Games like Waves
If Waves is your kind of game, the closest matches are Waves 2: Notorious, SynthEscape and Demeter — picked from the ranked list below. Reviewers single out its bomb chaining rewards skill, hypnotic soundtrack enhances immersion and chill. Each pick is ranked by what players of this game also play, shared genres and tags, and review-mined similarity — not a generic popularity list.
Get personalized picks →About Waves: Waves is an Arcade Twin-Stick Shooter that's all about High Scores. Build your combo and drop bombs in pursuit of Leaderboard dominance over seven game-modes!
Players who liked Waves also play
Steam players who put hours into Waves also tend to own these titles — a signal called collaborative filtering. imho.run cross-references millions of library ownership patterns to surface games whose real audiences overlap, regardless of whether their genre tags match.
Waves 2: Notorious
WHY THIS
Shares a hypnotic mood with Waves.
Top pick for Waves fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Action with Waves.
Waves 2: Notorious is an arcade twin-stick shooter set in Cyberspace. Build Combos, earn Adrenaline and unleash powerful Burst attacks as you Dive into the Net and do battle against an AI that adapts to your weaknesses!
SynthEscape
WHY THIS
Second-strongest match for Waves fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Action with Waves.
A Synthwave-themed shoot 'em up (heavy on the vibes) where grazing enemy fire charges your bullet-slowing field and builds your score. Play through 5 levels in solo or co-op with leaderboard support. '80s vibes meet precision shmup gameplay. Graze Bullets. Bend Time. Break the Future.
ActionSteam ↗Demeter
WHY THIS
Third-strongest match for Waves fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Action and Indie with Waves.
An arcade twin stick shooter that tests reaction times and decision making. Designed for short sessions on the train with your Deck, or waiting for the next queue to pop, Demeter is all about action, skill and high scores.
PERFECT MATTER
WHY THIS
Ranked #5 for Waves fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Action and Indie with Waves.
Amass independently powerful upgrades that synergize into world shaking phenomena, and use them to lay waste to countless entities across a dying universe.
Pew-casso
WHY THIS
Ranked #6 for Waves fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Action and Indie with Waves.
Choose your loadout, choose your art brushes, and blast your way to a masterpiece! Pew-casso is a top-down action-roguelite shooter where you defeat enemies to level up and create a piece of art. The longer you last, the more complex your unique piece of art will become.
Destropolis
WHY THIS
Ranked #7 for Waves fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Action and Indie with Waves.
Destropolis is a top-down shooter game with a fully destructible environment, hundreds of enemies and nuclear explosions. Fight a countless swarm of enemies. Tear them to pieces with bullets, lasers and explosions. Destroy as many of them as you can before they overwhelm you...
Debris Infinity
WHY THIS
Ranked #8 for Waves fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Action and Indie with Waves.
Be elusive! Be intense! Be constant! Put your reflexes to the limit, manipulating time itself to make impossible maneuvers, using an advance scoring system to rank your performance!
Reviewers mention these as similar to Waves
Surfaced from review text: when other players write 'if you liked X, try Y', we catch the name and resolve it back to a Steam game.
Everyday Shooter
WHY THIS
Shares a hypnotic mood with Waves.
Reviewers of Waves cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Indie with Waves.
Everyday Shooter is an album of games exploring the expressive power of abstract shooters. Dissolute sounds of destruction are replaced with guitar riffs harmonizing over an all-guitar soundtrack, while modulating shapes celebrate the flowing beauty of geometry.
Waves 2: Notorious
WHY THIS
Shares a hypnotic mood with Waves.
Reviewers of Waves cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Action with Waves.
Waves 2: Notorious is an arcade twin-stick shooter set in Cyberspace. Build Combos, earn Adrenaline and unleash powerful Burst attacks as you Dive into the Net and do battle against an AI that adapts to your weaknesses!
Crimsonland
WHY THIS
Reviewers of Waves cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Action and Indie with Waves.
Thousands of aliens, giant spiders, mutant lizards, and more are on the attack - can you survive the onslaught? Crimsonland is a top-down shooter with a touch of RPG. Unlock over 30 weapons and over 50 perks from quirky to brutal. Complete the quest and show your skills in five survival modes.
Nex Machina
WHY THIS
Shares twin stick shooting and a hypnotic mood with Waves.
Reviewers of Waves cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Action and Indie with Waves.
Nex Machina is an intense arcade style twin-stick shooter from Housemarque. Taking hints from both Robotron and Smash TV, Nex Machina focuses on pure action, voxel destruction and competition in the distant, cablepunk themed future.
Tempest: Pirate Action RPG
WHY THIS
Shares an immersive mood with Waves.
Reviewers of Waves cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Action and Indie with Waves.
Tempest is a Pirate Open World Action RPG where you rove the seas across three continents filled with dozens of colonies and forts, hundreds of quests and countless ships to plunder. Customize your ship, trade, challenge fellow pirates and face mythical monsters such as the Kraken and Leviathan!
Vampire Survivors
WHY THIS
Shares an immersive mood with Waves.
Reviewers of Waves cross-mention this title as a similar play. Shares Action and Indie with Waves.
Mow down thousands of night creatures and survive until dawn! Vampire Survivors is a gothic horror casual game with rogue-lite elements, where your choices can allow you to quickly snowball against the hundreds of monsters that get thrown at you. Be the bullet hell!
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Frequently asked about Waves
- Is Waves verified for Steam Deck?
- Yes — Waves is Steam Deck Verified, meaning Valve has confirmed it runs well on the Deck with full controller, text legibility, and default configuration support.
- Is Waves free to play?
- Yes — Waves is a free-to-play title on Steam. You can install and play it without buying anything, though some games include optional in-app purchases.
- What games are most similar to Waves?
- Based on Steam play patterns and shared genres/tags, the games most often recommended alongside Waves are Waves 2: Notorious, SynthEscape, Demeter.
- Who developed Waves?
- Waves was developed by Squid In A Box Ltd.
imho.run ranks Steam game alternatives using a mix of collaborative filtering (ALS / iALS / EASE / LightGCN), content scoring over genres, categories, Steam tags, developers, and publishers, plus AI-extracted vibes mined from review text. The page above is generated in seed mode anchored on Waves.
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