Bullet Heckin'

Burst Hero is a bite-sized Vampire Survivors-like game with similar-but-worse progression, balancing and gameplay than what you’d expect five years after the original’s release. However, for what Burst Hero lacks in polish, it more than makes up for with silliness and accessibility.

Have you ever wanted to decapitate a giant praying mantis with dozens of spinning Captain America shields? Or kill Satan with bees shot from a Gatling gun? Well, Burst Hero has you covered and then some. A pixel presentation with an oddly charming U.X., nothing about this game is overthought. There’s no real recognizable theme to be found here, as we battle through four levels of grasslands, graveyards, a castle and finally Hell. We’ve got undead skeletons, quad-copter rifle drones, mutant snails, possessed tea-cups who want to kill you… it seems like no enemy, gun, or ammunition idea was turned down for inclusion in Burst Hero. You can play as a knight, a cowboy, a witch, a ninja… there’s 19 ‘heroes’, 41 guns, 31 ammunition types and 76 modifiers to your runs, all unlockable via a superfluous Gacha machine that lets you cheat every 6 spins. Someone clearly had a vision for what this game should be, and they really nailed it. Whether that vision resonates with audiences seems completely ancillary.

Luckily, this game gets more right than wrong, and is a legitimately fun time. I don’t mean to sell Burst Hero short when I say it’s a testament to just how good the Vampire Survivors formula is. There’s a lot of missing polish here, but when the core loop of killing oozes, looting coins, getting chest drops and crafting an 8-minute rogue-like run that feeds into meta progression of unlockables works, it REALLY works. There’s a floor on how bad a game like this can be, and it avoids any truly annoying pitfalls by having vision and style.