Hello everyone!

So, I just wanted to talk about something that's been on my mind a bit for these past few years after the advent of the explosion of lots of games that are designed to be imitations of "Vampire Survivors". Vampire Survivors is a great game and did a good job of re-popularizing the genre it represents, but it is far from being one of the originals of the genre.

The earliest game I can recall playing that feels like a "Survivors-like" is actually Crimsonland by Reflexive Entertainment, which released all the way back in 2003 and even then was still more technically impressive (e.g. more polished particle effects) than Vampire Survivors!

It had the same kind of ability selection system as these "Survivors-like" games have where you see 3 to 4 cards each time you level up to pick one from. The most substantive difference is Crimsonland requires you to aim, whereas many/most "Surivors-likes" turn aiming mostly into an idle/passive element in most respects for most abilities. Still though, 90% to 95% of the genre's traits go way back to much earlier games like Crimsonland.

I'm not sure what the actual original game(s) in the genre were, but in my own mind it was/is Crimsonland that popularized it and not Vampire Survivors.

Thus, I personally like to refer to such games as being "Crimsonlikes" instead of as "Survivorslikes".

There's also the term "arena shooters" but I feel like that term is broader and can refer to games that feel too different really.

Anyway, I just wanted to share these thoughts and this piece of history for those not aware of the full scope of the genre and how far back it actually goes (at least to 2003 and probably earlier). That should broaden the range of what games like that you are aware of if you want to try more and it also gives a bit more credit to prior games in the genre, too much of which is ascribed just to recent games like Vampire Survivors.

PS: There are also games that take the Crimsonland like formula and make it less simplistic instead of more simplistic, moving in the opposite direction of the increased simplicity of games like Vampire Survivors. Neon Chrome is one of my favorite examples of that opposite trend, and it essentially plays/feels like a hybrid of Crimsonland and a Roguelike (like Crimsonland in a militarized randomly generated office building essentially). Those kinds of games are fun to explore too (roguelike top-down shooters essentially).