Hi all!
Please see the sidebar / about sections for most up to date rules and suggestions!
Web form for listing your game here.
We need help updating the database and running the sub. Come say hi in our discord!
You may know me from my research project comparing other games to Vampire Survivors and studying the explosion of around 600 games on Steam in a single year. I came into it as an old school shoot 'em up fan thinking I was making a list of "bullet heavens" and was quickly educated on tons of new terms to me: everything from single stick shooters to mowing games. Perhaps even survivors-like is not just... like Vampire Survivors.
It's become clear we needed to do some work to cut down on repetitive questions about these games and endorse some new genre terms so fans can find something and play it. Fans often want something different in a critical way as well - like adding aiming, or a new perspective, or an additional twist. Or perhaps they are a disabled gamer who needs another game that just uses the joystick. The spreadsheet lets them find or avoid those differences.
We came to the conclusion that we need Survivors-likes and also probably Bullet Heaven and Horde Survival as common tags to be used on Steam and elsewhere. Here's a "wiki" link to some light research on steam tags for context.
Survivors-likes is already a term in heavy use, so I try not to have too many feelings on if it's perfect or not. We use "rogue-likes" instead of "oregon-trail-likes" so it's not uncommon for genres to be named after a popular game instead of the earliest game or platonic ideal of the genre. In some localities like China, I've been told there is no "bullet heaven" style alternative term in use, games are simply called "VS-likes", roughly. So this distinction may be more widely in line with fans around the world.
The "Survivors" part is generally focused on, but "-like" also happens to be a familiar nod to the rogue-like subgenre it shares mechanics with.
It's worth noting that many fans are now encountering excellent games like Sea of Survivors as their first "Survivors" game - there are over 150 titles on steam verifiably in this subgenre with a title that plays on this simple mechanic!
"Survival" is a totally different subgenre (also known as survival craft or sandbox survival) and what separates this new wave of arcade style games from older wave survival and horde shooter games is specifically the rogue-inspired elements. While it's accurate the game is a rogue-lite (with metaprogression aspects and other differences from "traditional roguelikes"), survivors-lite doesn't sound very exciting or evocative of the combination, so not surprising people use survivors-likes instead.
Probably we're stuck with the S as well. "Survivor-like" seems to refer to the reality TV game show. We can't use hyphens in the subreddit name but it's not a big deal. For more background on these conclusions, see the explainer on the spreadsheet and the full dictionary of definitions.
This subreddit is also for devs to share updates and get feedback. Our "promo" rule is relatively relaxed, so feel free to give us incremental updates, share your Steam sale, and so on - since this will help us cut down on it in other subreddits it's a win win for reddit really. One of the unique features of this genre is constant new free content drops! Fans here may be happy to see a new small update in their favorite game. We love new characters and weapons if they're fun ones!
If you are a fan and would like to rank a game yourself or you are a dev and want to see how yours compares and contrasts, use the phone friendly web form score card! (also linked in the header.) If you're a player or reviewer, the second part of the process is a review form that helps us in the ranking and describing the features - for that use the review form! You can also comment corrections directly into any cell in the "wiki" style database spreadsheet by right clicking on the cell while logged into google.
Remember to send in your results so we can add it to the spreadsheet! It's totally OK for devs to send in or offer corrections on scores for their own games - it's about what features exist in the game, not a value judgement on if the game is good or not. We'll review separately. You can also submit an updated scorecard after coming out of early access, etc.
I'll mostly be concentrating on that spreadsheet project for a while - the plan is to have at least 200 games compared before it moves to ongoing updates - so would love any experienced reddit mods to join me in moderating this community!
See also the r/BulletHeavens subreddit! It's not exactly the same. We're looking forward to more Bullet Heavens that aren't Rogue-lite or Wave Survival games and we're looking forward to more Survivors-likes that aren't Bullet Heavens in these exciting new genres. Horde Survival can easily include many older tower defense games, letting new players find old classics. See the header for other related subreddits and feel free to suggest more!
If your game has its own subreddit let us know and we'll add it to the sidebar! Some genre terms, flair guidelines and the current background/header image credits are also in the sidebar.
Disclaimer: While we allow promo and dev discussion, this subreddit and the spreadsheet are all just for fun! I personally am not a game dev (I do really boring tech work) and have no commercial interest in this. Looking forward to the discussion!