Games Like Vampire Survivors You Haven't Played Yet

You finished Vampire Survivors. You unlocked every character, evolved every weapon, found the secret stages, and now you're staring at your Steam library wondering what fills that specific hole in your brain. The one that wants you to walk in circles while numbers fly off the screen and dopamine floods your skull for thirty straight minutes.

Good news: the genre Vampire Survivors kicked off has exploded, and there are now hundreds of games chasing that same feeling. Bad news: most of them are forgettable clones that add nothing. The list below isn't most of them. These are the ones that took what Vampire Survivors built and pushed it somewhere genuinely new.

Which games like Vampire Survivors remix the formula best?

The best games that remix the Vampire Survivors formula are Brotato (arena rounds with a shop system), Halls of Torment (gothic Diablo II aesthetic with skill-based dodging), 20 Minutes Till Dawn (twin-stick aiming), and Death Must Die (full action-RPG depth with god-granted powers). Each one changes a core mechanic rather than just reskinning the original.

Brotato is probably the closest thing to a must-play after Vampire Survivors itself. Instead of an open field with a timer, you get short arena rounds separated by shop visits. Your character can hold up to six weapons in floating arms, and the builds get ridiculous fast. A run takes maybe twenty minutes, which makes it perfect for squeezing in between other things. The co-op mode they added is great, and the expansion pack went deep on new content.

Halls of Torment looks like somebody dragged Diablo II's visual style into a bullet heaven and it works way better than it has any right to. The gothic atmosphere is a genuine differentiator in a genre dominated by cute pixel art. Combat leans more toward skill-based dodging than pure Vampire Survivors, and the build variety is serious: you're making meaningful choices about how your character functions, not just picking whatever upgrade has the biggest number.

20 Minutes Till Dawn answers the question "what if I could actually aim?" You move with WASD and aim with the mouse, turning it into a twin-stick shooter with survivors-like progression. That single change makes the skill ceiling dramatically higher. If Vampire Survivors ever felt too passive for you, this is the fix.

Death Must Die goes full action-RPG. The Diablo and Hades influence is obvious, but the bullet heaven structure holds it together. Gods bestow powers on you during runs, and the pixel art has a moody gothic quality that gives it real personality. It's one of the deeper games in the genre and rewards players who like theorycrafting builds.

What are the weirdest games like Vampire Survivors?

The most creatively strange survivors-likes include Boneraiser Minions (you command a necromancer army instead of attacking), Luck Be a Landlord (a slot machine roguelike that nails the same synergy dopamine), Granny's Rampage (minigun-wielding grandmother vs. hell), and Soulstone Survivors (Path of Exile-depth skill trees in bullet heaven form).

Boneraiser Minions replaces you with a necromancer who raises an army instead of attacking directly. You're managing a horde of your own skeletons and demons while enemies swarm in. The humor is extremely British and extremely dry. It's one of those games that screenshots terribly and plays brilliantly.

Luck Be a Landlord isn't technically a survivors-like at all, it's a slot machine roguelike. But it scratches the exact same itch. You spin slots, build synergies between symbols, and try to make enough money to pay rent. If what you actually loved about Vampire Survivors was the dopamine loop of combining upgrades into something overpowered, this game distills that feeling into pure slot-machine form.

Granny's Rampage takes the genre somewhere genuinely funny. You play as a grandmother armed with a minigun tearing through hellish landscapes across five stages, with boss fights, obstacle systems, and a sense of humor that runs through the whole thing. It's a bullet heaven that leans into absurdity and lands it. The kind of game that makes you text a screenshot to your friend because explaining it out loud sounds unhinged.

Soulstone Survivors pushes toward proper ARPG territory with a skill system that lets you customize abilities in granular ways. If you've ever wished a bullet heaven had the depth of Path of Exile's passive tree, this one gets closest.

What underrated Vampire Survivors-likes are worth playing?

Three overlooked survivors-likes deserve more attention: HoloCure (a free, incredibly polished fan game), Magic Survival (the Korean mobile game that arguably inspired Vampire Survivors itself), and Yet Another Zombie Survivors (a unique three-character squad game with party management). All three are buried under the wave of clones but stand out on their own merits.

The Vampire Survivors clone graveyard is enormous, and a few genuinely great games get buried in it because they don't market themselves loudly. These three deserve better.

HoloCure is the free Hololive fan game that is somehow one of the best bullet heavens ever made. Free, polished, dense with content, charming if you're into the vtuber thing and tolerable if you're not. The game doesn't actually require knowing anything about its source material. The fact that a fan project outshines half the paid market is genuinely embarrassing for the rest of the field. If you've been sleeping on it because of the framing, stop.

Magic Survival is worth knowing for historical reasons. It's a Korean mobile game that predates Vampire Survivors and arguably inspired it. The auto-attack, survive-and-upgrade loop existed there first, in a stripped-down mobile format, years before Poncle made the formula go nuclear. Playing it feels like archaeology. You can see the bones of what Vampire Survivors became, in a less polished but equally compulsive form.

Yet Another Zombie Survivors does the wild thing of turning the formula into a three-character squad game. You control one character at a time while the other two fight alongside you, each with their own builds and weapons. The party-management layer adds a strategy dimension the genre traditionally doesn't have, and the core conceit is strong enough to recommend on the bones alone.

What are the hardest games like Vampire Survivors?

For players who find Vampire Survivors too easy, the genre does scale up. Start with Vampire Survivors' own hidden Inverse and Hurry modes, then move to Halls of Torment for tighter combat, Death Must Die for pattern-reading, Soulstone Survivors' curse system, Brotato's high danger levels, or The Spell Brigade's friendly-fire co-op chaos.

Vampire Survivors is not a hard game once you understand it, and that's by design, it's a power fantasy with a gentle on-ramp. If the screen full of your own projectiles stopped being scary a while ago, the genre scales toward difficulty better than its reputation suggests.

Start with the game you already own. Vampire Survivors hides a much harder game inside its unlocks: Inverse mode flips stages into far more punishing versions, Hurry mode accelerates the clock, and Limit Break content pushes the late game into genuinely dangerous territory. A lot of players never reach any of it and assume the whole game is as gentle as the opening.

Beyond that, several games above double as the difficulty ladder.

Halls of Torment is the cleanest first step up: enemies hit harder, screen pressure ramps faster, and a sloppy build gets you killed in ways Vampire Survivors never would. Death Must Die turns the genre into a reaction game, where you're reading attack patterns and timing dodges like you would in Hades. Soulstone Survivors adds a curse system that lets you crank the difficulty well past your skill ceiling and dares you to find your limit. And Brotato's higher danger levels turn its approachable base game into a brutal optimization puzzle where a single weak build choice ends your run fast.

The Spell Brigade makes things harder in a completely different way: friendly fire. In four-player co-op, your elemental spells can hurt your teammates, so coordinating positioning so a fire mage and an ice mage don't delete each other becomes a genuine skill. It shipped 1.0 in April 2026 after selling over a million Early Access copies, and the friendly-fire design is exactly why it feels harder than its peers. For players who find solo survivors-likes too controllable, human chaos is the difficulty dial.

Which big-budget bullet heavens are worth playing?

The standout big-budget bullet heaven is Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, which layers a mining and resource-gathering mechanic on top of the survivors-like formula with higher production values than most indie entries. Vampire Survivors' own Castlevania and Contra DLCs also qualify, adding full new stages, characters, and weapon evolutions that feel nearly like a sequel.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is what happens when a beloved franchise pivots into bullet heaven with a real budget and existing lore. The mining mechanic adds a resource-gathering layer that no other game in the genre has, and the production values are noticeably higher than most indie entries. The dwarves remain charming even in top-down form. It costs more than the typical $5 bullet heaven, but the depth justifies it.

Vampire Survivors' own DLCs deserve mention here because people genuinely sleep on them. The Castlevania crossover isn't just a skin pack, it adds entire new stages, characters, and weapon evolutions pulled from Konami's catalog. The Contra crossover does the same. If you burned out on the base game two years ago, loading it back up with the DLCs installed is almost like playing a sequel.

What are the best mobile games like Vampire Survivors?

The best mobile survivors-likes are Survivor.io (free-to-play with solid touch controls) and Vampire Survivors itself (the full game, nothing stripped down or paywalled). Magic Survival is also available on mobile and predates the genre. The mobile bullet heaven scene has less competition than PC, so new entries stand out more easily.

If you want this genre in your pocket, the landscape is surprisingly solid.

Survivor.io is the biggest mobile entry and it works because the touch controls map perfectly to the one-joystick movement that bullet heavens need. It's free-to-play with the usual mobile monetization baggage, but the core gameplay loop is genuine.

Vampire Survivors itself is on mobile now, and it's the same game, nothing stripped down, nothing paywalled. If you haven't tried it on your phone, it's honestly a great fit for the format.

The mobile side of this genre is still wide open compared to PC. Search for "bullet heaven mobile" and you'll find way less competition than the desktop scene, which means new entries have more room to get noticed.

What we make at Choost

Choost Games is a small indie studio behind two games: Granny's Rampage, a bullet heaven where a minigun-armed grandmother fights through hell ($2.99 on itch and Steam, free on Google Play), and Granny's Gambit, a Victorian deckbuilder roguelike that is pay-what-you-want on itch. Both star the same unhinged nan.

We're a small indie studio. Our games: Granny's Rampage, a bullet heaven where grandma grabs a minigun and fights through hell, and Granny's Gambit, a Victorian deckbuilder roguelike starring a card-slinging nan with a chip on her shoulder. Granny's Rampage is $2.99 on itch (Windows) and free on Google Play (Android), and on Steam since June 22 (also $2.99). Granny's Gambit is pay-what-you-want on itch.

What makes a good survivors-like game?

A good survivors-like adds a mechanical hook that changes how you think about runs, not just a new coat of paint. Build variety matters more than anything else. The games worth playing are the ones where two items combine into something devastating and your brain starts running optimization calculations at 2 AM. If upgrades feel interchangeable and runs blur together, skip it.

After playing a lot of these, the pattern that separates the great ones from the forgettable ones is pretty clear. The good ones add a mechanical hook that changes how you think about runs: Brotato's shop system, Halls of Torment's dodge emphasis, 20 Minutes Till Dawn's aiming. The bad ones just reskin Vampire Survivors with a different theme and call it a day. If you're trying to spot a real one in the wild, that's the test: what did they actually change? If the answer is "graphics and waves," skip it. If the answer is something about the verb or the structure, give it a chance.

Build variety matters more than anything. The reason Vampire Survivors consumed your weekend wasn't the pixel art or the soundtrack. It was the moment you realized two items combine into something devastating and suddenly your brain is running optimization calculations at 2 AM. Every game on this list preserves that feeling. The ones that didn't make the cut are the ones where upgrades feel interchangeable and runs blur together.

The genre is still growing. Steam's Bullet Fest 2026 is happening this summer, and the community successfully pushed for an official "bullet heaven" tag on the platform. New games are coming out every month: from deckbuilder hybrids to 3D experiments to rhythm-game fusions. If you loved Vampire Survivors, there has never been a better time to explore what grew out of it.

The real question isn't whether there are games like Vampire Survivors. There are hundreds. The question is which ones respect your time enough to do something new with the formula. The ones above do.