Game Review: Grind Survivors (Xbox Series X)

Developed by Pushka Studios and published by Assemble Entertainment, Grind Survivors is a bullet hell/heaven game with simple gameplay and solid customisation depth. While its overall premise is familiar, it has got enough unique elements to stand out from the pack.

Players take on the role of a ‘survivor’, with one being available at the start and more classes unlocked later in the game, tasked with blasting your way through hordes of demons across a handful of Hellish maps. It’s as simple as that and mightily addictive, even if, for now, it comes in limited form.

If you’ve played a bullet hell/heaven style game before, you’ll be very familiar with the core setup of Grind Survivors. Played from the top down, and with automated fire (which can be turned off), players start off weak, dealing with low level enemies that are constantly rushing at you. As you mow them down, they drop XP, which in turn allows the player to level up and gain a number of new attacks, perks, boosts, etc. that will help you survive that little bit longer.

Survive an increasingly overwhelming onslaught, get to the end of a timed round and defeat the boss. Hell has been conquered, for now.

What makes Grind Survivors different is its RPG elements. This is where you can customise and improve your character’s abilities and take advantage of the game’s weapon system before you even start a round.

During runs, enemies will randomly drop weapons with different kinds of rarity, depending on the difficulty level. While these can’t be swapped out in-level, once back at the customisation screen, players can take advantage of something known as the forge. Spending in-game currency to fuse weapons like shotguns, SMGs, a tesla gun, and more together to make more powerful ones. Though once maxed out through reforging, there’s still plenty of ways to make your weapons even more effective.

Except this side of the customisation comes with more randomised aspects as you reroll to improve individual weapons stats and boosts. This means you really can push a weapon beyond its pre-determined limits, but it is luck based and there is a risk of losing upgrades instead.

This customisation, alongside the ability to spend points on permanent stat upgrades and equip high-powered runes, is what makes survival and progress possible. Yet, even then, the in-level upgrades are so important and how the player chooses to stack them can make all the difference. It is easily one of the more satisfying elements of the game as there is so much on offer and its left to the player to decide what works best For them. Do you focus on buffing your attacks, improving your damage, range, and reload stats, or you do go more defensive and focus on dodge, shields, and increased health? What about elemental effects like burn and freeze? Which also have stackable upgrades too.

There’s quite a lot on offer and finding the right combination can take a while, but once you do, you might find that you rarely deviate from it. Especially if it’s a winning combination.

Grind Survivors is not an easy game, and you’ll fail levels more often than you’ll beat them. A lot of that comes down to the fact that the progression system isn’t balanced well enough, and you’ll require a bit of luck as you level up and choose your boosts. Simply because some of them are literally game changing. It can be quite frustrating to see a run come to a premature end all because the game’s randomised perk selection refused to give you enough damage or speed boosts.

It is one of the more notable negative aspects of the game, but not to such an extent that ruins the experience. It’s way too much fun and far too satisfying for that.

What is harder to forgive is the lack of actual content. As of right now (March 2026) there are only three maps, a handful of different weapons, four classes, and very little variety with bosses. There is a sense that this can, and probably will be, expanded upon in the future, but for now it’s just a little bare bones.

I still think it’s good though and while it doesn’t quite hit the high that is the likes of Vampire Survivors, it has the potential to do so with more content and a few gameplay tweaks here and there.