Hero Survival – Review

Vampire Survivors might have rocked your ghoulies in 2022, but it’s time to return to the single-stick shooter genre with Hero Survival, brought to us by fantastic indie publisher Sometimes You and developers PidgeonDev.

Hero Survival throws you into the shoes of Jake trapped in a field full of incoming monsters, with nothing more than a pistol to hold your own. Like Vampire Survivors the pistol will fire automatically so you’ll simply need to walk around evading enemies, it’s simple enough at first but as you progress the enemy hordes get larger, so you’ll need to pack a little more firepower.
Thankfully with every wave you complete and every level you progress you’ll get a choice of power-ups to help along the way. Firstly are weapons, you can equip a maximum of 4, and while your starter pistol is likely to be replaceed by SMG’s, Assault Rifles and MiniGuns, you’ll also find more powerful versions of each dependent on their colour.

There are two main ways to increase your damage output, by levelling up your hero or completing a wave.
Levelling up your hero by defeating enemies unlocks your skill path between Bomber, Gunslinger & Cryomancer, my personaly favourite was the Bomber for instant AOE damage to help thin the hordes, but the Crypomancer was also incredibly powerful once levelled up a little, especially with weapons with a high-rate of fire, vastly increasing the number of frozen enemies. The Gunslinger equally relied on a mix of weapons, but feels a little more dependent on weapon RNG.

Each wave you’ll be tasked with survivng a set amount of time and succeeding will reward you with a choice of items, such as weapons and relics, if you’re lucky you’ll quickly fill out your weapon slots with powerful guns, which will allow you the chance to pick up relics which might help increase speed, armour or another stat, but you’ll have to pay attention as some might give you a greater boost, but they’ll also have negative effects you’ll need to balance.

During each game enemies will occasionally drop gold coins, which can be used between games to purchase a new starting weapon or character, these prices ramp up quickly, so while you’ll unlock a new character and a few weapon options within an hour or two of playing, it’ll take far longer i you want to be starting off with an assault rifle or minigun.
Because of weapon classes, grey, green, red and purple, starting with a better grey weapon isn’t a massive boost, so the game continues to be more dependent on a good run and a little rng luck, making the roguelite nature of getting better starting weapons a little less impactful than many games.

When you’ve reached wave 10 of a level you’ll meet our friend the devil, unlike Vampire Survivors death, this guy isn’t impossible (without insane buffs) but he does serve as a boss character (even if only a very basic bullet sponge).
Continuing to avoid the smaller enemies and killing the devil on the first map “Green Zone” will unlock Graveyard which you’ll then neet to finish to access Snow Field and then onto the final map Hot Sands.
Each map uses the same enemies, but the further you progress the more enemies you’ll face and they’ll also have more health and deal more damage, your reward for tackling these tougher levels is a higher amount of coins and experience, but beyond that, there’s no real benefit to punishing yourself on one level if you’re already struggling on one before.

Levels are always a large square/rectangle and as enemies seem to spawn from the edges constatnly you’ll usually end up with a large group in the centre. This helps make those bombs, penetrating bullets and frozen enemy buffs even more effective, but you’ll still need to ensure you’ve got enough firepower to avoid getting trapped around the edges.

While very similar to Vampire Survivors, Hero Survival still feels quite unique, I certainly don’t think it’s as easy to play as Pncles famous single-stick action game, but it’s a slightly different sort of challenge.
Maybe I just miss my garlic, but on Hero Survival there’s no close-proximety weapons, and due to the rotation away from those large groups, there’s far less effective when enemies do get too close.
Thankfully you do have enough health to withstand a few bumps and scratches, but you will need to keep an eye on your health, as I had many occasions where I’d lost health and didnt even notice, thanks to some occasioanlly suspect collision detection.
Fortuantely you’ll occasionally get a health bonus pop up when levelling up, but this comes at the deficit of losing that chance to grab a better weapon or power, so you’ll want to avoid damage wherever possible.

One problem with this is the scenery, your character and enemies will dissapear behind trees, gravestones making it tough to judge exactly if you’ll escape damage, the weapons seem to overlay everything, so when trying to track yourself or an enemy behind a tree and your giant minigun still appears in front of the obstacle, it’s just a further distraction.

Graphically, as you’ll see Hero Survival follows its inspirator by being a little basic, you cant complain too much as the enemies are well defined and all look unique enough but as explained above its the scenery blocking the view and weapons being in the foreground which sometimes make life a liitle more difficult than it needs to be.

Audio fails to excel the presentation as well, while the backgorund music isn’t too bad the repetitive gun sound effects seem to drown out most other areas, which is likely to leave you turning the volume down a little which leaves the background music a little too much in the background to be remembered.

The saving light is the low $4.99 price tag, like Vampire Survivors it’s not going to cost much to test your survival and while repetition does start to set in before the end of your first evening, it’s the sort of game you can come back to for the odd hour without losing track of where you’re upto or what you need to do.

Overall Hero Survival isn’t trying to break any new ground, it’s just offering a slightly different perspective on the simple, single-stick arcade action that made Vampire Survivors so popular.
Hero Survival isn’t as deep, engrossing or well presented as Vampire Survivors so you might want to check that out first.
But if you’re a fan of Vampire Survivors, you’re likely to find Hero Survival a worthy alternative when you need a break from the garlic.

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