Warhammer Survivors launches on November 10, 2026 for Xbox Series X|S and PC, and Xbox Wire lists it among the games coming to Game Pass. The roguelite comes from Auroch Digital, the studio behind Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, working with Warhammer and poncle, the developer of Vampire Survivors. Its Steam page promises more than 40 playable characters drawn from both Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar, so its character select screen mixes two separate Games Workshop settings. Here is how the two universes differ and who from each one turns up in the game. Check out the official trailer down below:
What Warhammer Survivors Actually Includes
Xbox Wire describes the game as a fast-paced roguelite that pits "a host of iconic Warhammer characters against endless hordes of enemies from multiple Warhammer factions," and says it covers "the universes of Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar." Auroch Digital is both developer and publisher on Steam, where the game is listed for Windows.
The Steam page names the first confirmed heroes. Commissar Sebastian Yarrick comes from the 40K side, Neave Blacktalon of the Stormcast Eternals comes from Age of Sigmar, and Malum Caedo, the Space Marine hero of Boltgun, is in the roster as well. Every character has unique weapons and starting stats, and the game counts more than 75 weapons, including the Boltgun, the Astartes Chainsword, Whirlwind Axes, and a pot of Nuln Oil, which is a real Citadel paint.
The enemy list splits the same way. Players fight Tyranid swarms and Skaven hordes, with bosses that include the Ork warlord Ghazghkull Thraka, the Skaven prophet Vizzik Skour, and a Great Unclean One. Stages range from the ashen plains of Aqshy to the corridors of an abandoned Space Hulk, and each stage has its own enemy faction. Warhammer paint pots found on the battlefield open up new character forms and secrets.
Warhammer 40,000 In Plain Terms
Games Workshop's own primer, "What Is Warhammer 40,000?", says the setting "takes place in the grim darkness of the far future," with humanity fighting across the galaxy against alien races and "the malignant forces of Chaos." Humanity's empire is the Imperium of Man, which Warhammer Community says spans "the million worlds of the Imperium of Man."
The Imperium is ruled from Terra by the Emperor of Mankind, who barely survived the war that defines the setting. Warhammer Community's Horus Heresy explainer calls that civil war "the foundation myth of Warhammer 40,000," set roughly 10,000 years before the current timeline. Horus, the Emperor's Warmaster, was seduced by the Chaos Gods and turned half of the Space Marine Legions against his father. Horus was defeated, but the Emperor was mortally wounded and "enshrined upon the Golden Throne in a permanent state of undeath."
By the time of the main setting, which Games Workshop calls the Era Indomitus, the Imperium is a "superstitious shadow" ruled by fear and ritual. The Space Marines are its most recognizable soldiers, described by Games Workshop as "towering, gene-sculpted superhumans" and "warrior monks armed with arcane weapons from another era." The traitor half of those Legions became the Chaos Space Marines, who fight alongside mortal cultists and the Daemons of the warp.
The rest of the galaxy is full of alien factions. Orks are the green-skinned warrior race led by figures like Ghazghkull Thraka. Tyranids are an extragalactic swarm that consumes whole worlds. The Aeldari are an ancient, declining alien people, and the Necrons are a robotic race waking from millions of years of sleep. Of these, Survivors confirms Tyranids and Ghazghkull's Orks on its store page.
Yarrick is one of the Imperium's human heroes rather than a Space Marine. He is a Commissar, an officer of the Astra Militarum, the Imperium's human army, and he is famous in the lore for defending the world of Armageddon against Ghazghkull. Ghazghkull appears in Survivors as a boss, so the two old enemies share the game.
Warhammer Age Of Sigmar In Plain Terms
Age of Sigmar is the fantasy setting, and it replaced the original Warhammer Fantasy Battle world in 2015, when the End Times storyline destroyed that world. Games Workshop calls the old setting the World-that-was and has since brought it back as its own game, Warhammer: The Old World. Age of Sigmar starts fresh in a new cosmology.
Warhammer Community's primer on the Mortal Realms says there are eight realms, each "a giant, largely flat crystallisation of magic" built around one of the eight forms of magic. Aqshy is the Realm of Fire, Chamon is the Realm of Metal, Shyish is the Realm of Death, and Azyr is the Realm of Heavens, Sigmar's home. Realmgates link the realms, and entire cities are built around them.
The history runs through named ages. In the Age of Myth, Sigmar led a coalition of gods over great kingdoms of men, duardin and aelves. Chaos then overran the realms in the Age of Chaos, and Sigmar retreated to Azyr and barred the gates. His answer was the Stormcast Eternals, whom Games Workshop calls "demigods clad in gleaming sigmarite armour." Each Stormcast is a warrior plucked from the moment of death and Reforged on the Anvil of Apotheosis, and when one dies their soul returns to Azyr to be Reforged again, losing a little humanity each time.
Later events reshaped the realms. Nagash, the God of Undeath, unleashed the Necroquake, which sent a wave of undeath across the realms and changed how magic works. The Skaven, the ratmen who appear as enemies in Survivors, then erupted into Aqshy in the setting's most recent edition.
The game's factions are sorted into four Grand Alliances on Warhammer.com: Order, Chaos, Death and Destruction. The Stormcast Eternals, Cities of Sigmar, Fyreslayers, Seraphon and Kharadron Overlords are all Order factions. Neave Blacktalon, the Survivors hero from this side, is a Stormcast Knight-Zephyros who hunts enemy leaders.
The Main Difference
The main difference is genre. Warhammer 40,000 is science fiction, with bolters, starships and a galactic empire held together by a dying god. Age of Sigmar is high fantasy, with gods, magic and lands made of elemental magic. Both share the four Chaos Gods, including Nurgle, the god of decay whose Greater Daemon, the Great Unclean One, appears in Survivors.
Both are tabletop wargames first. Warhammer Community says the core rules and unit profiles for Age of Sigmar are free, and its starter boxes pair Stormcast Eternals with Skaven, the same two sides Survivors pulls from.
Other Warhammer Stories And Games
Games Workshop publishes its fiction through Black Library and offers a free Black Library sampler of 40K stories. Warhammer+ carries the publisher's animated series, including the Age of Sigmar series Arkanaut. On the video game side, Boltgun is Malum Caedo's original game, and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV, from Deep Silver and KING Art Games, launches December 3, 2026 on Steam.
Which side will you pick first in Warhammer Survivors, the Imperium of Warhammer 40,000 or the Stormcast Eternals of Age of Sigmar?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.