I thought they were auto battlers?
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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I think the fact that you move the character around sorting 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'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.
Metroidvania is a stupid name
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.
Twi-like
Sucky N Fucky
Based
Boring after 20 minutes type games?
Its a passive horde survival game.
The game play is rotating the stick in a rough circle so you keep moving that you can do without even having to look at the screen while you hoover up tiny pellets that make you stronger to survive more blobs of color on the screen.
Have any of you ever tried risk of rain or heck even cuphead? You can have rapid gameplay and a point to it.
This feels like the modern bathroom book as a game. Fun but just enough to be over when you have finished something more worth your time.
This feels like the modern bathroom book as a game. Fun but just enough to be over when you have finished something more worth your time.
Sometimes that's just what you need. Vampire survivors is my go to for when I burnt out from work and don't want to think anymore but need something to do.
Other comments said it but I think bullet heaven is perfect
They're already called reverse bullet hell?
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.
It should be more in inverse bullet hell: it's hell, but not for you.
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.
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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.
Mob Hell is a way better descriptor
Oh, I like this one
I thought it was already considered a reverse bullet-hell. But I do like Bullet heaven as well.
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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.
Yep definitely is. I guess OP hasn't heard of brotato and deep rock survivor either.
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.
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It's a horde survival shooter with upgrades
We've established a name already in the indie space for these. It's a "horde survival shooter" damnit.
Not to be confused with the plain old "horde shooter" like your helldivers 2 and what not