The Swarmer: Tale of a New Genre
Kicking off at the beginning of the year with the now infamous Vampire Survivors, this flourishing new genre is truly fascinating to me for a few reasons. First, it’s been quickly iterated upon and expanded exclusively by indie devs of either tiny teams or single devs; second, it’s become antithesis to AAA trends such as live service and loot box driven gaming; and third, I don’t think it’s actually possible for AAA to encroach on the genre as it is inherently “small”.
Games in this genre have consistently been quite cheap, they are both endlessly repayable but also “completable” in just a few hours - meaning you don’t need to feel obligated to play for over 100 hours to see all the #content, but you can keep playing if you enjoy it - and also having AAA budgets and pricing is probably not going to enhance this style of experience all that much.
For me, it’s the rising story of 2022 - a flourishing new genre where indie devs can experiment, make cool games, and find an audience.
Vampire Survivors
The granddaddy of the genre. Pretty much required reading to understand where every other game in this list came from. Also a damn good game in it’s own right! Set the bar high for all those to come.
Nomad Survival
One of the first out the gate to walk in Vampire Survivors’ shoes, there isn’t much different as such no display here - it’s simply “one of those”. That doesn’t mean it should be written off though - it does that same thing very well.
20 Minutes Until Dawn
Early access
While I’m a little disappointed Spiritlink Tactics got put on hold for this, it’s easy to see why. Another of the “early out the gate” Swarmers. Here we have a pretty cool art style, as well as the progenitor of the now quite popular mechanic come to be known as “aiming”.
Project Lazurus
Early access
Graphical fidelity gets a step up here, with a mech focused Swarmer. That’s not just aesthetics though - build your load out based on weapon slots, meaning you can house multiples of the same weapon as well as upgrade them each individually.
HoloCure
Free
An unofficial, free Swarmer based on a popular vtuber. This one has a dacha mechanic hook to unlock new and interesting characters (using in game currency only). Was so popular around launch it crashed the itch page.
Boneraiser Minions
Early access
Probably my favourite of the bunch I’ve played. Rather than build up abilities to fight for yourself, you raise an army of undead to fight in your stead. Excellent and (somewhat) cute pixel art. Cool progression systems and customisation ability. There’s even an entire card game within the game!
Her Name Was Fire
Great theming and colour palette, even if the readability kind of suffers at times because of it. Defeat the 5 stages of grief as they send their hordes at you.
古巫竞技场 Ancient Witch Arena
I like the art style of the games coming out of this indie Chinese development studio. The translation is bad, but the gameplay is fun!
Beautiful Mystic Survivors
Early access
There’s no way around it, the big innovation of this game is teddies. Great big huge teddies. I guess teddies is not in my dictionary and is auto correcting to teddies. Oh well, you get the idea. Other than teddies, this is probably the most vibrant and colourful Swarmers out there, with some cool animations tied in.
Tiny Rogues
Early access
More of a blend of traditional dungeon node based roguelike with Swarmer sensibilities built in. Quickly build up an iterate on a build as you power through bullet hell levels, tackle bosses and further your meta progression.
Rogue: Genesia
Early access, has demo
Roguelike stages and mechanics set the stage for this Swarmer, with each level containing a kill or time limit, elite enemies and more. Nails the push and pull of the power curve really well.
Soulstone Survivors
Early access
Higher fidelity graphics and polish are the selling points here, with the visual effects on screen absolutely going bonkers the further you get in.
Spellbook Demonslayers
Early access
Spellbook Demonslayers iterates on the genre with a splash of tower defence and a spell crafting system.