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.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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Sucky N Fucky
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
I've just been calling them exactly that: vampire survivors like. It's a mouthful, so I'm open to the alternatives.
Other comments said it but I think bullet heaven is perfect
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.
Too late it's Vamvor.
Vampvore
roots in voreaphilia
Vampier
Survivor
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.
It should be more in inverse bullet hell: it's hell, but not for you.
I didn't come up with the name, that's just what people have been calling it for as long as I can remember.
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.
Just like Vampire Survivors!
Bullet Heaven
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
This is the one I always hear these days.
I heard it from the Castle Superbeast podcast.
Yup, this is the one.
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.
Garliclike
lol saw this on a Steam Review and it is my favorite.
It's an autoshooter isn't it?
Vampire Survivors would be a rogue-like autoshooter.
Like Backpack Battles is an autobattler.
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.
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.
I've also heard Autoshooter. Seems as good of a genre name as any.
Digital crack
Dragon chaser
Freebase gaming
Addiction "simulator"
MOBA - massive onslaught bullet arena
FPS- Frantic Progression Survivor
RPG - Running, Progressively Gaining
Survive Em Up
I like my shootemup games personally
I always thought of it as a Hord game
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