Highlights

• Vampire Survivors has had a significant impact on the indie gaming world, with its simple mechanics and fun gameplay design.
• GunSuit Guardians and Atomicrops are two games in the same genre that offer unique elements like twin-stick shooting and farming simulation, respectively.
• The VS genre has seen the inclusion of interesting twists, such as voice acting and customizable decks of cards, in games like Death Must Die and Slime 3k.

Since its Early Access launch in December 2021, Vampire Survivors has made waves in the indie gaming world with its simple mechanics and just-one-more-run gameplay design that makes it easy to pick up and hard to put down. Best of all, it was shockingly cheap on launch, which belied the amount of enjoyment you’d actually get from it.

In its wake, a new genre has formed, defined by waves of enemies to fight and survive against, varied weapons, characters, and upgrades to experiment with, and an attractive price point. While lesser copycats just in it for a buck are inevitable, here are the best examples the genre has to offer and a few older titles that are surprisingly similar despite pre-dating Vampire Survivors.

Updated on February 9, 2024, by Christopher Padilla: More than a year after its initial launch, Vampire Survivors continues to inspire games in its genre. We've added some games to keep an eye on, since they add some interesting twists to the formula. Also, we've noted which entries have gotten some significant updates or even a 1.0 launch!

28 GunSuit Guardians

VS-Like Comfort Food With A Unique Aesthetic

If you enjoy Vampire Survivors and games like it, you’ve seen games like Gunsuit Guardians before. This is especially true if you like VS-likes that lean into twin-stick shooting like 20 Minutes Till Dawn, Brotato, or Holocure.

While it doesn’t break the mold, it’s still a solid entry into the genre with a Cosmonaut Galaga aesthetic that’s pretty unique. It’s cheaper than a cup of coffee and despite being in Early Access, it feels pretty complete already. GunSuit Guardians is pretty fun, and after that Early Access polish, it might just carve out its own niche in the genre.

27 Atomicrops

Lots Of enemies, Lots Of Farming

Atomicrops predates Vampire Survivors by a few years and while they’re not the same thing, they undoubtedly have some convergent evolution going on. It’s a roguelike top twin-stick shooter where increasingly difficult waves come at you. It’s more a bullet hell than a bullet heaven, though.

What makes Atomicrops unique, however, is pretty special. In all that bullet dodging and mowing down enemies, they managed to fit a while farming sim in there, a la Stardew Valley. Run your farm, sell the crops, and use the Cashews you earn to improve your firepower, all while trying not to die in the process. Maybe even romance a mutant (or two) in the process? If you end up as fertilizer, do it again!

26 Kill The Crows

I Count Six Shots...

Have you ever wanted to play Vampire Survivors, but it was punishingly difficult and had a Weird West Motif? Kill The Crows is a VS-like for those who favor skill over strategy. Increasingly difficult waves of enemies are out for your blood, but there’s a major twist to the formula: everything dies in one clean hit.

By default, you get to shoot six times before you have to reload, so make every shot count. Every missed shot, every unnecessary dodge, and every time you have to reload is another opportunity for you to catch a bullet. Luckily, you can even out the score with your Crow Eye, an ability reminiscent of Cole Cassidy’s Deadeye that stops time and can take out multiple enemies at once.

25 Death Must Die

Characters? Voice Acting? In My VS-Like?

Hordes of enemies, random upgrades and power-ups, and roguelite progression — we’ve been on this ride before. Even the gear-based progression and Diablo-esque graphical style have been covered by Halls of Torment. However, this game does add something new, namely a pantheon of attractive gods giving you their boons similar to Hades, with voice acting, even!

And while it doesn’t hit such lofty heights as the modern classic that might have inspired it, where it lands still sets it apart from other VS-likes, who rarely give so much as an afterthought to plot and characterization.

Death Must Die is in Early Access, so we haven’t even seen its final form, which might just be magical.

24 Slime 3k: Rise Against Despot

Plenty Of Slime To Carry Plenty Of Firepower

Seemingly bog-standard at first blush, Slime 3k does some interesting things that we haven’t really seen in the genre before. An offshoot of the Despot series of games, Rise Against Despot retains the dark humor and pixel art stylings of the other titles, but this time, as a VS-like.

The most unique thing about the game is the ability to curate your upgrades through a customizable deck of cards before a match even starts, allowing you to make synergistic builds to more efficiently mow down the hordes of puny humans and other creatures coming for you. Part VS, part deckbuilder, and part auto chess: if this heady mix is up your alley, then you can give its Early Access release a try on Steam.

23 Time Wasters

Bullet Heaven In The Heavens

Vampire Survivors, but in SPAAAAACE! Time Wasters takes the familiar formula and takes it into the stars. Though fans of VS will feel right at home here, the game throws in enough wrinkles to keep it interesting. Chief among them are the Captains, the characters you play. Not only do they start with a set weapon, but they unlock a special functionality in their signature weapon as well.

Captains also have their own unique upgrades, which goes nicely with the fact that you can take on multiple captains in a run for your own customized crew. The map also features buildings that give you all sorts of powers, but which will occasionally come under siege, being removed from the run if you don’t save them.

22 An Ankou

You Want Those Upgrades? Get Crafting!

To borrow a cliche, An Ankou is basically the Dark Souls of VS-likes. This game takes the scaling and roguelike nature of Survivors-type games but puts it in an ARPG/survival/crafting game that takes a familiar formula and twists it into a completely different experience.

Upgrades are not just given to you in An Ankou, you have to craft them yourself or make an offering at a shrine (using a random material). You collect materials from the field at the relevant nodes (iron from deposits, wood from trees, etc.) and craft them into weapons and armor, hopefully keeping at pace with the game’s scaling.

You only get a small tutorial to get you started, and you’re left to figure out the rest for yourself. If you’ve ever felt like taking the VS genre from something meditative to an experience with teeth, then you can find this game on Steam Early access at a modest price.

21 Deep Rock Galactic Survivor

Rock And Stone! Better Start Digging...

The folks who brought you Deep Rock Galactic have thrown their pickaxe into the VS arena with Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, marrying the gameplay of VS with the rock-and-stone of DRG. This isn’t just an aesthetic choice either; Ghost Ship games added resource gathering and mining as important mechanics.

In practice, this leads to a more claustrophobic experience since maps are full of choke points and corridors, but with your trusty pickaxe, you can dig through the stone and make enemies' paths toward you. Like in DRG, you can mine up Gold and Nitra for between-map upgrades, and the weaponry leads to new and exciting ways to splatter the bugs of Hoxxes IV. The game already has a feature-rich demo on Steam, with a planned release date sometime in 2024.

20 Disfigure

Don't Let The Tentacle Bugs Bite

This is a strange little game that brings some intriguing mechanics to the table. As far as VS-likes go, this one is closer to 20 Minutes Till Dawn than Vampire Survivors in both mood and gameplay. However, its core mechanic of light and darkness is all its own.

In addition to the usual swarm of enemies, you’ll also have to face the darkness. There are two vision modes: circle, which illuminates a small area around your character, and cone, which illuminates much farther but only in one direction. To make things even more interesting, upgrades often interact with the light and darkness as well.

The game is feature-light, but there’s still plenty of gameplay and experimentation to be done, and it’s as cheap as free.

19 Swarm Grinder

Taking The Bug War To The Bugs

If you love VS but wish that the game were much more claustrophobic, then Swarm Grinder is for you. The gameplay is familiar but with a major twist: you are surrounded by walls that you can break down, but this will also free the titular Swarm. This effectively means that you control the pace at which enemies come at you (to a degree).

You’re constantly running out of fuel, which eats into your health if you can’t top up. Enemies drop fuel, so you’ll need to mow them down if you want to stay alive. Progression is tied to Mining Stations that you establish across the map instead of killing enemies, further incentivizing you to keep on moving. This loop of feast and famine, risk and reward makes for some interesting runs.

18 Yet Another Zombie Survivors

Trade In Magic And Artifacts For Modern Fire Power

Basically, VS with modern weaponry instead of spells and sorcery. However, Yet Another Zombie Survivors’ change of flavor makes all the difference. Everyone loves mowing down zombies, after all. Currently in early access, the game is feature-light, but there’s enough to it that it’s still quite fun.

Plus, it’s not exactly a reskin since it adds a new mechanic to the genre: the ability to form squads. During a run, you can add other characters to your party, for a max total of a three-man squad.

17 Boneraiser Minions

Be The Bad Guy You Were Born To Be

In Boneraiser Minions, instead of avoiding the horde, you are the horde… while you also avoid a horde of pesky humans. This game casts you as a Boneraiser, a necromantic lord who summons animated skeletons and other unholy minions to fight off your enemies.

In theory, this would seem like a huge paradigm shift. But in practice, you’re still dodging swarms of enemies while collecting resources – bones to construct your armies with instead of gems. However, it’s still different enough to be fun in its own way. Plus, everything is done in an 8-bit art style, calling to mind classics like Ghosts ‘n Goblins for the NES, giving it all a retro charm.

16 RICE

The Game Doesn't Like You, But It's Still Fun

Just going by the name, you can tell that RICE is something else. The name is an acronym, standing for Repetitive Indie Combat Experience, and it’s an important hint for what sets this game apart from other VS-likes, namely, that it seems to dislike and actively lambasts the genre as a whole.

You’ll also quickly find that the game doesn’t like you, the player, either. From a story that casts you as a galactic-level mass murderer to unhelpful item descriptions and tooltips that are condescending or even directly insulting, RICE drips with disdain.

This doesn’t actually stop the game from being fun. Aside from the gameplay you’re used to, it also adds some interesting wrinkles to the genre, like the weapon upgrade system that has you collecting three of the same weapon type to get a more powerful version of that weapon. Or a meta-upgrade system oddly reminiscent of Resident Evil 4’s attaché case.

15 Crafty Survivors

Finally, You Can Crochet Your Enemies To Death

If you love the gameplay of 20 Minutes Till Dawn but wish it was centered around crafts or had stronger character identities, then Crafty Survivors is the game for you. It has endless waves of enemies that you crave to obliterate, but every character also represents a craft.

There’s a chef who prepares foes for a screen-clearing feast, a seamstress-ninja, a sculptor whose statues devastate the battlefield, and more on the way. The game is in Early Access, but is already pretty fun. It has since added some new characters like a Lumberjack, Farmer, and Alchemist, as well as a handful of new systems to play with.

14 Tiny Rogues

Roguelike Bullet Dodging, A Love-Letter To The 16-Bit Era

Stylistically, Tiny Rogues is fairly similar to VS, sporting a crisp 16-bit look out of the SNES era as opposed to the 32-bit Symphony of the Night thing Vampire Survivors has going. Though their core gameplay loop is different, they have enough similarities that if you enjoy one, you’re likely to enjoy the other.

You still dodge bullets and clear waves of enemies and come up with gonzo builds made from random drops, but Tiny Rogues has you clearing rooms and beating ten classically themed worlds. Win or lose, you take Souls, the game's meta-currency, back to the beginning, which you can use to unlock new characters, buffs, and items you can take into your next run.

13 Brotato

A VS-Like Operating In More... Intimate Ranges

Brotato is a twin-stick shooter in the same vein as 20 Minutes Till Dawn but trades in the infinitely scrolling levels for a claustrophobic arena that leaves you just enough room for some thrilling battles.

Also, unlike others in the VS-like genre, the game can be enjoyed in short bursts. Full runs are comparable in length to others in the genre, but the game is broken up into short rounds that allow you to pick up and put down the game pretty much at will without losing any progress.

Visually, the game is a throwback to the flash games of the mid-'00s, calling to mind Newgrounds classics like Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers. In-run progression is pretty interesting: each piece of equipment is tagged as a part of a set, with each set giving a unique buff that gets more powerful as you get more of it, a la battle chess games like TFT.

The game also has accessibility features that includes a customizable difficulty, which is a nice concession to the more casual crowd.

12 Just King

A Gameplay Melange In A Cute Package

A charming little game that combines the VS genre with elements from battle chess games and just a hint of tower defense, Just King is an interesting blend of gameplay tropes that has the potential to be something special.

The game got a 1.0 release in December 2024 after an Early Access period. It has a demo on Steam if you want to try before you buy.

11 Rogue: Genesia

If Final Fantasy Had No Story And Just Kept Throwing Enemies At You

Visually, Rogue: Genesia is the closest to VS’ art style, with similar 16-bit console-era pixel art. But, where VS is clearly inspired by the Castlevania series, this game brings to mind classic sprite art Final Fantasy.

The gameplay is similar to VS, but the game leans more into the roguelite style. Similar to games like Slay the Spire, you traverse an overworld map. At the combat nodes, fights play out like you’d expect from a VS-like, with the stage ending when you reach a goal, usually outlasting the clock, killing a set amount of enemies, or killing elites or bosses.

10 Spellbook Demonslayers

A Surprisingly Standout Soundtrack

Of all the VS-likes that are out right now, this one offers the most bangin’ soundtrack to back the action. It’s full of rocking tracks that bring to mind the infectious instrumentals of the Sonic Adventure 2 OST. Visually, it’s nothing to write home about, but the pixel art animesque aesthetic is easy enough on the eyes. But on the whole, its setting of a cosmic library under siege by demons doesn’t really shine through.

The gameplay isn’t revolutionary, playing like a middle ground between VS and 20 Minutes ‘till Dawn, but it has some interesting tweaks to the formula that make it pretty fun. Aside from a robust meta-progression system, the game adds Shrines– basically a capture-the-flag objective for buffs that provides tactical options and the ability to evolve passive abilities (Auras), a concept that other VS-likes should ‘borrow’ in the future.

9 Soulstone Survivors

Look At Those Particle Effects Fly!

Perhaps the most gonzo VS-like, Soulstone Survivors distinguishes itself from most other titles with its 3D art style and almost gratuitous levels of physics modeling and particle effects on display. When a run gets going, the combination of the hordes of enemies that ragdoll upon defeat, destroyable stage props, and spectacular ability animations can be kind of wild.

Sometimes, this works against the game since it can devolve into a lot of visual noise and sometimes hide objectives. Still, if you can keep track of the action, there are plenty of things to collect and unlock, meaning there’s always another reason to dive back into the fray.