 8.5%, and the deepest secret/challenge achievements sit at 0.4–0.5%, an unusually steep cliff even by roguelite standards.

Value

At NZ$10.49 with no DLC and no in-app purchases, this is at least honestly priced for what it is — a short, budget diversion rather than a full-price disappointment. If your expectations match the price, a few hours of "meh" horde-survival for ten dollars isn't an unreasonable trade. It's the Pathfinder branding, not the price tag, that oversells what's here.

Verdict

Pathfinder: Gallowspire Survivors is a budget horde-survivor that its own most enthusiastic reviewers describe with a shrug, built on specific, repeated complaints — thin progression, an unupgradable companion, minimal class variety, and a license that doesn't run as deep as it looks — that add up to more than genre growing pains. Two years of near-total silence since its last real update, and a review flow that's dropped to a trickle, suggest the playerbase reached the same conclusion. Worth a look only on a deep discount, and only with expectations calibrated to "meh."