The effort to canonize a Steam tag for the world's 'survivorslikes' and 'bullet heavens' intensifies with a public poll and celebratory sale aiming to finally settle on a name for the misfit genre

Big Vlad Dracula himself, looking at camera with blue night sky and castle in background.

Of all the ideological struggles pervading our world today, none is more crucial than the effort to decide what we should actually call all the games like Vampire Survivors. This week, more than 450 developers are joining forces to solve that frustrating quandary of categorical nomenclature with a public survey aiming to finally settle on a Steam tag for the genre that's been variously referred to as bullet heaven games, survivorslikes, and—apologies—"auto-attacking wave-based survival games." Hopefully it's not the last one.

As I write this, the third Bullet Heaven Festival is running on Steam until December 11, offering discounts on all manner of games where you stand in the middle of the screen as everything around you is macerated by a blender of weaponized particle effects. In addition to discounts, the organizers of the third-party sale have also organized a public poll to help canonize a communally agreed-upon name for the genre that—until now—has been scattered across a smattering of tangentially-relevant Steam tags.