"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.

The trailer shows off what kind of gameplay you can expect from the mobile version of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. It will essentially be the same game as what we have on PC, albeit with a different control scheme that makes use of an on-screen joystick to control the character. Generally speaking, the game’s simplistic control scheme should make it perfectly playable on smartphones, since you don’t really get to do much aside from move around and occasionally select upgrades when you level up.

In the announcement, Funday Games producer Jacob Laurits Basenbacher Kjeldsen said that the decision to bring Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor to Android and iOS devices largely came about after the studio saw how much of the PC version’s play time was being taken up by portable gaming systems like the Steam Deck.

“We’ve realized that Survivor was perfect for smaller, portable devices when we saw how popular the game has become on Steam Deck,” he said. “It felt only natural to bring the game’s bullet heaven action to mobile, and soon players will be able to rock and stone on the phone wherever they are!”

When it comes out on iOS and Android—available through App Store and Google Play—Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor will make use of a “try before you buy” model, where players can download it and try out the Elimination mission with the Scout class in the Crystalline Caverns on Hazard 1 for free. Those that enjoy the game can then access the rest of it with a one-time payment. Along with this, the mobile will release is slated to feature no advertisements.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor – a spin-off to co-op shooter Deep Rock Galactic – was first released in Early Access all the way back in early 2024. The title proved to be an instant hit, selling more than 1 million copies in its first month alone. Since then, developer Funday Games has been working on releasing constant updates for it, leading up to its exit from Early Access earlier this month.

The game has players take on the role of one of for playable classes – Scout, Engineer, Gunner and Driller, each equipped with their very own weapons depending on the subclass chosen, as they venture deep beneath the surface of planet Hoxxes. As they take on missions to mine and gather precious minerals and plants, players will have to content with the local fauna getting progressively more angry, attacking them in hordes.

Along with its core gameplay loop of getting random weapons with unique upgrades over the course of a run, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor also features plenty in the way of meta progression, with the ability to find and equip gear that provides special bonuses, as well as a passive skill tree to work your way through.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor sees players venturing to Hoxxes and mining materials while upgrading weapons and taking on waves of dangerous alien bugs. The caves are procedurally generated, and upon clearing a wave, you rush to a Drop Pod to progress further. As the expedition ventures further into the planet, missions become tougher.

Early access launched with four classes, 40 weapons to choose from, 20 different types of enemies and three biomes alongside a progression system. Along with celebrating the sales milestone, Funday announced that its first content update is due next week and adds a new biome that is “sure to challenge even the greybeards among you.” Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

If you’ve played a reverse bullet hell or survivor-like shooter, the gameplay loop is simple: Kill enemies, get upgrades, and kill even more enemies. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor offers a variety of weapons with procedural cave generation and waves of foes. However, there’s mining and completing objectives allows for even tougher encounters until you extract tons of rewards.

The initial early access release will have four playable characters, over 30 weapons and ten enemy types, three to five biomes, one to three bosses and several mission types. There will also be perks, artifacts and upgrades. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is expected to be in early access for six to 12 months, but that could change based on player feedback. It may also see a price increase with the full version based on the content added.