Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor review

It was easy to think when Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor was first announced that it was a cynical project. A spin-off of a popular game from a different developer, jumping on a new genre bandwagon, and seemingly built mostly with reused assets.

But over the last few years I've played a lot of different Vampire Survivors imitators, and all the way through DRG:S's run in early access, I think it's been the king of the pack. It's creative, it's charming, and it genuinely bridges the gap between two wildly different games.

For anyone who's been following that early access journey, the 1.0 release won't come as any startling reinvention. But it's a really confident fleshing out of the structure and features around that excellent core gameplay loop, and the result is that a roguelike I already lost nearly 100 hours to before this final update has its claws firmly in me all over again.

The core action of DRG:S is deceptively simple, and familiar for Vampire Survivors fans. Your dwarf miner is dropped onto an alien asteroid (alone—unlike original DRG, there's no co-op) and tasked with mining for resources and surviving against escalating hordes of bugs. Your weapons fire automatically, and as you level up you're able to add new guns (up to four) and fine tune them with stat upgrades and overclocks—modifiers that more dramatically change how a weapon functions.

DRG:S's special sauce is its environments. Each stage is its own randomly generated cavern, and your dwarf's pickaxe allows them to burrow through the rock walls, creating their own tunnels and arenas. This is where combat gets tactical, because most bugs don't have that ability. As the swarms chase you, you're able to shape the landscape around you against them, escaping down tunnels, creating bottlenecks, or leading them in circles around pillars.

Different biomes add further wrinkles—from lava flows to skirt around or lead bugs through, to bouncy mushrooms that allow you to leap right over swarms, to thorny vines that regrow after you mine through them.

It all contributes to the game's wonderfully inventive feel. Whether you're luring an elite alien into being crushed by a falling supply pod, or dancing towards and away from a horde to trick explosive bugs into blowing up prematurely, it always feels like there's ways to get one up on the enemy.

And you need to, because the pressure is always on. Bugs swarm relentlessly, and though weapons upgrades do feel impactful, you never become the kind of screen-clearing god you do in many survivor-likes. Often, the genre rewards careful build-crafting with a finale where you don't need to do anything at all other than stand there and watch the fireworks. In DRG:S, things only get more and more frantic, demanding faster decision-making and increasingly risky tactics as you dodge around the horde to grab valuable resources.

Elite enemies—from ranged acid spitters to relentless juggernauts—demand a different approach to defeat, and the climactic dreadnought boss fights have all the drama of a proper action-RPG battle.

Drill ride

The 1.0 release spices things up further with a whole new mission type—Escort Duty—which sees you accompanying a huge mobile drill across the map. It's a fantastic twist on the formula. The more narrow passages and the need to stick close to your charge creates tense, claustrophobic battles without the luxury of simply fleeing to a different area when things get tough. At the same time, following behind the drill as it plows through rock and enemies with equal ease is a lovely little power trip.

A second core mission type is exactly the shot of added variety the game needed to feel complete. Add to that all the modes introduced during early access such as daily runs, mastery challenges, anomaly dives with weird new modifiers, all playable with 12 different classes, and DRG:S really squeezes every single drop of fun that can be had out of its simple premise.

Wrapped around that offering is a now incredibly robust set of progression systems. Playing through missions and meeting specific objectives unlocks further missions along a lengthy campaign track, and there's one for both the basic Elimination dives and the new Escort Duty ones. Resources mined during dives can be spent on permanent upgrades, and gaining achievements unlocks new gear, modes, and more. Mastery challenges reward you with buffs to specific weapons, classes, and biomes that can be improved by beating them on higher and higher difficulties. It's a lot, but it ensures every play session offers its own dopamine rush of rewards, and there's always something new to try.

The release version has rounded that out with one last addition—loot. Gear now drops during missions, and can be equipped to grant permanent bonuses across runs. It hooks into existing progression neatly—more difficult missions reward better loot, and new achievements can upgrade the level loot drops at.

It's a fun new thing to fiddle with, and I like that seeing a juicy bit of gear appear during a dive can tempt you into yet more dangerous risks to grab it. But managing the loadouts of 12 different dwarves after every run can feel like busywork, and a fully-equipped miner can seem a bit pigeon-holed into particular builds, narrowing some of the possibility space of your in-mission levelling.

Grindset

There's definitely a fine line, too, between enjoying the multitude of ways to push the numbers up, and feeling the weight of a long grind ahead of you. DRG:S doesn't really lock meaningful content behind any task too onerous, but for completionists ticking your way down every checklist it has to offer will certainly take over 100 hours. And given that the 1.0 update recommends wiping your save progress to start you out with a clean slate, veterans may not relish having to put that time in all over again with the new, but not that new, progression systems.

Still… it hasn't put me off yet, and even as one of those veterans, I'm happily trundling my way through this second expedition with no desire to put down my pickaxe yet. To me, DRG:S is the survivors-like genre at its most engaging and tactical—not just an exercise in picking the right level-ups, but a proper sprawling challenge with new surprises every time.

Instead of finally growing bored of its formula, I find myself just imagining yet more things developer Funday Games could add in new updates to come. This release makes the game feel complete and ready for a broader audience, after over a year of public development. But at the same time, it feels like it could be only the beginning.