What Is a Survivors-like? Vampire Survivors and Bullet Heaven
Auto-attacks, swarming enemies, and upgrades at every level-up. The origins, key games, addictive appeal, and design of the Vampire Survivors-like genre.
"Survivors-like" is a label for the games that multiplied rapidly after the huge success of Vampire Survivors in 2022. Your character attacks on its own, you only move, and you survive for tens of minutes while mowing down enemies that fill the screen. In English, the genre goes by names such as survivors-like, horde survivor, and bullet heaven. (In Korean, it's called "baemseo-ryu," short for "Vampire Survivors-type.")
In this post, we look at what a survivors-like is, where it started, what branches it has, and which games represent it. We then look at why you keep playing "just one more run" and what to watch out for when making a game in this genre. For the broader history of RPGs, see the history of RPGs, and for the genre's roots in roguelikes, see the history of roguelikes.
What Is a Survivors-like? Definition and Core Appeal
The survivors-like is classified as a subgenre of the shoot 'em up. The player moves a character around a large top-down map and has to withstand endless waves of enemies pouring in from all sides. There's usually no attack button. Weapons fire automatically at set intervals, and the player's job is to decide where to move and what to pick when leveling up.
A single run goes like this.
- You start with one weak weapon.
- Defeated enemies drop experience gems, and picking them up levels you up.
- Each time you level up, you pick one of three or four randomly offered weapons or upgrades.
- As time passes, enemies grow more numerous and stronger, and your firepower grows large enough to cover the screen.
- The run ends when you survive the set time or fall, and you use the currency you collected to unlock permanent upgrades or new characters.
The core appeal is "30 minutes that turn the underdog into a powerhouse." At first you're chased around by a few bats, but once your combination clicks, hundreds of enemies melt away before they can even get close. This thrill of reversal, along with the fun of testing a different combination every time, is what holds the genre up.
The name "bullet heaven" is a flip of "bullet hell." In bullet hell shooters, the player has to dodge enemy bullets filling the screen, but in survivors-likes, it's the player's bullets that fill the screen.
Origins: From Magic Survival to Vampire Survivors
The direct starting point of the survivors-like is considered to be Magic Survival, a mobile game that came out first in Korea. According to Wikipedia, the game was released in Korea in 2018 and internationally in 2019, and it featured an auto-attacking character holding off waves of enemies. The developer of Vampire Survivors has said he was inspired by this game.
Vampire Survivors is a game that Italian developer Luca Galante (known as poncle) began making in 2020 while unemployed. He developed it with Phaser, a framework for web games, and borrowed its atmosphere from the Castlevania series. Drawing on his previous experience working in the gambling industry, Galante added flashy slot machine-style sequences when opening chests.
When he first posted it on itch.io, there was almost no response, but it launched in Steam Early Access at a very low price in December 2021, and sales surged in early 2022 when YouTube creators covered it. The full version came out on October 20, 2022, followed by Xbox and mobile the same year, and later Nintendo Switch (2023) and PlayStation (2024). At the British Academy Games Awards (BAFTA), it won in the Game Design and Best Game categories.
Right after its success, similar games poured out. HoloCure, Brotato, and 20 Minutes Till Dawn are representative, and spin-offs of existing games such as Temtem: Swarm and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor also came out. The genre's name went unsettled for a while, but in May 2026, Steam set the official tag name for the genre as "Bullet Heaven." Before that, "bullet heaven" had also received the most votes in a naming poll in which more than 400 developers took part.
Branches and Characteristics of the Survivors-like
Even among survivors-likes, the feel varies quite a bit depending on what was changed.
| Branch | What's different | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Classic | Fully automatic attacks; progress through movement and choices alone | Vampire Survivors |
| Manual aiming | You control firing direction or reloading yourself | 20 Minutes Till Dawn |
| Wave and shop | Buy weapons and items at a shop between short waves | Brotato |
| Action RPG | Isometric view, gear farming, classic RPG atmosphere | Halls of Torment |
| 3D | 3D maps with elevation and a third-person view | Megabonk |
| Spin-off | Characters and systems from an existing IP transplanted into the survivors-like structure | Temtem: Swarm, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor |
The common elements are as follows.
- Automatic attacks: Your hands aren't busy, so you can focus on decisions and movement.
- Level-up choices: You build your loadout by picking one of the randomly offered options each time.
- Weapon evolution and combinations: Maxing out a specific weapon together with an upgrade turns it into a stronger weapon. Vampire Survivors' "evolutions" and HoloCure's "collabs" are examples.
- Short runs: Many games are structured so a run ends in about 15 to 30 minutes.
- Meta progression: Currency carries over after a run, making the next one a little easier.
Representative Games
| Year | Game | Developer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Vampire Survivors | poncle | Popularized the genre; weapon evolutions and chest sequences; won two BAFTA categories |
| 2022 | 20 Minutes Till Dawn | flanne | Manual aiming and reloading instead of auto-attacks; limited vision in the dark |
| 2022 | HoloCure | Kay Yu | A free fan game featuring hololive VTubers; weapon combinations called "collabs" |
| 2023 | Brotato | Blobfish | Potato character, shop purchases between waves, made by a solo developer |
| 2023 | Halls of Torment | Chasing Carrots | 1990s isometric action RPG atmosphere, 30-minute runs |
| 2025 | Megabonk | Vedinad | A survivors-like moved to 3D maps and a third-person view |
Years are based on first public release (including early access). Brotato entered early access in September 2022 and fully launched in June 2023, and according to Wikipedia, it sold more than a million copies during early access alone. Halls of Torment entered early access in May 2023 and fully launched in September 2024. 20 Minutes Till Dawn entered early access in June 2022, with the full version released in June 2023. Megabonk sold a million copies within two weeks of its September 2025 release, and its developer described it as "3D Vampire Survivors."
Why Is It So Addictive?
Survivors-likes pack many kinds of rewards densely into a short span of time.
- Frequent choices: Level-up choices come at short intervals. Each pick brings the anticipation of "what combination will it be this time?"
- Visible growth: It's not numbers that change but the screen. A screen that started with a single blade swinging ends up covered in lightning, garlic auras, and holy water.
- A reversal structure: The contrast between early danger and overwhelming late-game firepower creates a story arc within a single run.
- Random reward presentation: The spinning sequence and sound effects when opening a chest heighten anticipation of the reward. This is the part the developer said reflects his slot machine experience.
- Low barrier to entry: Since movement is the only control, even first-time players can enjoy it right away.
- Short runs and meta progression: Runs are short, and even if you lose, the next run gets a little easier, so "just one more run" follows naturally.
However, when overdone, the same devices lead to fatigue. A writer at the British games outlet Rock Paper Shotgun pointed out that many imitators, compared with the original, don't do a good job of distinguishing the player character amid the visual clutter on screen.
Design Points
Survivors-likes look easy to make, but the parts that determine the fun are more delicate than you'd think.
1. Balancing the growth curve and enemy density
If the player's firepower and the enemy count grow at the same rate, it gets boring; if firepower pulls ahead too fast, the tension disappears. Many games draw a curve that's deliberately tough early on, gives a sense of release in the middle as builds come together, and then ramps up the pressure again late. Vampire Survivors firmly ends the run by bringing out a powerful Reaper when the time limit is reached.
2. The quality of choices
If level-up options always feel similar, there's no fun in choosing. Limiting the number of weapon slots (Vampire Survivors has six weapons and six passive upgrades) and having evolutions that only unlock with specific combinations turns "what to give up" into strategy.
3. Screen readability
Enemies, your projectiles, experience, and healing items appear by the hundreds on a single screen. Color, size, and effect transparency need to be tuned so the player character and threats can be distinguished at a glance. Adding a setting to reduce effect brightness is another option.
4. Performance optimization
Since hundreds to thousands of entities move at once, technical preparation is needed, such as object pooling, simple collision detection, and handling off-screen entities. Right after its success, Vampire Survivors also announced plans to move to an industry-standard engine to improve performance.
5. One axis of differentiation
Because the genre's grammar is so solid, it's best to clearly decide on one thing to change. Changing one axis, such as aiming (20 Minutes Till Dawn), shops (Brotato), perspective (Megabonk), or atmosphere (Halls of Torment), makes a game remembered as something distinct rather than "yet another survivors-like."
Who Should Play Them
- People who want short, intense thrills without complicated controls
- People who like putting builds together and experimenting with combinations
- People who want to play in 15–30-minute chunks on their commute or during breaks
- People who like the repetitive structure of roguelikes but find high difficulty off-putting
On the other hand, if you're expecting precise controls or a long story, you may find it monotonous quickly.
Survivors-likes Today
Within a few years, the survivors-like has established itself as a genre of its own. Steam has held events dedicated to the genre since 2023, and in 2026, the "Bullet Heaven" tag was officially created. Attempts to change the format itself, like Megabonk's move to 3D, are also continuing.
The originator, poncle, is broadening the genre too. It introduced its own term for similar games, "Survivaton," gave the original the subtitle "The First Survivaton," and in April 2026 released the deck-building spin-off Vampire Crawlers. The mobile version was released as free with optional ads, reportedly rushed out after clone apps that stole the original's code and art appeared on app stores.
The framework of automatic attacks and level-up choices is spreading to other genres as well. Going forward, rather than "is it a survivors-like or not," the criterion distinguishing games will likely be which elements of the survivors-like were mixed in and how.