On Monday Valve announced that Bullet Heaven is now an official tag. I am so happy there is finally an official name for the Vampire-Survivor-Brotato-like genre. I have been checking in on the genre for years because it is fun to see how a once white-hot-genre ages years after the initial spark.

I have written about the genre annually since Vampire Survivor’s launch:

In today’s blog I talk to Marvin Wizard the solo developer (mostly programmer) behind Vital Shell. It is a top down 3D, PSX-N64 looking Brotato-like starring Mechs. Mr. Wizard developed the game part time while still holding a full time day job. 

The launch went very well and propelled the game into “Real Steam” within a few weeks. Vital Shell has earned over 1,500 “Overwhelmingly positive” reviews.

Also note, Vital Shell. Vampire Survivors. GET IT?

TL;DR Summary

Vital Shell shows that Bullet Heaven is still a viable genre for small teams who can deliver excellent quality, but it is no longer a quick-win-rapid-release genre.

The Vital Shell pre-launch marketing campaign was very slow. If you compare the game’s marketing performance to the benchmarks it rarely rose above Silver Tier. 

Then why did it take off at launch?

My theory is that people still enjoy playing Bullet Heavens but they don’t anticipate them. It’s not like they track and follow them. Even though Vital Shell has a good hook (PSX mech Bullet Heaven), people don’t care pre-release. So during the marketing runup nobody went crazy sharing the game, it didn’t go viral on reddit or social media, content creators aren’t fighting to play it pre launch. 

Then at launch, Vital Shell delivered. It didn’t try to reinvent the genre. It didn’t make that mistake of trying to be a Dating Sim + Horror + Vampire Survivor + Horse Game. Nope! Vital Shell is just a 20% improvement on the core formula that has proven to work with other games in the genre. It had a neat instantly-recognizable visual style. It didn’t stray too far from the Brotato branch of the Bullet Heaven family tree. It did what it set out to do. So people bought it and it spread by word of mouth.

If you want to understand how well crafted (but not overwhelmingly unique VS is check out this video from Wanderbots

“Okay, I actually really like this bullet heaven. Like I said, I don’t think it really does much to uh like really push the genre ahead, but it does exemplify it extremely well.”

Execution and style matter.

Make small games first

This is Marvin Wizard’s first real game. He didn’t quit his day job to make it. In fact, even though he has a game that is “real steam” and has sold very well, he still has no intention of quitting his day job. 

He is a smart dev.

“It’s my first game so I wanted to pick something I could time box to a year. Super simple survivors-like at that, it’s arena based like brotato. No procedural generation, no big maps, quests objectives, etc. It’s just an arena shooter in a box. I started fiddling w/ Godot at the very end of 2024 and committed to the project in January of 2025. So it was pretty much exactly a year long project. So truly just a matter of it being a simple form factor and the mech styling seemed like a great fit.

“

The basics

Development time: about 15 months (including learning Godot)
Steam coming soon page live before launch: 217 days

Announce

  • Steam Page Launch Wishlists earned: 240 🥈
  • Wishlist Resting Rate: ~9/Day 🥈

Demo launch: 

  • 2 months before Steam Next Fest
  • 4 months before release
  • Demo median play time: 22 minutes 🥈

Steam Next Fest

  • Participated in the last Steam Next Fest before launch.
  • Pre Steam Next Fest Wishlists: 4573 
  • Steam Next Fest Wishlists earned: 2187 🥈

Launch window

  • Days on Popular Upcoming: December 31st – January 7th (7 days)
  • Pre Popular Upcoming wishlists: 8367 
  • Pop Upcoming wishlists earned: 6652
  • Launch Day wishlists: 17,826  🥇
  • Launch Day: Jan 7th
  • Days on New & Trending: January 8th – January 18th (but it fell off the charts temporarily on 15th, 16th, and 17th.) A total of 8 unique days.

The campaign

In terms of everything up to launch I just followed your advice. Made some cool trailers, they eventually caught the eye of IGN and they reached out to me to post them on Game Trailers

Martin Wizard

Trailers

Demo launch trailer (+2264 wishlists)

CZ Note: Really like how much it leans into the retro vibes. Calling it a Demo Disk.

Official Launch Trailer

Social Media

Social media was a nice way to get the seed of a community going but definitely wasn’t a major driving force.

Marvin Wizard

Content Creators

Reaching out to streamers was really difficult. Barely got any responses, it was almost all organic in terms of the big folks. Many of them later reached out and said they had missed my initial email and key and they had bought the game to play.

Marvin Wizard

The Demo

Marvin Wizard launched the demo ~3 months after steam page launched

The median playtime was only 22 minutes. 

CZ Notes: That is good. But usually “Real Steam” games have 38+ minutes of median playtime

The game design of Bullet Heavens

When I play modern survivors-likes I tend to bounce off of them because there are so many meta currencies and things to grind, they feel like they are engineered to get me stuck for 200 hours. I tried to do the opposite and provide something that quickly gives you a lot to play with, and respects your time.

Brotato has the same form factor, it’s the game I started with as a system foundation. Although the upgrades and actual moment to moment gameplay is super different.

Marvin Wizard

90s deep dive

The vibes are the main hook of Vital Shell.

I spent my time playing old games or watching long-plays, watching movies from the 90s, and listening to music.

Marvin Wizard

Seriously, look at how good Mr. Wizard is at capturing and reproducing the vibes of the era. THIS is the level of commitment you need to succeed on Steam. You must be in command of your craft. You must know what you are making. 

Here is the Vital Shell capsule:

Yes it uses ALL CAPS BLOCK FONT. I always make fun of capsules that use that because it is usually a sign of a self-made capsule. 

But Vital Shell is allowed to do it because that is the secret symbol of PSX-era cover design. When Mr. Wizard was doing genre and style research he compiled a ton of PSX-style box art. Here is his original style guide. Marvel at how close Vital Shell nailed the vibe.

Music

Many of the reviewers call out Vital Shell’s awesome sound track. 

I was actually a fan of the music before I started game dev. Over the past few years there had been a resurgence of “Low poly Jungle” effectively recreating that sound from the early aughts.

Marvin Wizard

While preparing and desiging Vital Shell Mr Wizard would listen to “Low poly Jungle” on Youtube, Spotify, Bandcamp, Apple Music. Then he started reaching out to the musicians he liked asking them if he could use their tracks in his game. 

I made little trailers for each of the artists before reaching out, basically said hey I’m a nobody and got very little cash, but look how cool your song goes with my game. They all responded really positively and gave me a great deal on licensing.

Marvin Wizard

Crowded genre how differentiate

I think it’s a really saturated market and you gotta have really high fidelity and polish or some degree of pivot. To me a large portion of the genre looks and feels the same, and the highest fidelity version of it rises to the top. For a solo-dev that’s impractical to try and compete with. Similarly there’s a decent number of 2D sprite based games that look like reskinned brotato or vampire survivors and the players seem to detect that.

I was definitely worried about the market saturation, but I also felt like the idea I had wasn’t particularly explored, both mecha as a platform for this survivors-like progression. It naturally is something you can imagine stacking upgrades on. And then the visual style also was completely untouched, aside from maybe halls of torment, but that’s really harking to 90s PC/Diablo rather than console/PS1.

I figured the Venn diagrams of people who play survivors-likes, people who like mecha games, and people who like these retro/psx games would have a decent overlap.

My best guess is the game is fun and feels different enough that people seem to really enjoy it, and the visual style is enough to get them in the door.

Marvin Wizard

Marvin Wizard has style and taste. He really took a fine tooth comb looking at the genre and the thematic vibes of the era he was targeting.

Reviews

But why did this game do so well after launch despite a “silver tier” marketing campaign?

If you check the reviews, you can really see how people are like “This is just a good game.” “I know exactly what this is”

Here are actual reviews 

This game takes the now-rotting corpse of the Vampire-Survivor-like genre, cuts off all the unnecessary meat, and from the bones builds a mechatronic dinosaur that is tuned to perfection, all while jamming to jungle beats and smoking whatever the ♥♥♥♥ it was smoking when designing the enemies.

Steam review

I like this review detail. It is a cool idea Mr. Wizard had: 

Hot Tip: There’s an in-game strategy guide which is accessible AT ANY TIME. This includes the level-up menus and when slotting gems, so you can quickly check on weapon potencies and gem resonances combos without needing an exterior guide open. I would like more games to have a feature like this 🙂

Steam reviewer appreciating the in game guide

Bundling

The team at Vampire Survivors reached out to him to ask him if he wanted to bundle.

My impression is they keep an eye on the space and for some reason or another they liked Vital Shell. Perhaps the shared initials : )

Marvin Wizard

Of course he said yes and they are sitting on a bundle. Mr. Wizard isn’t sharing how much his game made from the bundle, but it is enough to buy a decent car. Not bad for a few menu clicks. Everyone should be bundling.

Chasing trends

If you’re sincerely interested in making a game, and have some kind of inspiration, you should channel that through a practical genre (if making games for money/as a full time gig is your goal) “

I think developers should think genre first. The giants that came before us have already “found the fun.

Marvin Wizard

This is where some developers get grump “THAT’S CHASING TRENDS.”

But players LOVE genre. They like the comfort of it. They like to know what to expect. Read through his reviews, everyone is like THIS IS GREAT! It is just like this thing I love”

But really, genre is just a clear vessel that you can pour your creative vision into and excite people. The vessel is clear which means people get to see YOU through the shape of a genre. This is where the “chasing trends” critics miss the point. You get to go crazy and weird WITHIN the genre. It is so creative how Mr. Wizard adapted the perfect late-90s PSX/N64 vibes into this game. He innovated! It is creative! Look at this brilliant way he displays the save menu:

The in-game manual is so cool and so perfect I want to punch the screen.

The use of serif fonts in the UI and the background grid are so cute I want to throw my already punched screen on the ground. He did it!

Chasing trends means you get to focus on cool stuff like vibes and story instead of trying to find the fun. It doesn’t mean you surrender your creativity. It actually gives you more time for creativity. 

So would I still recommend making a Bullet Heaven?

Yes! 

But only if you are a dev who has released previous games and know what you are doing.

Yes! But only if you are willing to stick close to the tropes of the genre and not go too crazy. I am looking at you crazy genre-mixer.

The Bullet Heaven genre is more competitive and so the quality bar is much higher. There are fans who are open to giving a VS-like a shot, but only if it has proven to be worth their time. 

To meet the minimum quality requirements it is probably going to take a year or so of development and you really have to understand good game design. VS-likes are not as hot as Idle games are now where the demand is so high you can throw out a decent idea with quick execution and have it work. 

To see if you are ready for a VS-like, look at the other hits in the genre that have launched in the past year. Are you capable of producing the quality level? Be honest.

If you haven’t made a game before and want to try getting a quick game out, I think there are better genres out there for beginners such as Idle, simple horror, gambling-with-extra-steps, friendslop.