The very first original video game that wasn’t a retread of an existing game like tic-tac-toe was Spacewar!, and ever since then people have been looking for newer and more intense ways to pack the screen with bullets. From Space Invaders and Asteroids to DoDonPachi and Radiant Silvergun, more bullets is better. This hit serious overload with Vampire Survivors, which was inspired by the Android game Magic Survivor, but became the breakout that kicked off the current shooter renaissance. While this type of game has yet to settle fully into its genre name, the most popular title is Bullet Heaven due to the way it reverses the gameplay of bullet hell. In bullet hell you’re a single ship, frequently overpowered, but easily lost in the overwhelming deluge of bullets the enemies throw your way. In bullet heaven the firepower comes from you rather than the enemies, and while there’s some return fire, the bulk of the threat comes from the sheer number of ships, creatures, monsters, mechs or whatever else may be throwing up resistance.
There are endless dozens of shooters wreaking havoc in the Bullet Heaven playground right now, and today Steam starteda gaming festto highlight them plus a few other games that can just barely fit within the definition. Demos, upcoming games, Early Access titles and even a few fully-released games all populate the festival, not to mention a good number of sales. As a rule these titles tend to be fairly cheap already, usually in the $4-$5.00 range, now starting to creep up in price as the games get fancier, but even so making it worryingly easy to build up a sizeable auto-shooter library. There’s a lot of great action to be had, so in no particular order, here’s a highlight list of worthy or at least interesting shooters from the festival.
Vampire Survivors- This isn’t actually taking part in the festival, but seeing as it’s the basis for so much of what’s to come, it gets honorable mention. Run around a wide-open field while your chosen character auto-targets and -fires on a growing swarm of creatures, then pick up the gems defeated enemies drop to level up. Each level-up brings with it a choice of a single upgrade from a group of three, and there’s a huge list of weapons and abilities to choose from that all interact until your character is at the heart of a pulsing nexus of death that’s still just barely enough to keep the swarm at bay. Money earned during the run can be spent before the next one to permanently upgrade abilities, cranking up the madness to a ridiculous degree.
Soulstone Survivors- A fully 3D take on the Vampire Survivors formula, with an excellent roster of characters and wide variety of well-thought-out weapons and upgrades to play with. As your characters get more powerful you can bump the curse level on the arena up to give them more of a challenge, to the point where the sheer number of player and enemy attacks all kicking off at once renders the screen completely unreadable to anyone who isn’t actually playing the game.
Kinetic Storm- More of a standard free-roaming shooter than a swarm one, with a fighter that’s got an unlimited gun, limited but auto-replenishing missiles, and an invincible dash to survive skies that are getting more crowded with each new wave. Surviving a wave earns the genre-standard power-up choice, but at no point will you feel overpowered seeing as the enemies are relentless. Kinetic Storm is currently only in demo form, with the full game landing some time in 2024.
Nebula- Lots of enemies, lots of room in space to kill them all until they come so thick and fast there’s no room to avoid them. This one’s got some fun weapons to play with, and while it takes a bit to get a toe-hold on the between-level upgrades, once they start piling up the arenas become a pleasantly chaotic killing ground. Nebula also does a good job of illustrating the advantages of keeping the power-up options limited to the basics, making for builds you may more easily tailor to your play style.
Brotato- Probably the second most popular of the bullet heaven games, Brotato features smaller arenas, but much larger build-customization options. Different character classes have massive differences in abilities, and the trick to surviving the waves is knowing what stats to lean into and which to write off as a lost cause. There’s a huge range for experimentation in the upgrade path, and while it’s possible to break out the spreadsheets to untangle the math, that would get in the way of the shooting.
20MTD: Emberpath- This is the sequel to20 Minutes Till Dawn, and just announced today. While it’s hard to be too specific about the new game, 20 Minutes Till Dawn was excellent and had clever innovations in the power-up path that other games have borrowed. Normally when you get an upgrade a second time it makes the initial one stronger, but 20 Minutes has small branching upgrade paths that layer whole new skills on top of the first one. It’s a system that makes each choice feel special, rather than a stepping stone on the way to eventual max power.
Odinfall- This one’s a traditional action-roguelike, more Nuclear Throne than Vampire Survivors, with fully-destructible nuclear wasteland arenas packed with enemies just waiting for a post-apocalyptic Norse warrior to grind them into chunks. Sent on a quest to bring down a mad AI who thinks its Odin, you’ve got to tear through everything in your path while constantly deciding if the weapon you’ve got is worth exchanging for the cool new toy that just dropped. The demo is hugely entertaining, but only a teaser for the full release at an unspecified date in the future.
Monsters ‘til Midnight- Steampunk horde survival with a great cast of characters and a lot of fun humor. While actually in full release, it’s still getting updates with the latest one adding a new zone and character just last week.
Whisker Squadron: Survivor- Basically a randomized Starfox meets the Vampire Survivors power-up system, with defeated enemies dropping experience crystals that level up the ship so it’s strong enough to possibly reach the end of the ten-sector run. I’ve written about this in the past so here’s a much morein-depth look, but the short version is it’s not one to miss.
Survivors of the Dawn- Brand new today, this is a sci-fi bug-hunt in the cavernous depths. Indicators on the edge of the screen point out areas of interest, which can be anything from stores to spend the gold nuggets found lying around everywhere to mini-stories where the decision grants a perk at the price of a difficulty increase. The combat feels super-chunky, and while there aren’t a lot of different weapons in the Early Access release, they felt strong in the demo. Which sadly isn’t available any more, but was more than good enough to make this worth a look.
Keep Those Bugs Away From the Bomb- There’s no demo for Bugs yet but while the name isn’t much of a clue it started out life as a sequel toB.I.O.T.A., a lo-fi metroidvania. Development went in unexpected directions, so what had been B.I.O.T.A. Swarm became Keep Those Bugs Away From the Bomb. It’s s still a single-screen platform auto-shooter that uses the choose-from-three-powerups method of getting ever-stronger, but added a richer color palette than what had been its predecessor plus a whole new cast, not to mention a bomb the player needs to protect from the angry swarm. At the very least it’s promising an interesting take on the overpowered autoshooter, and if the trailer soundtrack is anything to go by should be a seriously high-octane experience.
Nimrods: GunCraft Survivor- This is a unique one, in that instead of building a character, you’re building a gun. Each level-up drops a choice of new gun parts, and they show up on the weapon when added. When the run concludes with the player death you’re revived back at base, frankengun intact, and can archive it for future use on a helper-drone. The map is also designed for exploration, and while it could use a few more points of interest, it’s good to have a reason to go exploring.
There’s of course a lot more going on than can be mentioned (like the third-person shooterAtomic Picnic, musical twin-stickBeat Hazard 3, ’90s Diablo-styledHalls of Torment, barely a prototype but with interesting ideasGun Run, etc), but above all it shows the shooter genre is alive and very active. Granted, it’s mostly all working in the shadow and influence of Vampire Survivors, but we’ve been here before when a game sets its genre on fire and ignites explosive growth. For this stage in its evolution the quality is much higher than the numbers would suggest, with more worth playing than anyone has time for. This is only the surface of what’s available, so drop by theSteam Bullet Heaven Festduring its November 6 through 20 runtime and see what else might catch your attention.
