# Signal, Vampire Survivors patches its flash and shake options again

> Tag: SIGNAL. Published 2026-10-01 by Tom and Ollie, FOXFIRE developers. Mirrors https://getfoxfire.com/dispatches/vampire-survivors-flash-and-shake-options/.

On 30 August 2026 Poncle shipped Vampire Survivors hotfix 1.16.107, a 14-item list whose sixth line reads 'Fixed FlashingVFX and Screenshake options for Descent Into Misery, Shimmering Sands, Damnation, LunarFlight'. The same kind of repair shows up in two earlier notes, and we set that pattern next to FOXFIRE's own Screen Motion and Flash Intensity settings.

## Three repairs, one switch
- 19 October 2023, patch 1.7.0 Whiteout: 'Removed various flashes if Flashing VFX is disabled'.
- 10 April 2025, Emerald Diorama: 'Fixed Intermittent flashing light on OTC stage when Flashing VFX are disabled'.
- 30 August 2026, hotfix 1.16.107: the Flashing VFX and Screenshake options repaired on four named stages.
- Three notes in under three years in which the switch is mended to reach something it had missed. The notes don't say what went wrong, so the cause is our reading.

## Why the switch misses new work
- Our guess is structural. The Legacy of the Bloodmoon launch post (28 August 2026) lists 16+ new weapons and evolutions and 1 new very large stage, and each brings effects of its own.
- A toggle in the options menu protects only the effects that consult it.
- The Epilepsy Society puts epilepsy at around 1 in 100 people and photosensitive epilepsy at around 3% of those. It adds that flashing or patterned effects can make people with or without epilepsy feel disorientated, uncomfortable or unwell.

## What FOXFIRE takes
- FOXFIRE has Screen Motion (full, reduced or off) and Flash Intensity (standard, reduced or off) in its accessibility settings.
- Screen Motion reduces or removes camera shake and non-essential motion punch. Flash Intensity does the same for non-essential full-screen and impact flashes.
- Both sit behind one policy that is written to be presentation only: nothing in it changes simulation, difficulty, rewards or progression.
- Shake is routed through the camera rig, which applies Screen Motion to the shake, the roll punch and the zoom punch where it builds the final view. Scripted camera moves, like the shudder when you die, run in a separate lane the setting doesn't reach yet. Flashes have no single choke point: more than a dozen separate files read the Flash Intensity scale for themselves, which lets a new effect go out unscaled.
- The game opens on a photosensitivity notice at every launch (covered in the July build notes).
- The team's stated bet, from the survivor-likes dispatch: "Vampire Survivors works because movement is a stale machine as old as Snake; FOXFIRE is the bet that survivor-like fans want the version where movement is an immersive part of the challenge. That bet might be wrong. We won't know until launch." (the FOXFIRE team)
- If movement is the challenge, the camera is how a player reads it. Screen Motion changes how the ship's movement is presented without touching how the ship moves, and the ship's physics never reads the policy.
- What we take from item six: a question for every effect we add, which is whether it asks the policy before it draws.

## Related dispatches
- What happens when you hand FOXFIRE to strangers (Supanova Sydney): /dispatches/hand-foxfire-to-strangers/
- We made the Viridian Storm fair (July build notes): /dispatches/viridian-storm-made-fair/
- The survivor-likes we tune ours against: /dispatches/survivor-likes-we-tune-against/

## Sources
- Vampire Survivors 1.16.107 hotfix notes, 30 August 2026: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1794680/view/689767056035283484
- Vampire Survivors patch 1.7.0 Whiteout, 19 October 2023: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1794680/view/6816816781630430097
- Vampire Survivors Emerald Diorama notes, 10 April 2025: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1794680/view/529842339955345357
- Vampire Survivors Legacy of the Bloodmoon launch post, 28 August 2026: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1794680/view/717913919982667416
- Epilepsy Society, photosensitive epilepsy (page updated 8 September 2026): https://epilepsysociety.org.uk/understanding-epilepsy/photosensitive-epilepsy
- Vampire Survivors on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1794680/Vampire_Survivors/

Last updated: 2026-10-01