This post made me install Vampire Survivors on my phone and it felt like an old flash game I used to play on miniclip during IT classes in school. Some of the assets are completely stolen from OG Castlevania too (I’m sure this has been pointed out before).
Anyway, like 45 mins passed and I have no idea where the time went. I can see this game being good for public transport, waiting rooms, etc.
Bullet heaven is likely what will stick. If you don’t like that it’s also the name of a game, consider that metroidvania contains the name of two games.
Metroidvania is a stupid name and always has been. I say this with those 2 series being 2 of my favourite and metroidvania being one of my favourite genres.
I think the fact that you move the character around during the battle precludes it from that genre. Auto battles usually have two phases, a shopping or building phase and a battle phase. You prepare for the battle in the former but have no influence on the outcome in the battle phase itself.
I don’t know why people keep calling it rogue like. Rogue-likes have a lot more randomness than an easily manipulated item drop system. I don’t know that a random map is a necessity but it certainly needs something along those lines.
Rogue had you start from scratch with a new character in a random map every time.
Rogue-like games initially meant you start from scratch in a new random world, but you incrementally improve your experience by small buffs you can buy, or changing your starting equipment / skills (sometimes by changing out which character you start as).
Rogue-like has slowly changed to mean “start over regularly but slowly unlock new items/buffs/equipment/characters/etc to help you further explore a world which may or may not be random”
So it applies to games like Risk of Rain (and 2), Balatro, Dead Cells, and Rogue Legacy, just to name a few examples (though 3 of those are 2d platformers with randomly generated worlds if I remember right…).
But yeah it seems to have morphed into a broadly used term for games where you get better over time through purchasing permanent buffs and whatnot (as well as natural skill), but are forced to restart any time you die.
Vampire Survivors and other similar style games have you constantly restarting when you die so I think the term fits as a partial descriptor.
Maybe we could adopt the idle/clicker game term Prestige, but that’s more of a voluntary restart when you hit a wall and can’t progress, so I don’t think it quite works.
For a while people tried to differentiate roguelikes, which maintained the lack of metaprogression, with roguelites, which did have progression. But that was pretty clearly a losing battle, the two names were far too similar to stay distinct as long as one or the other took off. Some few pendants still try to maintain the distinction, but that ship sailed ages ago.
It’s a really stupid way to differentiate the two as well. Rogue like is the original term and will obviously be the blanket term, but people want to insist that a subset of such games are not actually a subset (“it’s not a rogue like, it’s a rogue lite”) because of the addition of a feature. When in reality most people view all rogue lites as rogue likes.
What in the heck is a reverse bullet hell? If a bullet hell is “so many bullets” then I have to image it’s like… Not many bullets at all. That sounds too easy.
Normal bullet hell (Touhou): the enemies shoot a hell of bullets at you. And your job is to avoid it.
Reverse bullet hell (Vampire Survivors): you shoot a hell of bullets at the enemies. And your job is to shoot even more, bigger, stronger bullets.
No we don’t, never heard anyone use that term when referring to games that are similar to Vampire Survivors. It’s always survivor-like game. Also, bullet heaven is not even an accurate description of the game, as in lots of these games you don’t throw lots of projectiles around. If you’re going to force a name change, Mob Hell is a way better descriptor.
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Survive-em-up?
Seriously I fucking loved the name.
This one makes so much sense I’m surprised it’s the first time I hear it.
This post made me install Vampire Survivors on my phone and it felt like an old flash game I used to play on miniclip during IT classes in school. Some of the assets are completely stolen from OG Castlevania too (I’m sure this has been pointed out before).
Anyway, like 45 mins passed and I have no idea where the time went. I can see this game being good for public transport, waiting rooms, etc.
I’ve heard “reverse bullet hell”, it’s decent.
I only heard bullet heaven
Bullet heaven is likely what will stick. If you don’t like that it’s also the name of a game, consider that metroidvania contains the name of two games.
Metroidvania is a stupid name and always has been. I say this with those 2 series being 2 of my favourite and metroidvania being one of my favourite genres.
Bullet heaven isn’t too bad though.
It´s a perfect fit for games like Dead Cells though, isn’t it?
I like “search action” instead of Metroidvania. Credit to Tim Rogers.
Bullet Heaven
This is the one I always hear these days.
I heard it from the Castle Superbeast podcast.
Yup, this is the one.
Bullet Heaven is an old bullet-hell game playable here. Naming the genre that is stupid.
Wait, It’s a new grounds game? So not even something that’s been published?
“Somebody somewhere used that name for their hobby project 13 years ago so now it can’t ever be used for anything else”
No two things can ever share a name
Projectile Nirvana
I thought they were auto battlers?
I think the fact that you move the character around during the battle precludes it from that genre. Auto battles usually have two phases, a shopping or building phase and a battle phase. You prepare for the battle in the former but have no influence on the outcome in the battle phase itself.
Yeah, I remembered Super Auto Pets and immediately realized I’d made an enormous mistake.
Garliclike
lol saw this on a Steam Review and it is my favorite.
Twi-like
It’s an autoshooter isn’t it?
Vampire Survivors would be a rogue-like autoshooter.
Like Backpack Battles is an autobattler.
Edit:
As raised in the comments, actually a rogue-lite as VS has meta-progression.
I’ve also heard Autoshooter. Seems as good of a genre name as any.
I don’t know why people keep calling it rogue like. Rogue-likes have a lot more randomness than an easily manipulated item drop system. I don’t know that a random map is a necessity but it certainly needs something along those lines.
Rogue had you start from scratch with a new character in a random map every time.
Rogue-like games initially meant you start from scratch in a new random world, but you incrementally improve your experience by small buffs you can buy, or changing your starting equipment / skills (sometimes by changing out which character you start as).
Rogue-like has slowly changed to mean “start over regularly but slowly unlock new items/buffs/equipment/characters/etc to help you further explore a world which may or may not be random”
So it applies to games like Risk of Rain (and 2), Balatro, Dead Cells, and Rogue Legacy, just to name a few examples (though 3 of those are 2d platformers with randomly generated worlds if I remember right…).
But yeah it seems to have morphed into a broadly used term for games where you get better over time through purchasing permanent buffs and whatnot (as well as natural skill), but are forced to restart any time you die.
Vampire Survivors and other similar style games have you constantly restarting when you die so I think the term fits as a partial descriptor.
Maybe we could adopt the idle/clicker game term Prestige, but that’s more of a voluntary restart when you hit a wall and can’t progress, so I don’t think it quite works.
For a while people tried to differentiate roguelikes, which maintained the lack of metaprogression, with roguelites, which did have progression. But that was pretty clearly a losing battle, the two names were far too similar to stay distinct as long as one or the other took off. Some few pendants still try to maintain the distinction, but that ship sailed ages ago.
It’s a really stupid way to differentiate the two as well. Rogue like is the original term and will obviously be the blanket term, but people want to insist that a subset of such games are not actually a subset (“it’s not a rogue like, it’s a rogue lite”) because of the addition of a feature. When in reality most people view all rogue lites as rogue likes.
I still use it but there are maybe 2 true rouge-likes published a year and no one plays them so it really doesn’t matter.
Just an addendum:
Risk of Rain does not have randomly generated maps. The maps are from a predetermined set, I believe 6 for each biome.
They call it a rogue-like because there is meta-progression even though you “start over” each run.
Yep definitely is. I guess OP hasn’t heard of brotato and deep rock survivor either.
Other comments said it but I think bullet heaven is perfect
Sucky N Fucky
Based
I thought it was already considered a reverse bullet-hell. But I do like Bullet heaven as well.
I’ve heard from at least one smaller channels that it’s a bullet heaven. That’s at least what they call this style of game.
deleted by creator
They’re already called reverse bullet hell?
I didn’t know that, but it fits. That or bullet heaven.
Bullet Heaven is the name of an existing game, don’t clobber it with a genre name.
An existing game from newgrounds posted 14 years ago. I don’t think it’s going to cause that much confusion.
Looks like it’s too late. I Googled bullet heaven and it took a few minutes to find the actual game, which is ironically a bullet hell game.
What in the heck is a reverse bullet hell? If a bullet hell is “so many bullets” then I have to image it’s like… Not many bullets at all. That sounds too easy.
Normal bullet hell (Touhou): the enemies shoot a hell of bullets at you. And your job is to avoid it. Reverse bullet hell (Vampire Survivors): you shoot a hell of bullets at the enemies. And your job is to shoot even more, bigger, stronger bullets.
It should be more in inverse bullet hell: it’s hell, but not for you.
Just like Vampire Survivors!
I didn’t come up with the name, that’s just what people have been calling it for as long as I can remember.
Let’s just stick with survivor, or survivor-like. It works fine for roguelikes and soulslikes. No need to force a genre name.
Survival games are already a thing, though.
So? SurvivAL is not the same as survivOR.
Seems like an insufficient difference for two genres that are so distinct. Plenty of opportunities for confusion.
Action, Adventure, and Action-Adventure are all different genres. I think people will figure it out.
Those aren’t words that can easily be confused for each other due to accents or minor variance in pronunciation.
And besides, we already have a genre name for Vampire Survivor-alikes. They’re bullet heavens.
No we don’t, never heard anyone use that term when referring to games that are similar to Vampire Survivors. It’s always survivor-like game. Also, bullet heaven is not even an accurate description of the game, as in lots of these games you don’t throw lots of projectiles around. If you’re going to force a name change, Mob Hell is a way better descriptor.
Oh, I like this one
Digital crack
Dragon chaser
Freebase gaming
Addiction “simulator”