Deep Rock Galactic just got a prop hunt minigame triggered by drinking transmutative beer

Deep Rock Galactic's doughty dwarf miners — (Image credit: Ghost Ship Games)

Beer has often made me feel like I've been twisted into some wretched new form, but it's never been anything a couple of Panadol and a bacon sandwich couldn't solve. I fear the dwarves of Deep Rock Galactic will soon need a more radical hangover cure than paracetamol and protein, however, as developer Ghost Ship Games has just introduced a brand new bevvy to its cooperative shooter that transforms them into new objects.

The Hidden Dwarf Double IPA was introduced as part of February's maintenance update. Frankly, this seems extremely irresponsible, as everyone knows you shouldn't operate heavy machinery while under the influence of alcohol. This hot new intoxicant direct from Hydengözik Brewery has the ability to turn the dwarves into various everyday items, setting the stage for a new prop hunt minigame players can partake in as they idle between missions aboard the Space Rig.

When it's not peddling transmutative beer that gets you so hoofed you turn into a chair, the maintenance update also finds time to do some actual maintenance. The most substantial change is to heavy armour, specifically that of the creatures living on the planet Hoxxes IV. Their armour now scales with a given mission's hazard level, meaning harder runs will provide tougher foes. On the plus side, the update also alters the 'armour breaking' modification so that weapons using it deal damage to their squishy soft bits too, making these weapons more effective in the field.

Elsewhere, the update orders a round of general bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements. With the former, players should no longer suffer from the aberrant terror of randomly teleporting Glyphid Dreadnoughts, and the update also fixes a bug that involved "doors on the Space Rig getting desynced between players", which sounds like the opening premise of a Star Trek episode.

Finally, Ghost Ship has made a few smaller additions to the game. This includes a 'Steam settings' button to the audio menu, while the studio's also chucked in a new monitor screen to the game's assignment board that counts down to the end of a current seasonal event. If nothing else, that should help you know when to get last orders in.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.