Exploring the: Survivors-like? Survivors? Horde Survival? Bullet Heavens? Action Roguelite?

Waves of enemies surround the player as they fight back with their great power in these... uh… What do we call them?

What are we talking about?

What started as a simple wave-based game called Magic Survival, inspired the very popular game we now know as, Vampire Survivors, which inspired many games that share similar aspects, those being:

Rogue-lite elements (meta-progression, sudo-permadeath, randomized upgrades or items),

Horde / Wave based (Enemies attack in waves and usually a large amount and the wave is based on the kill count or timer),  

Reverse Bullet Hell / Bullet Heaven (Everything mentioned before this, but they fill the screen with projectiles as they mow down their enemies, becoming extremely strong).

That last one was created around the time Vampire Survivors was exploding in popularity, but how come there isn’t a tag for it in Steam? If you were to type that in the search bar, the tag doesn’t exist, even when Steam held a Bullet Heaven Fest. From what I’ve noticed, many share the Action Rogue-like tag, but within that are a plethora of games that are not similar to Vampire Survivors.

Is it important to agree on a name?

As a consumer and a fan of the genre, whatever it may be named, it’s important that we can agree on a name so we can easily find the game we want to financially support. In other words, let me find some good games to spend my money on.

Think of the people who thoroughly enjoy Dark Souls and need more of that in their lives; the gaming community agreed on calling those games Souls-like, and it even has a tag in Steam called Souls-like. Well, why isn’t there one for games like Vampire Survivors?

Vampire Survivors, just like Dark Souls did, inspired many developers to put their spin on the genre, but it’s hard to find games like that if you don’t have a tag or name for it. While it’s not impossible to find them, as I have found many of them, I have to put some effort into finding some of them. Some have even used the tag Bullet Hell, which they are not, and those looking for Bullet Hell games would find the complete opposite.

Well, what do we call them?

It’s fair to say that there isn’t a name set in stone on what to call the genre, though the most popular one is Bullet Heaven. Going through comments, forums, etc., I’ve found people call it many things, but ever since Steam’s Bullet Heaven Fest, though some might disagree, it seems like the overall winner.

While people might be tired of calling things “-like,” I believe Survivors-like, though wordy or silly, is good enough. And the main reason is because there is a great game called Bullet Heaven that I have a soft spot for. Though, I do understand that Bullet Heaven sounds much better than Survivors-like.