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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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?
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I've heard "reverse bullet hell", it's decent.
I only heard bullet heaven
Survive-em-up?
Survive-em-up?
Seriously I fucking loved the name.
This one makes so much sense I’m surprised it’s the first time I hear it.
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.
I've also heard Autoshooter. Seems as good of a genre name as any.
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.
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I thought it was already considered a reverse bullet-hell. But I do like Bullet heaven as well.
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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.
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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This post made me install Vampire Survivors on my phone and it felt like an old flash game I used to play on miniclip during IT classes in school. Some of the assets are completely stolen from OG Castlevania too (I'm sure this has been pointed out before).
Anyway, like 45 mins passed and I have no idea where the time went. I can see this game being good for public transport, waiting rooms, etc.
Other comments said it but I think bullet heaven is perfect
I thought they were auto battlers?
I think the fact that you move the character around during 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.
Yeah, I remembered Super Auto Pets and immediately realized I'd made an enormous mistake.
Let's just stick with survivor, or survivor-like. It works fine for roguelikes and soulslikes. No need to force a genre name.
Twi-like
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