The bullet hell genre is a staple of arcade gaming and modern indie games. Bullet hell games generally task players with frantically avoiding swarms of bullets while attempting to defeat enemies and often bosses, usually giving the player some kind of movement ability like a dodge roll or dash to help them survive.

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The genre itself is generally considered a sub-genre of shoot-em-ups, but more modern games manage to apply the gameplay of bullet hell games to other structures, too, such as RPGs, boss-rush games, and - more often than not - rogue-lites.

Updated on April 20, 2024, by Harry Ted Sprinks: The bullet hell genre has always been popular among indie games and is especially prevalent in top-down shooters. Action rogue-lite games are becoming increasingly popular, with iconic games such as Risk of Rain warranting both a sequel and a remake of the original and an already anticipated sequel on its way for Supergiant's massively popular Hades. However, it could be argued that it's classic bullet hell games like Nuclear Throne and Enter The Gungeon that continue to inspire new bullet hell experiences years after their popularity peaked, influencing one of indie gaming's most widespread genres.

15 Returnal - A High-Budget, 3D Bullet Hell From A Third-Person Perspective

Steam User Rating: 81%

This third-person shooter takes bullet hell gameplay and combines it with 3D environments, giving players more options for movement. Returnal is a rogue-lite, using a time loop as its thematic reason for the game's structure.

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Returnal can be extremely intense, tasking players with jumping, dashing, and sprinting around to avoid the game's overwhelming number of bullets. The game features a variety of alien creatures, as well as difficult bosses to overcome. Throughout the title, players can explore to find tech that enables them to upgrade their abilities for future runs, and the game also features a strong narrative that helps to keep fans engaged.

14 Archvale - A Combination Of Top-Down Shooter And RPG Bullet Hell

Steam User Rating: 89%

• Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox
• Released: December 2, 2021
• Developers: Idoz & Phops
• Genres: RPG, Adventure

This beautiful pixel-art fantasy game combines an RPG structure with bullet hell combat across a campaign with a variety of environments, enemies, and weapons. The game also features dungeons for the player to explore and conquer, as well as a crafting system and various bosses.

Archvale also features local co-op and a hard mode for those who want to squeeze more play-time out of the game. Fans of Enter the Gungeon and other bullet hell games who are looking for a longer experience with exploration, crafting, and RPG progression are likely to enjoy Archvale tremendously.

13 Furi - An Intense Boss-Rush Bullet Hell

Steam User Rating: 91%

This twin-stick sword-fighting shooter is a 3D, fast-paced boss rush game that has players battling various unique bullet hell bosses one after the other, learning their patterns and mastering their various phases to beat them.

Furi has players dashing to avoid hundreds of bullets, switching between gunplay and swordplay, and doing all of it to the sound of an original electronic soundtrack. Each boss battle is also broken up by short scenes of dialogue that provide a vague narrative, offering some context to the game's fighting.

12 Rogue Star Rescue - A Niche Combination Of Tower Defense And Bullet Hell

Steam User Rating: 93%

• Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox
• Released: March 9, 2019
• Developer(s): Chute Apps
• Genre: Rogue-like

Rogue Star Rescue combines top-down shooter and bullet hell gameplay with tower defense elements, offering a truly unique experience. This blend of genres creates a uniquely strategic and engaging experience, though it can be slower-paced than other bullet hell games.

While Rogue Star Rescue does feature tower defense elements, it is first and foremost a top-down shooter, much in the vein of games such as Enter The Gungeon. Rogue Star Rescue tasks players with exploring levels, dodging bullets with their jet-pack, and fighting off a variety of enemies with a broad selection of guns.

11 Patch Quest - A Rogue-Lite Metroidvania

Steam User Rating: 95%

This unique mash-up of the rogue-lite and Metroidvania genres has players performing in a fun and simple mini-game to tame various fantastical beasts. Once tamed, these beasts can then be mounted by the player to access their unique powers.

In Patch Quest, players venture out into the wild, fighting and taming the world's quirky creatures while avoiding a plethora of bullets. What makes Patch Quest great, though, is that the way the player maneuvers around the game's bullet hell changes depending on what mount they're using, and there are a lot of mounts available. The game also features various bosses, as well as shortcuts to find and power-ups to unlock in true Metroidvania fashion.

10 Enter The Gungeon - An Expansive Top-Down Shooter With Massive Replay Value

Steam User Rating: 95%

This wildly successful bullet-hell is a top-down shooter rogue-lite published by Devolver Digital, featuring charming pixel art and a gun-themed take on classic fantasy dungeons. Enter the Gungeon gives players access to a massive roster of weaponry, a dodge roll, and limited-use "blanks" that allow them to clear bullets from the screen.

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Enter the Gungeon features a variety of unique floors, enemies, and bosses, as well as plenty of different playable characters that each have their own unique weapons and equipment. Each character also has a unique secret boss, making Enter the Gungeon one of the most replayable bullet hell games on the market.

9 Asterogues - A Pixel-Art Bullet Hell With A Unique Roster Of Characters

Steam User Rating: 96%

• Platform: PC
• Released: September 30, 2023
• Developer(s): pipotchi600
• Genre: Rogue-like

This cosmic-themed top-down shooter features challenging bullet hell gameplay and a broad selection of playable characters. It's this roster of characters that makes Asterogues unique, with each character having a distinct style.

Outside its playable characters and unique theme, Asterogues is a fairly standard action rogue-lite. However, even in its Early Access state, Asterogues displays a high level of polish and replay value, making it one of the more promising Early Access bullet hell games on Steam.

8 Undertale - A Bullet Hell RPG

Steam User Rating: 96%

This wildly popular indie RPG is more revered for its storytelling, NPCs, and player freedom than it is for its bullet-hell gameplay, but Undertale's combat is undeniably bullet-hell. Even though combat is far from Undertale's primary focus, its various encounters often make for challenging and rewarding experiences.

Undertale is notorious for its passive and aggressive playstyles in which players must decide to either kill their foes or talk them down, with the latter being much harder to do. This is because talking enemies down requires players to survive that enemy's unique bullet hell attacks. Unlike most bullet hell games, players can't fight back in Undertale and are instead forced to avoid bullets of all shapes and sizes in a cramped environment.

7 Nova Drift - A Minimalist Bullet Hell With Heaps Of Customization

Steam User Rating: 96%

This action rogue-lite remains visually pleasing despite its minimal art style and contains a hefty amount of depth and strategy with its variety of upgrades in the form of several mini-skill trees. Players acquire several skills throughout each run, all of which allow them to fine-tune and customize their spaceship.

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In Nova Drift, players are given an incredible amount of variety and customization with which to construct their build, and many of the upgrades are game-changing and immediately noticeable, allowing gamers to create builds that incentivize different playstyles. This, combined with the game's arcade nature, makes Nova Drift one of the best bullet hell games out there.

6 Tiny Rogues - A Top-Down Action Rogue-Lite With RPG Mechanics

Steam User Rating: 96%

This action rogue-lite takes the stats and weapon-scaling of RPGs like Dark Souls and combines it with bullet hell gameplay in a simple room-by-room structure that has players choosing which rewards they want to fight for, similar to games like Hades. Like many bullet hell games, Tiny Rogues features a dodge move, though this time, it's tied to a stamina system that players have to manage.

Tiny Rogues features a broad variety of enemies and bosses across multiple floors, several unique unlockable classes and trinkets, and a massive variety of weapons and other equipment that allows players to create unique builds every run.

5 Nuclear Throne - A Modern Classic Top-Down Shooter

Steam User Rating: 96%

Developed and published by Vlambeer, Nuclear Throne is a pixel-art rogue-like top-down shooter that takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting, putting players in control of one of many unlockable mutants with unique abilities.

The game's enemies and bosses provide a frantic, fast-paced bullet hell, with each of the various biomes providing its own set of unique enemies as the game gets progressively harder. Nuclear Throne is one of the biggest bullet hell rogue-likes to have been released, and its broad character roster and loop system offer a great level of replayability.

4 Windowkill - An Experimental Bullet Hell

Steam User Rating: 97%

• Platform: PC
• Released: February 22, 2024
• Developer: Torcado
• Genre: Twin-Stick Shooter

This truly unique twin-stick rogue-like shooter features fast-paced bullet-hell gameplay with a distinctive twist. Unlike the average bullet-hell game, Windowkill has players firing at the edges of their game window to push it around the screen, fighting against enemies and bosses with their own separate windows.

This experimental action game won't be for everyone, but it's Windowkill's unique, unapologetic twist that makes it one of the best bullet-hell games available on Steam. Furthermore, Windowkill features multiple playable characters, unlocks, and secrets that make it a replayable experience.

3 Minishoot' Adventures - A Bullet Hell Metroidvania

Steam User Rating: 97%

This beautiful top-down indie game features a distinctive, bright, and colorful 2D visual style that makes it a consistent joy to look at. Gameplay-wise, Minishoot' Adventures is a creative mash-up of Metroidvania and bullet-hell twin-stick shooter, two genres that the game combines rather successfully.

Despite its top-down, 2D visuals, Minishoot' Adventures offers players a variety of environments and biomes to explore, managing to make many of its locations memorable. Furthermore, Minishoot' Adventures features three difficulty modes and even accessibility features, such as auto-fire and aim-assist.

2 Voidigo - A Colorful Bullet Hell That Combines Ranged And Melee Combat

Steam User Rating: 97%

This beautifully animated pixel-art rogue-lite is full of charm and character, tasking players with hunting down and defeating a variety of wacky bosses using a plethora of melee and ranged weapons in a wonderfully colorful environment.

Voidigo gives players the traditional dodge to avoid the game's many bullets, but it also provides them with a "stomp" that allows gamers to stun enemies and turn the tide in their favor. What makes Voidigo stand out along with its uniquely brilliant visuals is its generosity with player loot, which values fun over balance.

1 Schism - A Niche, Quirky Indie Game

Steam User Rating: 100%

• Platform: PC
• Released: December 11, 2023
• Developer: Fami
• Genre: Action Rogue-like

This relatively challenging combination of rogue-lite and action-RPG mechanics features a unique, scratchy art style and a distinctive mechanical hook. Schism plays like a fairly standard old-school rogue-like dungeon-crawler but with action bullet-hell gameplay. It uses a deep RPG-inspired leveling and stat system and provides options for customizing the various guns to make itself stand out.

Schism also features a unique mechanic in which players can change their "frequency" to match the color of various enemy bullets, allowing them to avoid taking damage. The game also provides an automatic pause when players enter a room, allowing them to suss out the layout of the area before engaging any enemies.

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