It’s official: Steam decrees ‘bullet heaven’ the name of the Vampire Survivors genre

Yes! Hahaha, yes. I’m in full-on sickos.jpg mode today with the announcement of 17 new tags being added to the Steam store, with the very first entry on the list canonizing the name for what has become one of the most popular PC game genres in recent years. That’s right: the genre birthed by Vampire Survivors is, according to Valve, officially Bullet Heaven.

“The opposite of Bullet Hell; Focus on upgrades while automatically attacking hordes of enemies,” describes Valve, in a completely uncontroversial move that will surely upset no one at all. Here’s the fancy new tag page on the store, if you’d like to browse through the top charts entries like Megabonk, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and Soulstone Survivors.

The attempt to put a definitive name on this style of minimal-input shooter has perhaps been trending towards bullet heaven for a while now; there have been multiple “Bullet Heaven Festivals” on Steam, with the most recent in December including a poll asking Valve for formal recognition of the term. I guess it worked. Either that, or someone at Valve read my 2024 article on bullet hell FPS Luna Abyss and found my aside about the bullet heaven convincing.

While bullet heaven may have been the trending favorite, it certainly wasn’t a shoo-in—you’ll note from just a couple of the popular games I named above that tossing “Survivor” or “Survivors” into a game’s name was extremely common shorthand for “yeah we made a game just like Vampire Survivors,” particularly in 2023 and 2024. Now that the trend has subsided at least a little bit I don’t know that we’ll see a wave of games with Heaven in the title, though that would be a funny outcome.

If there’s a definitive loser here, I think we can all agree that it’s PC Gamer’s Robin Valentine, who last year tried to determine the best name for the genre and threw his weight behind “survivor” rather than bullet heaven, rating them 4/5 and 1/5 respectively.

“The idea is that bullet heaven is the opposite of bullet hell—i.e. that you’re the one launching screen-filling bursts of projectiles, rather than dodging ones from enemies. Really though, the two genres have very little in common mechanically, and fans of one are not especially likely to be fans of the other,” Robin wrote when he argued against bullet heaven.

Perhaps a persuasive argument, based on logic. Unfortunately, based purely on how fun it is to say, which is what I actually care about, bullet heaven mops the floor with survivor. Sorry Robin! (Due to timezones, Mr. Valentine could not be reached for comment on this devastating loss at press time).

Alongside bullet heaven, Valve has christened several other trends, longstanding themes, and game types with 16 more store tags. Here’s the full list:

• Bullet Heaven – The opposite of Bullet Hell; Focus on upgrades while automatically attacking hordes of enemies
• Desktop Companion – Games that only use part of your screen and keep you company while you do other things
• Organizing – Tidy up, de-clutter, or unpack, carefully placing items in virtual spaces
• Cleaning – Satisfying removal of grime and dirt from stuff
• Decorating – Creative placement of furniture and other objects
• Wuxia – Historical fantasy adventure featuring martial arts, competing sects, and inner qi
• Xianxia – Fantasy adventure focused on cultivating supernatural powers and strength
• Falling Blocks – Arranging, rotating, and placing blocks from above
• Espionage – Spying or secretly securing valuable intel
• Samurai – Japanese warriors best known for katanas, loyalty, and self-discipline
• Zoo – Care for and display a park full of wild animals
• Wolves – Also known as Canis Lupus
• Capybaras – The largest and possibly most adorable rodent species
• Animals – Cute and furry, or large and terrifying and everything in between
• Cult – Small groups with extreme devotion to a person, thing, or belief
• Poker – Draw, bet, and bluff
• Language Learning – Learning and teaching new languages

It’s quite nice seeing wuxia get its due, and I’m also not surprised to see desktop companion, organizing, cleaning, and decorating—all now firmly established parts of the cozy game core—get their own tags.

A large number of tags have been removed from the store as well, “because they no longer serve a good purpose for establishing connections between games or describing unique and useful elements of content in the game.” Some tags Valve decided were “too subjective” like “well-written,” “cult classic” and “masterpiece,” (RIP to this list of more than 1,200 games described as masterpieces which included Sex with Stalin and Fat Dude Simulator) while others had too much overlap with other existing tags. “America” and “foreign” are both gone, as is “illuminati,” which I have to say is a classic illuminati move.

Here’s the full list of tags no longer on the store:

• 3D Vision
• Ambient
• America
• Blood
• Crowdfunded
• Cult Classic
• Documentary
• Drama
• Dungeons & Dragons
• Electronic
• Experience
• Feature Film
• Foreign
• GameMaker
• Games Workshop
• Illuminati
• Kickstarter
• LEGO
• Masterpiece
• Mature
• Movie
• Narration
• NSFW
• Roguevania
• RPGMaker
• Warhammer 40K
• Web Publishing
• Well-Written
• “Clicker” has been renamed into “Incremental” to capture the broader essence of games that focus on numbers going up.
• “Conversation” has been renamed to “Dialogue Heavy” for clarity
• We’ve made a few tags plural to match other tags: Dogs, Foxes, Vampires, Elves, Dwarves, and Assassins
• “Pool” was humorously applied to games with a swimming pool, so we’ve renamed this to “Billiards”, which is the overarching term for all games played with cue sticks anyway
• Merging “Jet” into “Flight”, as the term “Jet” was not unique enough.
• Merging “Unforgiving” into “Difficult” since these terms mostly overlap in usage and intent