Новини
Discover the best survivor games on Epic Games Store – from Vampire Survivors to Brotato
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Steven T. Wright
What is a survivor game, anyway?
In short, a "survivor-like" or survivor game—also called a bullet heaven, auto-shooter, or wave shooter—challenges the player to survive intensifying waves of attackers in a closed arena. To fend off these foes, you amble your way around, gathering increasingly powerful auto-attacking weapons and leveling up your character to create a build that can deal with the big baddies you will eventually encounter. Most survivor games feature relatively short runs, often tracked by a visible timer that allows you to map out when certain types of enemies or challenges will appear.
Besides these baseline mechanics, survivor games share a number of other common characteristics. They tend to feature stylized lo-fi graphics, yet this apparent simplicity is usually overwhelmed by a deluge of colorful projectiles just minutes in. Survivor games give the player the ability to essentially create their own visually impressive "bullet hell" to erase the endless well of foes, and it can take time and experience to figure out just what is happening, especially late in a run. They almost always have loot (like Vampire Survivor's chests) or XP systems that define how each survival attempt progresses.
These general principles apply to survivor games as a whole, but just like with roguelikes or first-person shooters, the details vary. Below, we've listed the notable survivor games on Epic Games Store, and what each of them brings to the table. While they vary in approach and theme, they're all solid games that're worth a look.
Vampire Survivors
Even with all the great competitors we've outlined below, it should go without saying that Vampire Survivors is probably the best place to get started with the genre. Not only is it an incredibly compelling game with the potential to take over your life, it also has a depth of content that is difficult to find from other games in the genre.
It has two main advantages that make it especially worthy of a recommendation, even if you've already played quite a bit of it. For one, its weapon evolution system is one of the most complex and satisfying mechanics in the genre, and it can take you hours to find all of the different combinations. For another, the game now features no less than five low-cost DLCs that further build out its already-impressive array of content, with new weapons and characters to try out. My personal favorite is the Ode to Castlevania pack, which makes the game's obvious inspiration official, complete with whip-bearing Belmonts, those annoying medusa heads, and plenty of classic tracks.
Karate Survivor
A kung-fu survivor mashup is an obvious blueprint for success, and that's exactly what you get with Karate Survivor. To its credit, it adapts the basic mechanics of Vampire Survivors to great effect—complete with large XP bar and the ability to choose from three possible build options every level—but the actual moment-to-moment gameplay feels quite distinct. You build out an arsenal of versatile kung-fu moves to take down droves of leather-jacketed thugs and knife-wielding schoolgirls.
You can choose the order of these maneuvers God Hand-style, which lets you experiment to figure out what works best for each level. Karate Survivor's use of the environment is really its key innovation, allowing you to pick up weapons like lead pipes and umbrellas to deliver a quick burst of offense in a pinch. You can even collect guns to go full Hard Boiled on your enemies from afar. With plenty of levels and modes to choose from, buying this game will definitely make for a better tomorrow.
Brotato
Don't take this potato-based shooter lightly, as Brotato will likely wreck your lunch break and have you procrastinating on that major life project. The concept here is pretty simple: You're a potato that can wield up to six guns, and it's up to you to figure out the ideal spread to take on the purple worm-creatures and other baddies that threaten you every round.
More overtly wave-based than most survivor games, Brotato gives you the option of spending your hard-earned resources at a shop between each round of enemies. This gives you more of a sense of control over the proceedings, which is handy to have since Brotato is actually quite a bit more complex than you might expect. It features a huge variety of characters to try out and weapons to sample, and it ratchets up in intensity much more quickly than some other games in the genre. It's downright addictive, so try it out when you have a few hours to kill.
20 Minutes Till Dawn
An eldritch-tinged survivor game with a simple yet gorgeous art style, 20 Minutes Till Dawn changes up the survivor formula by challenging one of its basic precepts: auto-attacking. Yes, you actually have to aim your weapons in this game—if you've ever played a twin-stick shooter, you know what to expect—which puts more demands on your reflexes than some of its contemporaries.
The big selling point for 20 Minutes Till Dawn is undoubtedly its dark minimal aesthetic, which stands out, especially in its detailed character portraits. Like Vampire Survivors, it has a variety of characters and builds to try out, but it's much more of a pure shooter than the other games on our list. Not only does it require you to aim, reload, and alt-fire, you have to worry about stats like bullet penetration as you get into the late game. 20 Minutes Till Dawn also features robust status ailments that can shut down entire hordes, especially the frost effect. If you're tired of waiting for the game to do the work for you, this is the survivor game for you.
Bio Prototype
Perhaps the strangest survivor-like of all, Bio Prototype is a wildly experimental take on the genre. In it, you build your own monster by cobbling together "Organs" that each have an effect on your attacks. Bio Prototype gives you a degree of customizability and experimentation that's far deeper than what you'll find in other games in the genre.
For example, you can equip "spines" that control how quickly your base attack triggers on one side, or a "heart" that activates a bonus attack if you don't get hit for an extended period. This also means that you can build yourself into a corner by choosing Organs that don't mesh well together, but that's the cost of freedom. If you've ever wanted more tactical latitude to build your ideal bullet heaven yourself, right down to the millisecond, Bio Prototype is definitely worth a look.
Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel
Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel is a Viking-tinged survivor game that's still in early access, but it's already got plenty of content to sink your teeth in. Faster-paced than many other survivor-likes, it injects a pure action-game approach to the proceedings, complete with robust 3D graphics and a dark fantasy aesthetic that's perfect for the Norse theme.
Like Hades, you can select powers from the gods of Norse mythology as you level up, such as Loki's fire, Thor's lightning, and Freya's divine might. You must balance this with the class skills that are inherent to your character—going too hard in any one direction might make you one-dimensional, or it might give you that powerful capstone ability you need to cleave your way through the skeletal hordes. Jotunnslayer has mechanical flair and style—it even has a dash—so it's perfect for survivor fans who want their reflexes to be challenged as well as their build knowledge.
This concludes our guide to the survivor-like genre. Now get out there and start spewing projectiles—we promise you'll have a good time.
Vampire Survivors and many other survivor-like games are available on the Epic Games Store.