Deep Rock Galactic's roguelite spin-off is delayed, but in the meantime it's getting another season of new stuff including a 'tomb-like' biome

"Let's just get the bad out of the way: we have to postpone the launch of [Deep Rock Galactic:] Rogue Core to early Q2 2026," said Ghost Ship Games director Mikkel Martin Pedersen in a briefing earlier this week. It was a rip-the-band-aid-off opening for a presentation that quickly moved on to what Ghost Ship's doing in the meantime: launching a new season for Deep Rock Galactic, its first since 2023, while it continues work on the roguelite spin-off for next year.

"At Ghost Ship Games we've realized we can't have our cake and eat it at the same time, and do everything ourselves," Pedersen said. That's why the studio is following the Dead Cells playbook, partnering with another developer nearby in Copenhagen to create season six, which will come to Deep Rock early next year.

The big draw for the new season is a spooky biome littered with the giant bones of ancient beasts, with a new enemy species to go with it. There are three types of Ossirans lurking in the Ossuary Depths, including a flying pest called the Scrab, the Pit Jaw, a "living bear trap" that can grab you if you walk over it, and the Bone Collector, which will pop up in other biomes.

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The Bone Collectors form the basis for the new season event: they'll flee when found, prompting you to chase them to their lairs full of valuable materials.

The Ossirans will also be your obstacle during new Heavy Extraction missions that see you cutting out chunks of easily breakable amber called resinite from the earth, then attaching them to lift pods to blast out of the cavern. "There are rumors that there's also something inside the resinite, but we don't know for sure what exactly is going on there," hinted Invisible Walls developer Andreas Bech.

Heavy Extraction will be playable in existing biomes as well, but seems particularly well-themed to the new season.

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Invisible Walls is working on the new season while Ghost Ship focuses on the next Deep Rock game, Rogue Core. At a glance it looks similar to Deep Rock, with the same art style and four player co-op.

"It started as us working on this as a potential expansion," said Pedersen. "We were trying to balance having Deep Rock Galactic intact, and it very quickly became a huge problem for us, to make a roguelike where we tear everything apart. So we have to remove it completely from Deep Rock Galactic to make Rogue Core work."

Weapons that reappear from the original game have been completely rebalanced, for example, while the class abilities (including new secondary skills) and progression systems are also different in the more combat-focused shooter. They completely reworked their damage system, adding support for new types of weapon upgrades and elemental damage.

Perhaps the biggest news is that Rogue Core will launch with a fifth class, something that's never come to Deep Rock Galactic since launch.

"It was one of the biggest features demanded for Deep Rock Galactic, [but] I don't really think the game would've been good at handling a fifth class," Pedersen said. "We have a very tight synergy between the four classes, and so we were really hesitant to add a fifth class. The really cool thing about Rogue Core is that the synergy is a bit more loose between classes, so we can do more than four. We have five, and looking into the future we'll probably be adding more classes as well."

Rogue Core needed a few more months to cook, but anyone who wants a chance at an early taste can sign up for the playtests on its Steam page. It'll launch into early access sometime in the first half of next year.