Games like Vampire Survivors on iOS

Vampire Survivors is free on the App Store, from Poncle. It is the reference point for the whole genre on mobile, and it is worth playing before anything on this page.

The pressure is the thing that differs

In Vampire Survivors, the pressure is density. The screen fills, and the question is whether your build outgrows the crowd before the crowd closes. It is a race against the number of enemies.

In REELS the pressure is a toll. Each floor demands a number of souls before a timer runs out, and the toll climbs faster than you do. The crowd is not the threat, the arithmetic is. You can be winning every fight and still lose the floor.

What carries over

• Weapons fire on their own, so the play is in what you assemble.
• Builds snowball, and the good runs are the ones where two pickups turn out to multiply each other.
• Runs are short, one handed, and fine to play in a queue.

What does not

REELS has no endless screen clearing power fantasy. It is a descent with a clock, and the reels decide what your weapons fire at, so a bad draw is something you have to play around rather than out damage.