Vampire Survivors has had a ton of success, and of course, in being a simple game on the surface, has generated a bunch of similar playstyle games. I don’t hope that survivorlike sticks as a term, I guess “action roguelike” is out there, and “bullet hell”, but I feel like those cover so many other games that play wildly different.
First up is Fully Dogomatic. It’s set on a small map, and enemies of largely the same type chase you down. It seems like some are larger or may be more bullet spongey, but no variation on model that I recall. Some will drop coins you need to collect, as there are timed weapon drops and you have to pay for the additional weapons you equip. The guns you buy have a static direction you decide when you add them and stay facing that direction. So if you decide to put your gun at your 9 o clock, it stays there, despite what direction you’re facing or moving. At the 10 minute mark, a boss spawns, and killing it will finish the demo. There are signs there are meant to be more dogs in the full version, but it’s unsure where it really goes from there, or what the different dogs may even do. The demo is still up and no release date is set at the time of writing.
Waifu Survivors sounds like it’d have more adult elements to it, but, it is still a SFW game. It’s just that it features heroines as all the playable characters. It plays a lot like the original, but adds an active ability to each character and adds a dodge instead of being a pure single button game. It uses a lot of the same exp and weapon upgrade mechanics. They did use AI for some of their art as disclosed on their steam page, which is a bit of an ick that I missed till after I was looking more at the game. If you’re fine with that, the demo is still up, and the release date is sometime this month.
Doom Survivors is probably one of the closest to the original game of the demos I tried this fest. It still tries adding a second active ability button, which has really led me to appreciate the single button simplicity of the original. That said, it’s got decent pixel graphics and played well, so someone looking for more of the same from the genre should definitely give it a look, and, thankfully the demo is still up.
Lastly, the game I surprisingly enjoyed the most was Pizza Delivery Survivors. It’s got a bright, NESlike pixel feel to the graphics. The difficulty started off really challenging and got easier with upgrades and unlocks, but still never got to the point of most of my Vampire Survivors runs where everything is incinerated on sight. One thing I often think about games that seem to be chasing after a larger title is “what does this add?”. The constant quest to deliver pizza is it, killing zombies is a secondary objective, you gotta get those pies to people in 30 minutes or less. It’s got the oddball minigame or trivia when you complete a delivery too, affecting your tip. I dumped two hours into this, I still don’t have all the upgrades in the demo unlocked and honestly can go back for more when I have time. Having the additional objectives other than “survive” was a great addition, similar to the one-time unlocks of VS (coffins and the like) that gives it a bit more structure. It doesn’t have a release date, but, the demo is still up for anyone to try.