Every time I talk about bullet heaven games here, I always discuss a little about my favorite aspect of the genre: that sensation of rediscovering how much powerful you can be. It's not only because of the flashy particles, but the feeling of getting into a run without knowing what is your ability maximum is fantastic. My problem with some of the new titles that are coming out is exactly how they try to do this but fail, and it feels that the experience of playing them lacks this exciting spark.

But it's great to see a game trying to do something different with the formula, and that's the case of Cozy Space Survivors. Instead of a title full of secrets to discover, the developer Simonschreibt was more focused on creating a cozy and simple experience than a power creep machine. Your job is to survive for 10 minutes in a pocket universe full of robots that are trying to destroy your ship because of a bug, and help alien creatures with their own problems in the meantime.

Because of the simpler approach, Cozy Space Survivors' mechanics doesn't have a lot of the depth you may expect of the genre: less weapons and upgrades make all possible builds feel similar, there isn't a lot of variation on enemies or strategy and advanced players can finish the game in 2 hours easily. The great addition to me were the quests you can encounter in the map that adds small challenges to overcome and makes you look at the game with a different point of view. (More bullet heaven games should have little quests during a run like this!)

It's funny because, even though the game didn't give me that feeling of power scaling, I really enjoyed my time on Cozy Space Survivors, mainly because it didn't try to create that feeling in the first place. The idea here was just create a small and quirky sci-fi map that I can navigate and relax for a hour, and it delivered very well. Of course, I would have loved more synergies and secrets to find, but the snappy controls and the cute art style were enough for me. I like when genres are twisted to give different experiences, even if the final product ends up distancing from its inspirations.

Cozy Space Survivors isn't the next step of the genre, but it definitely can be your first step into the world of bullet heavens. Players that already know all the evolutions on Vampire Survivors can look into this game and speak badly about its shallow mechanics, but their idea of creating a autoshooter that can also be cozy and wholesome worked very well. If you always wanted to try a game like this and was intimidated to do, or just want to relax for a hour or two, you will have a good time here.