Have you been playing Vampire Survivors? Well, we definitely hope so! It’s been the smash hit of the year, a surprise indie game that started as a free little title and then became so big that even longtime players have problems keeping up with all the new Vampire Survivors secret characters and items that are being added with each patch and release.

We are now up to 0.10.0 and getting close to the game finally coming out of early access. There’s so much meat to chew on, both for first-time players and for longtime aficionados of the little action game, powered by tomato sauce, pizzas and – of course – loads of garlic.

But if you’re here, then we’re here to help you find out how to unlock those Vampire Survivors secret characters in the latest release of the game.

How to unlock Vampire Survivors secret characters

Here are all of the Vampire Survivors secret characters:

• Exdash Exiviiq – quickly type x-x1viiq on the keyboard while in the main menu, if successful you should hear a jingle – that means you’ve unlocked Exdash. Otherwise, through the secrets tab in the menu, type exdashexoneviiq.
• Toastie – unlocked only after Exdash. You need to kill one of these enemies: Stalker (green), Drowner (blue, always spawns at the bottom of the map) or Trickster (pink). At that point, Toastie will briefly show up on the bottom of the screen, you have to be quick and press Down + Enter (S does not seem to work), controller is also okay.
• Smith IV – after unlocking both Toastie and Exdash, type spam in the main menu. You have 30 seconds to do the same thing, write spam, in the character selection screen, select whatever character, type spam again in the stage selection screen, enter a run and then – finally – type humbug. Phew!
• Boon Marrabbio – you need to have unlocked the achievement for 100 chickens picked up. Then go to the Mad Forest, pick up both Pummarola and Skull O’Maniac. At this point a shadowy boss should show up (if it doesn’t, follow the trail of pies), defeat it and you’ll have unlocked Boon Marrabbio. Otherwise just type fettinepanate (but don’t search for this term on youtube or you’ll be damned forever) in the main menu.
• Minnah Mannarah – with the Yellow Sign unlocked, you should see a cheese on the Dairy Plant level as a pick up item. If you pick it up, seven werewolves will appear, defeat them all to unlock the character.
• Leda – this strange boss shows up in the Gallo Tower going all the way to the bottom: the music will start disappearing and the screen will slowly go dark. It will approach you very slowly so wait for it to catch up. Defeat it and unlock Leda.
• Peppino – choose the character O’Sole Meeo and Il Molise in stage selection. The starting weapon of the character will heal the plants in the stage, you need to heal them for 100.000 points.
• Gains Boros – in The Bone Zone level, go up and seek a flower ring which heals the character. Wait on it for 10 seconds and you’ll unlock Gains Boros.
• Red Death – you need to kill the Reaper that comes for your soul after 15 mins (or 30 mins, depending). To do this, the best weapons are high powered Clock Lancet and the Laurel shield.
• Big Trouser – collect all the items in the Moonglow stage and max them out, but leave the stage before the Reaper comes to kill you.
• Cosmo Pavone – you need to have unlocked both the Yellow Sing and Zi’Assunta Belpaese. Choose Capella Magna in stage selection, along with Peachone and Ebony Wings as weapons. Then go up on the map and pick up the burning weapon item (Nduja Fritta Tanto). The gates up there should unlock adn you can go in and collect Cosmo.

We hope this information was useful to get the most out of the fantastic Vampire Survivors, but if you want to take a break from all that vampire hunting, why not go check out our relaxing guides on Stardew Valley’s Dish O’ the Sea or the best indie games to play?