Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor

After spending more than a year and a half in Early Access, and achieving a higher Steam CCU peak than Deep Rock Galactic, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor has now left Early Access behind. It's also one of the best games in the genre.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a spin-off featuring the eponymous space-mining dwarves. However, it is only available for single players, and it is unfortunately not possible to enjoy the game cooperatively, which would make it more similar to the original.

Taking inspiration from the reverse bullet hell game Vampire Survivors, which spawned titles such as Death Must Die, Brotato, and Halls of Torment, this game sees the player controlling a dwarf who must drill through several stages, collecting resources and fending off hordes of enemies. The character shoots independently, so players only need to choose a route, mine resources, select upgrades and deal with the onslaught of enemies. The dwarves correspond to the four classes from Deep Rock Galactic, and they can dig their way through rock on Planet Hoxxes to escape or evade enemies briefly while completing small mission objectives and fighting big bosses.

The game's standout feature is mining, setting it apart from competitors in other genres. Players can skilfully avoid and channel their opponents in the underground caves, but opponents can also dig through the rock. The environments also feature jump pads, lava, falling crystals and more. As in Deep Rock Galactic, each mission uses procedural cave generation and enemy waves.

The dwarf will die quickly in the first few rounds, but the more resources he collects, the stronger his arsenal, perks and stats become - and later he can take on hundreds of enemies at once. As with other games in this genre, upgrading weapons during missions can be highly motivating and sometimes results in absurdly powerful killing machines - or, rather, dwarves - if players are lucky enough to obtain the right perks. During the runs, players can also collect various types of currency and minerals to unlock permanent enhancements (metaprogression). There are also region/cave and weapon championships that allow players to gradually and specifically improve the basic performance of the dwarves. Overall, this is a successful and motivating gameplay loop that could benefit from a little more variety in the events.

The journey of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor to version 1.0 has seen the introduction of mutators, anomalies, and weekly dives that push the dwarves to their limits. However, the developers have introduced new features for the 1.0 update. As well as expanding the Achievements to 300, gear has been introduced. This gives players even more ways to customise their gameplay, with six different types of gear available. Equipping items such as armour boosts defensive stats, while gadgets help players to collect precious materials and experience. This allows for a greater level of customisation, which is motivating. A new addition is the main mission Escort Duty, which sits alongside the standard missions in which players must defeat boss enemies. In this new mission type, players must escort BOb-33 the Drilldozer to the extremely rare Ommoran Heartstone mineral, changing the usual gameplay.

"After a year of Early Access updates, we're beyond excited to finally bring the 1.0 release to PC and Xbox players. We've moulded Survivor alongside our player community every step of the way, and Early Access has been instrumental to understanding what our players want and what our game needs. We believe that Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor has found its form with 1.0 which sets the stage for even more on the horizon." - Funday Games producer, Jacob Laurits Besenbacher Kjeldsen

Although Ghost Ship is only the publisher of this game and not the developer, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor can draw on all the assets of Deep Rock Galactic. Everything is familiar to DRG players: dwarves, classes, voice acting, music, enemy designs, biomes, weapons and resources. Thanks to the genre leap, new players are likely to become aware of the original co-op title.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is the work of Funday Games, an independent video game development studio. Founded in 2011 and based in Aarhus, Denmark, Funday Games has grown to comprise over 40 developers. The publisher is Ghost Ship Games, a Danish game development studio founded in spring 2016. Their motto is simple: Co-op First. In 2021, Ghost Ship was acquired by the Swedish video game holding company Embracer Group. In February 2023, Ghost Ship announced the launch of its Ghost Ship Publishing branch. In addition to Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Ghost Ship Games is looking to build on the success of Deep Rock Galactic with another game in the series: Rogue Core. The roguelite spin-off is expected to enter Early Access in late 2025 if all goes to plan. Both Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor are being published by Ghost Ship Publishing, whereas Deep Rock Galactic was previously published by Coffee Stain Publishing. Ghost Ship Publishing will also publish Bitfire Games' tactical top-down co-op shooter DarkSwarm, Chop Chop Games' roguelike autobattler FLASK, and Northplay's real-time strategy game Dinolords. The latter has attracted particular attention thanks to its medieval city building, action-packed battles and dinosaurs.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor has left Early Access on PC (Steam) and Xbox Series X|S, priced at €12.99. It is also included in Game Pass.