Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Review – Rock and Stone

Since the release and subsequent success of Vampire Survivors, the genre—colloquially referred to as bullet heaven—has exploded amongst indie developers. The newest entry in the ever-growing style of gameplay is a spin-off of co-op shooter Deep Rock Galactic, appropriately titled Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. Having been out for some time as an Early Access title on Steam, it is now finally out with a full 1.0 release, so the only remaining question is whether it can tap into what made Deep Rock Galactic such a fan-favourite.

"In its themes, atmosphere and overall gameplay, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor very much manages to match up to its older 4-player co-op sibling."

Much like Deep Rock Galactic, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor puts you in the shoes of a dwarf that has been charged by a mining megacorporation to dive underground into several planets and mine out all the precious minerals they can get their hands on. Of course, the local populace typically doesn’t approve of this sort of encroachment, which means that players will have to fend off hordes of alien threats—primarily large, Starship Troopers-inspired bugs—as they go about their mining missions.

In its themes, atmosphere and overall gameplay, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor very much manages to match up to its older 4-player co-op sibling. However, the fact that it is a single-player only game in a genre that has been sorely-lacking in co-op multiplayer releases does take a bit away from what made the original shooter such a great time. Since it’s a single-player game, it also suffers from a few curious balance problems, largely stemming from its class system.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor gives you the choice between four distinct classes to play. Aside from being cosmetically different, all four classes also start out with their own unique stats like health, armour, and dodge chance, and most importantly, their own unique weapons. While the Scout class, for instance, starts out with a burst-firing assault rifle, the Gunner class, on the other hand, starts out with a minigun. Similarly, the Engineer starts out with an assault turret, and Driller starts out with a pistol. Each class also has further unlockable sub-classes, which change up the starting weapons and passive bonuses you get a bit.

Some of the classes, especially early on when you don’t have too many points in the meta progression tree to give you more passive bonuses like health, armour and leveling speed, tend to feel quite awkward to place. I especially found the Gunner to be an oftentimes frustrating class owing to the fact that its starting weapon only shoots in the direction you’re looking in, which means that you’re going to have to run towards the massive bugs to make sure that the gun actually does any damage. These frustrations could be somewhat alleviated if I had a friend or two that could join me in my mining adventures, but this is a single-player-only game.

As is the case with any bullet heaven game, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a lot of fun to play once you’ve actually found your bearings. After a few runs of trial and error, I was able to settle on a choice of weapons that allowed me to successfully finish the first dive, and it was an incredibly-enjoyable experience due to how well the weapon system, leveling up, and elemental systems work together. Essentially, every time you level up by killing some bugs or mining, you get to choose between three different options, some of which will focus on specific weapons while others will give you overall bonuses.

"Once a weapon hits level 5, you can give it a mod that can do a variety of things"

Every few levels, you get to add a new weapon to your arsenal, which can then also be leveled up. Once a weapon hits level 5, you can give it a mod that can do a variety of things, from simply raising damage or firing rate, to giving it elemental damage which can have its own unique effects. When it comes to elemental damage, there are six distinct types you can get. Most weapons start off with the Kinetic damage type, which is essentially a lack of any elemental. Eventually, however, you get to choose between Fire, Electrical, Acid, Cold, and Plasma. Each of these has its own distinct features. Electrical damage, for example, makes an enemy hit by it more susceptible to critical damage, while Plasma shots can bounce between targets and the terrain. Cold, on the other hand, can slow down monsters, while Fire causes a constant damage-over-time effect.

While the goal of each level during a 5-level dive might revolve around killing as many bugs as possible and sometimes getting your hands on specific minerals or flora around the area, it doesn’t mean that going all in on raising your damage levels is a smart idea, however. It is incredibly easy to get swarmed by massive hordes of bugs in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. More so when you even have a mini-boss to handle at the same time. Thankfully there are a few survival-based leveling options you can find, from simple ones like movement speed and mining speed, to more complex ones, like raising the slowing effect of your Cold damage-dealing weapons.

"Dives will also often reward you with new permanent equipment pieces which grant minor-but noticeable boost to these statistics."

This overall gameplay loop is wrapped up in a few levels of meta progression. As you go through various missions, you’ll get your hands on minerals which can then be spent on gaining permanent boosts to various things, from health and damage, to XP gain, critical hit chance, and even how much gold or nitra you might start out with to then spend in the mid-level shops. Along with this, dives will also often reward you with new permanent equipment pieces which grant minor-but noticeable boost to these statistics.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor also offers an escalating sense of difficulty as you unlock more and more sectors by completing various objectives. Each of these sectors tend to have quite a few levels to finish within them, each level having 3 of its own objectives to complete. All in all, there is plenty to do here if you’re looking for your next long-term bullet heaven game after having wrapped up your time with the latest Vampire Survivors DLC. The fact that you can repeatedly farm end-of-dive bosses for guaranteed gear drops, paired with passive bonuses means that there are plenty of options for more targeted buildcrafting for your next dive. There’s always a self-directed objective to follow, alongside the game’s own various objectives.

One of the newer things that has been added to Deep Rock Galactic: Survivors is the Escort Duty game mode, which puts players in charge of escorting a Drilldozer to complete various objectives. The game mode isn’t anything new for those that might have already played Deep Rock Galactic. The Survivor version, however, does bring with it some interesting challenges and chances for extra mayhem thanks to the generally more insane variety you tend to get in terms of weapons and their mods.

"Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor carries over some of the most fun aspects of its bigger sibling into a new genre"

A major thing to note with Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, much like any other title in the genre, is that the game might start causing some performance hitches when you are attacked by particularly large swarms. While I personally didn’t have issues that were outrageous, I did notice a few slowdowns on my PC running on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32 GB of DDR-6000 RAM, and an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU. I was able to maintain a solid frame rate of 60 FPS while playing at 1440p for the vast majority of my time with it. However, there were moments where I saw the FPS dipping to the high-50s.

Generally speaking, despite being a single-player-only game, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor carries over some of the most fun aspects of its bigger sibling into a new genre; the core gameplay is fun thanks to an excellent selection of weapons and weapon mods, and the meta progression does a great job of making things easier over a reasonable amount of time. The only real complaint I have about it is the fact that some of the starter weapons feel quite awkward to use, especially before you start getting bigger boosts from the meta upgrades.

This game was reviewed on PC.