Vampire Survivors and HoloCure fans should check out Spirit Hunters: Infinite Horde
It doesn’t happen very often these days, but occasionally we’re faced with an interesting quandary: exactly how to refer to what appears to be an emergent new genre in gaming. Or, at the very least, an emergent new subgenre in gaming. Because Spirit Hunters: Infinite Horde very much belongs to this new subgenre, which most people know as “games like Vampire Survivors and/or HoloCure“, and no-one seems to have quite agreed on a name for it yet.
That’s why I, Pete Davison, editor of the greatest website in the known universe (that is about obscure Japanese games, indie titles and retro guff) am hereby coining the phrase “arena survival” to describe these games. I am absolutely not going to call them “Vampire Survivors-alikes” because naming a genre after one or two individual games that didn’t necessarily invent the thing they’re doing is lame (looking at you, “Metroidvania”) and I also refuse to further overburden the poor, exhausted “roguelike/roguelite” genre with even further baggage, even if arena survival games do indeed have a lot in common with them.
Because these games unfold in an arena that extends in all directions, and all you have to do is survive the constantly incoming hordes of enemies, you see? Simple, effective, clear, and doesn’t require any knowledge of any other games for you to be able to clearly understand what it’s all about. So that’s what they’re called now. Arena survival.
Anyway, Spirit Hunters: Infinite Horde is an arena survival game that is, at the time of writing, in Early Access on Steam — aren’t they all? And, what’s more, it’s rather good. Not only that, but it offers a notably distinct experience from other titles in this emergent genre, making it eminently worth spending some time with even if you’ve already ploughed an embarrassing number of hours into at least one other game of this type. Which, statistically, a significant number of you reading this almost certainly have.
In Spirit Hunters: Infinite Horde, you begin by picking a character and a starting ability. Each character has a unique passive bonus and set of starting stats, so the characters are immediately distinct from one another in terms of their basic priorities.
The starting abilities are the same for all characters, but each character begins with a unique “starting synergy” based on the starting ability they choose. For example, the default male hunter character gains 10HP every time he levels up his starting ability, making him a good choice for beginners, while the default female sorceress character is more likely to spawn XP-yielding spirit gems with her starting ability, making her faster to level.
Initially, the available abilities might seem quite limited compared to other arena survival games out there, but there’s a reason for that: levelling in Spirit Hunters: Infinite Horde works a little differently. Rather than simply picking an ability to level up each time you fill the experience bar, you’re instead presented with three (or, later, four) options to choose from, each of which allows you to increase one characteristic of one weapon. Sometimes the randomly selected upgrades will each apply to different weapons, sometimes they’ll all be for the same one.
So for example, the Orbital Fire ability starts as a small fireball that constantly rotates around the player character. On levelling up, you may get the opportunity to increase its size, speed or damage potential — but only one of these things at a time. Alternatively, you may get the chance to start using the other available abilities to you — and, as your run progresses, upgrade these in the same way.
Another interesting aspect of Spirit Hunters: Infinite Horde’s mechanics is that it deliberately limits how many of these abilities you can use at once. Unlike other games, where an effective strategy is equipping as many different types of attack and defence items as possible, in Spirit Hunters: Infinite Horde you can only make use of up to four unique abilities per run. This means there’s a strong emphasis on picking abilities that complement one another — and/or your play style — rather than simply beefing up your character to become a near-invincible death machine.
On the one hand, this might feel quite constraining compared to other games of this type. In practice, though, it’s anything but — because the nature of the upgrade system means that you can make those four abilities immensely powerful over the course of a complete run, and it also minimises the risk of leaving yourself underpowered for difficult parts of the stage.
Talking of stages, they’re 15 minutes long in this one, and your progress through the time is indicated on screen at all times, with clear markers showing when sub-bosses and the stage’s major boss will show up. The difficulty on the default setting errs rather easier than other popular examples of the arena survival genre, but in exchange there are a lot more stages on offer — including “substages” of the game’s three main geographical regions — as well as up to four difficulty levels for each battlefield, with bonuses to your loot (as well as various passive drawbacks to deal with!) on the harder levels.
There are a few other changes from other popular games in the genre, too. Notably, you keep all the loot that you acquired in a particular run, and the final boss of a stage isn’t there to just wipe you out unceremoniously. Rather, they’re a final confrontation that is challenging but beatable, and your reward for succeeding is even more loot to add to your collection.
Look takes several forms. Coins are used within a single run to either “reroll” the upgrades on offer when you level up, or to purchase other types of loot and/or healing from shops that occasionally pop up on the battlefield. Runes are used to provide small upgrades to existing abilities and game mechanics, and crystals are used to unlock more significant features such as new abilities, characters and stages.
Runes and crystals are used on a “web” between runs, allowing you to pick and choose what you would like to upgrade or unlock. The web is shared between all characters rather than being a unique skill tree, but it provides a nice sense of “ownership” over your save file, as well as giving Spirit Hunters: Infinite Horde plenty of longevity.
Besides simply unlocking features, the web helps make existing abilities significantly stronger, which in turn gives you greater survivability on the harder stages — which in turn will give you more loot, which will let you unlock and upgrade more stuff… it’s a compelling loop for sure, and one which works extremely well for this genre.
Despite being in Early Access, Spirit Hunters: Infinite Horde is already a very complete-feeling game, with lots of stages to challenge, lots of abilities and characters to unlock and some solid (if distinctly Warcraft-inspired) presentation. It looks good, sounds good — the music is particularly great — and, most importantly, plays very well indeed.
My only real nitpicks right now would be that the “final boss” attack patterns aren’t very interesting — they mostly tend to take the “pause for a moment, then charge right at you” format — and some of the attacks could do with a weightier sense of impact to them, perhaps with some meatier sound effects. These are both things that could easily be tweaked during the Early Access process, though — and neither are game-breaking by any means.
So if you’re a fan of the emergent arena survival genre, then this one is most definitely well worth adding to your collection. Just don’t come complaining to us when you find your play time well into the triple digits… or more!
Spirit Hunters: Infinite Horde is available now for PC via Steam.
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