Bermuda Survivor Review

I’ve found a lot of fun with some bullet heaven games in the past; Vampire Survivors never hit for me quite like it did for a large majority, but Halls of Torment scratched an itch I didn’t even realise I had. Bermuda Survivor is a new entry into the bullet heaven genre, and it’s one I thought would add a unique spin, but that wasn’t really the case…

You take the role of the Diver, a member of a ship’s crew, who unfortunately ends up lost within the Bermuda Triangle. It’s then your job to journey through the depths and find the missing crew, while surviving hordes of enemies.

The story is fine, but not all that engaging, and it’s only worsened by some of its writing and characters. The tone is a little all over the place, and it plays more into a silly and cartoonish atmosphere, rather than fully committing to a serious plotline. The worst of this is the Diver himself; he’s constantly talking, and during the primary gameplay, he’s often cracking Duke Nukem—esque jokes, which I didn’t find particularly funny or charming, and the inclusion of Chuck Norris and Deez Nuts jokes made the humour feel wildly outdated… It’s only worsened by the fact that there aren’t even that many, so within a single run, you’ll already hear repeated voicelines, and it gets incredibly grating.

While I wasn’t fond of that, though, there’s always a chance for it to be redeemed in other aspects, such as the core gameplay loop, which was the real draw here for me. Like typical bullet heaven games, you’re assaulted by hordes of simple enemies, and upon death, they drop EXP, which in turn levels up your character. Each time you level up, you’ll be given the option between a few skills and buffs, such as movement speed, damage, and other effects. You’ll also find upgrades around the map, which can include new weapons. Unfortunately, this falls pretty flat, too.

Enemies are unremarkable, and the power curve is heavily unbalanced in the player’s favour. Most of the time, you’ll find a combination of one or two abilities that completely demolish any sense of challenge, which only leads to you spiralling even further into an unbelievably broken build. This is inherently the draw to a lot of roguelikes, but normally this level of power comes from clever build-crafting options over the course of a run, not one or two abilities and a new weapon. Enemies don’t scale up at a pace that feels threatening, and the variety is lacking, so builds don’t need to be multi-faceted; if you’re doing a consistent amount of AOE damage, you’ll have no real difficulty.

The level design is one of the more interesting and unique features here; it’s a persistent world, so you’ll be making consistent progress on each run, which also allows you to learn the layout and get a leg-up on each of your 10-minute runs. I don’t dislike this as a system, but I do think it’s not conducive to the bullet heaven gameplay. As you make progress, the timer begins to become nothing more than a tedious roadblock rather than something that emphasises clever play. Once you beat the story, though, you unlock a proper endgame score-based survival mode, but unfortunately, the bullet heaven gameplay isn’t strong enough for this to really appeal.

Bermuda Survivor is, unfortunately, not particularly remarkable. It’s a bundle of unique and interesting ideas and twists on a very oversaturated genre, but none of the new ideas really land.