It’s been a while since I last looked at what the “Survivors” genre (or “Bullet Heaven”, or “Reverse Bullet Hell”, or whatever else you call it) has been cooking up; enough of a reason for me to change that. I mean, the very pleasant surprise that was “HoloCure – Save the Fans!” got its own article because I felt like it would be an injustice to just let it be a side note in a mashup article like this, but not all the games I play deliver such stellar performances. That does not mean that all of the games in this article are bad, not at all, even though I have to admit that some of the entries left much to be desired. But before I fill the screen with anymore introductory filler, here are six more “Survivors” games that I played over the last few weeks and which I have now given their own mini-reviews to. The list is as follows:
Bounty of One
Game: Bounty of One
Developer: OptizOnion
Genre: Bullet-hell, Rogue-like
Releases: 2023 (PC)
Let us start with a positive surprise in this article. “Bounty of One” has been on my radar for quite a while but with the full release in late 2023 and this article asking for more input there was no more reason to delay playing it any further. And while this will not become my favorite “Survivors” game “Bounty of One” has some strong showing. It starts of relatively tame: With only a goblinoid with a bowgun as the character option, you dive into the game. While it is similar enough to other games of the genre, there are some distinct differences giving it a unique twist: You do not have a regenerating life bar but instead only can take a number of hits shown above you character. Also, you can only shoot your weapon while being stationary which means that experience collection kills your damage output. There are options to move and still dish out punishment, for the most part in “Bounty of One” you slowly edge forward to get the best of both worlds.
Once you get familiar with this new way of play, you are rewarded with a game that intelligently uses all of a character’s bonuses to create builds. Shooting kills, that much is true, but whether you shoot a constant stream of projectile or giant world-ending projectiles of doom is up to you. And you do not need to shoot at all with damage auras and damage triggers when moving being available that can make for entirely different builds. Probably the greatest change when compared to other “Survivors” games is the amount of dashes you can store in “Bounty of One”. While other games treat dashes as this rare but highly useful resource that the player should not get to modify in most cases, “Bounty of One” really does not care and gives you ten of them if you wish to go for a dash-based build. And with upgrades like damaging yourself when dashing but gaining more damage output combined with a heal when dashing, you can spiral out of control rather easily.
“Bounty of One” manages to bring that feeling of utter control over the screen that some games of the genre try to achieve. With various different characters that all have their own approach to fighting, and an interesting Wild West-themed presentation this game really is a solid experience for quite a few hours. Whether you use Nigel, the sheriff star-flinging ex-protector of justice or Roger, the vulture-looking black market merchant that might start weak but is able to use his contacts and business acumen to his advantage they all feel good to play and all have a powerful passive ability that you can base your build around. And I have yet to find another “Survivors” game in which madness like “four times attack speed” as a permanent upgrade feels so good while also not being utterly broken. Long story short, if you look for a “Survivors” game that is a little different in presentation but rock-solid in gameplay and mechanics, you might find something in “Bounty of One”.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
Game: Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
Developer: Funday Games
Genre: Bullet-hell, Rogue-like
Releases: 2024 (PC)
“Survivor” games now go meta, with successful franchises making their own little auto-shooter, or bullet heaven game, or whatever you want to call it. The latest game to hit the market in the genre (at least at the time of writing this bit) is “Deep Rock Galactic Survivor”, a spawn of the co-op first person shooter featuring dwarves that I reviewed before. Now, I was not a big fan of “Deep Rock Galactic”, although this is more a thing of me not getting warm with the game rather than the game doing anything horribly wrong, but maybe the “Survivor” offspring has more for me to offer seeing how many games of the genre I played at this point.
The game is true to its roots and players that know the original will see a lot of common themes, with dark caves, four different classes of dwarves, the same equipment, and even a similar idea of prioritizing the mining of minerals rather than just blindly running around shooting stuff. Your meta progression does cost resources that you find in the caves, which forces you to scout the area and get the materials. This is nothing new, since games like “An Ankou” have a similar idea of your character fetching resources to get stronger; however, the amount of enemies in “Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor” does make a farming run impossible by design. During the game, you therefore need to find the balance between shooting the opposition and gaining experience, and mining minerals for more long-term benefits. And this entire mining idea gives “Deep Rock Galactic Survivor” its own special interaction that I have not seen in “Survivor” games before: You can interact with the level via terraforming. You have your back against the wall and insects come from all sides? Well, simply mine a way out through the rock behind you. Enemies are dump as the rock you are mining and therefore will follow the strict pathfinding to the only entrance you made until you break through and the insects realize that there is another way around. As far as I have seen it, only explosive bugs can destroy the level in sizeable portions (and only if you trigger them) while flying enemies can ignore the walls; but any other crawly has to go the long way.
This would be a promising start, but in my personal opinion it does not save the game from feeling kinda underwhelming. This is a “Survivor” game in which your weapons need to constantly take breaks due to being reloaded, which leaves unfortunate holes in your damage output that you cannot really plan for when you have four weapons on different timers. The Scout, which is the only class unlocked right from the start, definitely has problems clearing bosses effectively once there are bugs there to protect it since none of the weapons allow me to aim them myself and rather fire at whatever is … convenient, I guess. I checked the settings to see if there was any button that disabled auto-aiming, but there is no such option anywhere which means this is by design. Add to this that the entire game is causing unnecessary stress: In “Vampire Survivor”, you know that each minute spawns some new wave of enemies, which means you have a soft time-limit aswell since you need to get strong enough to handle the next threat. However, having a gauge at the top of the screen that automatically spawns elites which only grow stronger the longer it takes you to finish them only to run to the pod in thirty seconds which forces you to leave all the experience points behind creates a system that feels bad.
Why anyone would decide to take a co-op game that actually makes a valid effort out of giving players different classes and making them all necessary in order to create a scenario in which teamwork is mandatory only to take that same idea and place it in a single-player game where none of this applies is a mystery to me. But I can tell you that my brief stint with “Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor” was enough for me, and I will not be coming back for seconds. There are some good ideas, with quests unlocking more areas and higher difficulties and the class levels bringing more bonuses as well as mods to change how the chosen class is played. However, the gameplay is slow, the itemization is uninteresting, and there are definitely some rough corners that the developer needs to smooth for a 1.0 version. I mean things like giving exploding enemies a warning radius instead of me guessing how big the explosion might be and then losing a quarter of my health. Or giving the moves of certain enemies a bit more build-up since losing a whooping 100 health to the final boss of the run because he rushes me with a bodycheck that I could not have known of since I never fought that guy before seems like an oversight. All in all, “Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor” might be true to the source material, but is underwhelming in its own right.
Scarlet Tower
Game: Scarlet Tower
Developer: Pyxeralia LLC
Genre: Bullet-hell, Rogue-like
Releases: 2022 (PC)
“Scarlet Tower” is, as you might have expected since it is featured in this article, another “Survivors” game. And while that might sound unfair, this could be the entire review about it. Now, it does try to have lots of game mechanics in order to differentiate itself from other games in the genre: The characters all have a certain school of magic, like Necromancy or Alchemy, which bring a few weapons but also tons of passive abilities with them. You can find eggs in the stages to unlock familiars, which passively increase some stat depending on the familiar. You can level stats directly via meta progression currency, but there are also talents for more bonuses, and there are racial traits, and glyphs, and an enchantment window that I did not quite get, but which I assume provides more stats and bonuses.
In fact, “Scarlet Tower” feels completely overloaded with boosts and boons, but with some much micromanagement before I can even start a map I already lose some of my motivation to play the game. And this all comes to a point when the actual gameplay can be described with the word “meh”. “Scarlet Tower” is not bad per se, but it actually does not do anything to innovate in a genre that has been overrun with developers trying to get a slice of the seemingly lucrative “Survivors”-like market. “Vampire Survivors” looks very similar in style, but has a sort of tongue-in-cheek humor to it and interesting item design that makes it so addictive to play. “Scarlet Tower” features a bland forest map with monsters swarming you from all sides while levels up feel like they have no impact since I want more Necromancy upgrades but the game wants to ram some burn affliction passives down my throat since there are just too many options out of which only a few really have an impact on the gameplay that I can notice.
In my opinion, the focus was wrong in this game. I do not really care about whether I play an elf or a human as a character, but since there are racial bonuses for whatever reason I might as well level those on top of what feels like fifty other things that I can increase but that change little overall. I much rather have interesting weapon ideas and gameplay that starts easy but invites experimentation in the long run rather than being drowned in options that ultimately do not matter. “Scarlet Tower” is rated positively on Steam and quite a few people recommend it if you are looking for an easy “Survivors” game, but since I am spoiled for choice I’d rather go for something else than investing my time in this game.
Swarm Survivor
Game: Swarm Survivor
Developer: MegalOh! Games
Genre: Horror, Rogue-like
Releases: 2023 (PC)
I like fresh ideas for the “Survivors” genre, hence why I am playing so many different games of it. Unfortunately, some of the ideas that look promising do turn out to be rather awful; and in my opinion “Swarm Survivor” is a case in which the premise kills its fun. “Swarm Survivor” is a horror game at its core: You are a lone survivor that tries to fight their way through whatever is currently going on around you. The game is pitch-black, which helps sell the horror theme since you constantly hear the enemies around you but can hardly see anything. As is so often the case in the horror genre, the flashlight is probably the most important tool of your arsenal. It shines a decent cone of light all the time, but can temporarily be activated to shine brighter to reveal more area while also slowing down any horrors of the night that you might find.
You start with a pistol which is a solid weapon due to its rather large ammo supply, but with options like shotguns, assault rifles, or sniper rifles you might want to upgrade in order to keep the monsters at bay. Different weaponry can be found in the level, but where there is loot there might also be danger; and the further you get away from your starting point, the stronger the threats become. Now, I play “Survivors” games because of the progression from being a wimp into an insane killing machine, and I love finding synergies between items, weapons, and character abilities. Well, this is probably why I disliked “Swarm Survivor”, since it hardly does any of that. There are no character choices, the weapons distinguish in damage, firing speed, reload speed, but do not come with any crazy abilities due to the rather “realistic” setting, and while there is level progression since you do gain experience by shooting down enemies the bonuses do not get much more interesting than “+5% movement speed” or “+10% damage”.
And I think I could live with my character being almost powerless since this is a horror game after all. There would be no tension if my character could simply swoop any opposition in a storm of damage areas. However, “Swarm Survivor” features moments in which way more fire power needs to be brought to the table since the opposition goes completely ballistic. The first time I almost died to the red circle event that pits me against a sizeable number of enemies without room to flee, only to get smashed by some giant muscle mountain minutes later. The second time I got to handle both only for the game to spawn two of the boss-like enemies and drown the screen in fire due to an absurd amount of flame spitting monsters. I can tell you that there will be no third time since I find the game unenjoyable, even though I can get behind the premise.
Time Survivors
Game: Time Survivors
Developer: Lunar Chili
Genre: Bullet-hell, Rogue-like
Releases: 2024 (PC)
“Time Survivors” can be best summoned up with the “Cocaine is a hell of a drug“-meme. Forget story-telling or common sense because the developer of this game apparently has smoked some bathsalts and then went on to produce a videogame. The result is “Time Survivors”, a game in which you play as historical figures fighting against whatever the stage in question has available. The gameplay should be familiar to anyone who played “Vampire Survivors” before: Take a character, kill the endlessly spawning monsters to gain experience which you then use to unlock more weapons and passives, and try to reach the big bad boss at the very end. Now, the stages in “Time Survivors” are already something else: You have the choice between the Dark Age at around 900 AD, Ancient Egypt at 3.000 BC, the Stone Age at 144.000.000 BC, or the Ice Age at 690.000.000 BC. There is also an additional side-scrolling level that is a horrible idea for a “Survivors” game in my opinion.
And then there is the character roster, which further shows the craziness of the creator. At the start, you only have “Claire” available, who is introduced as “The most famous historical hero. Just not yet.” since she comes from 2700 AD and therefore from the far future. There are actual historic figures like Abraham Lincoln, shortened to “Abe”, Nicola Tesla”, who is referred to as “Nik” in the game, Cleopatra, or “Cleo” for short, and Nero. Nobanaga Oda is now just referred to as “Nobu”, “Vince” is Vincent Van Gogh, and the character named “Anita” seems to be Anita Garibaldi; oh, and Napoleon is just that, but with the most hideous character portrait I have ever seen. There are more characters, but each of them work like the usual character in a “Survivors” game, having their own stat block, a signature starting weapon, and an ultimate ability which ranges from useful like “Anita’s” bomb, to puzzling like “Abe’s” wall of cherry trees that normally blocks me more than it does the enemy.
Now, granted, you could make an interesting game by completely overtuning the facts that we know about historical figures and make them interesting characters. However, this is where “Time Survivors” falls short: Most of the weapons feel rather bad with certain characters having such bad starts that I cannot be bothered to pick them. And the weaponry is kind of boring too: Nero could have easily gotten a lute that creates fire projectiles instead of simply making some fireballs, while “Abe” definitely should have gotten an axe instead of the flail that is already available in the game. “Time Survivors” really does not manage to be fun since your builds are fairly limited, you normally need to pick around the bad choices rather than having a wide array of tools, and the game even has the audacity to make certain weapons worthless against some of the enemy waves, which makes the griffons in Dark Age especially punishing to name just one example. There are some interesting consumables with magic mushrooms making your character a giant that can just trample over enemies or a computer chip multiplying your weapons for a short amount of time, but that does not fix the issues. At the end of the day, while “Time Survivors” could have been a fun fever dream, it really does not make me want to play another round, on top of being somewhat ugly design-wise.
Wedding Witch
Game: Wedding Witch
Developer: Chowbie
Genre: Bullet-hell, Rogue-like
Releases: 2023 (PC)
“Wedding Witch” is another “Survivors” game and despite its appearance it is actually SFW; if only barely. You play as Bell, a witch, who has heard of a strange human tradition called marriage and sent out her owl familiar to hear more about this cultural phenomenon. She is particularly interested in the honeymoon part and longs to find a man; but to make sure that she actually finds one she has the brilliant idea of “borrowing” body-changing potions from her succubus grandmother, which turns out to be the major gameplay mechanic in “Wedding Witch”. However, the forest is full of monsters which makes finding those potions a little bit harder than first anticipated; and there is also the little issue of grandmother succubus not really appreciating someone stealing the potions she made, be it family or not.
During the stages, you can level up by defeating enemies and collecting dropped experience like in any other “Survivors” game, but there are two major differences: Her witches’ broom is actually a bouquet of flowers, which you can find on the stages and which work like relics in other games by giving some passive bonuses. More interesting, however, is the potion part: After each stage, you can choose from a selection of potions which improve both your character and her magic capabilities. The options are as follows: Growing her hips improves area magic, more muscles increase melee capabilities, bigger breasts improve explosion magic, while smaller breasts bring bonuses for projectile-based magic. She also can transform in a succubus herself and become more adapt in curse-based magic, while the available cat form improves anything that spawns minions to fight for you.
The artwork is pretty and the game does work quite well, with curse being my personal favorite due to the combination of auto-targeting spells with passives that increases magic hits. You do not have different auto-attacks and instead always rely on swings with your bouquet, but with upgrades like more damage, crit change, attack speed, range, and cone size the go-to auto attack is pretty much always worth leveling and using, regardless of the build you are going for. And I would say that every single school of magic can become utterly insane, with showers of projectiles being as good as lots of overlaping dark holes and plasma zones melting the opposition. However, it does not have long-term appeal since even the highest difficulty is relatively easy to conquer after a few meta-progression-upgrades, which makes “Wedding Witch” an average title in my book.
Cubic Creativity 