9 Lives to Defend

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

.

Review:

(Note: Review code provided by the kind folks at Silesia Games)

9 Lives to Defend is an Arcade-style game with some light Roguelike and 2-Stick Shooter elements released in 2025 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This game puts players in the role of a housecat defending his home from vermin invaders while his owner is away.

The presentation here is okay, with silly, cartoony hand-drawn 2D visuals and a whimsical soundtrack that I actually couldn’t hear too well over the goofy sound effects and frequent meowing (both when your kitty gets hurt and during some of your own attacks). There’s nothing here that’s especially impressive but it all works well enough for this game’s cartoony style.

When it comes to the gameplay, this is very obviously inspired by “bullet heaven” games like Vampire Survivors, with your character automatically attacking as you’re increasingly surrounded by hordes of enemies. In addition to this, you have a dash move with a brief recharge, an ultimate move that charges up over time, and a food dish that refills every once in a while to heal you back up to your last full “life”. And as the title states, you only get nine of these lives.

It’s not a bad direction to go with the Vampire Survivors formula, but there are some pretty major problems here. From the start, your character is absurdly weak with a frustratingly slow firing rate, even in the easiest game mode. In between runs you can use “kibble” collected within the runs to upgrade your characters’ base stats, but this progression goes very slowly. And even after multiple upgrades, you’ll still find yourself frustrated with bullet sponge enemies, drops that disappear from the screen often far too quickly to be picked up, enemies that spawn right at your location at times apparently without warning, an arsenal of weapons that are cute in theory but uninteresting in execution, and a lack of a feeling of synergy in the upgrades you can pick up, which leads to the Roguelike elements here feeling weaker and less significant as a result.

On top of all of this is a problem I often see in this genre: some really nasty slowdown at times. And unlike many other games in the genre where this was largely a late-game issue, here I encountered slowdown shockingly early into my time playing this game.

In short, while 9 Lives to Defend has some of the core elements to Vampire Survivors’ “Bullet Heaven” formula, it messes up far too many parts of that formula. And with this game only being $1 less expensive than Vampire Survivors, it’s really hard to see a reason to recommend this game over its far superior inspiration, unless you absolutely want a kitty-themed Vampire Survivors-alike. And even then, I think you have better options, like Sweet Survivors. With all this being the case, it’s hard for me to give 9 Lives to Defend a recommendation.

tl;dr – 9 Lives to Defend is an Arcade-style game in the style of “bullet heaven” games like Vampire Survivors, with this game placing you in the role of a cat defending its household from invading vermin. While this game has all the core pieces to make for a decent entry in this genre, it has a laundry list of problems, including bullet sponge enemies, enemies that spawn right on top of you, a lack of synergy, and nasty slowdown issues. Given the abundance of better alternatives with a low price point (not least of which is Vampire Survivors itself), I can’t give this game a recommendation.

Grade: C-

.

This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2025 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Laziest Copycat

.

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}