Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Early Access Review

14.02.2024 - 12:15 / ign.com / Deep Rock

I've spent countless hours plumbing the depths of alien worlds, blasting bugs, and bringing home loot with my crew of jolly space dwarves in 2020’s excellent Deep Rock Galactic. And as it turns out, that experience translates quite well to a single-player, top-down approach in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. The pacing can be a little hectic as of its Early Access launch, but the exciting weapons, vicious enemies, rewarding progression, and overall good vibes had me ready to get back below ground as many times as the company would let me.

Having put hundreds of hours into Vampire Survivors, Holocure, and other games in this growing roguelite genre, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is familiar enough that I was able to hit the ground running, but also immediately sets itself apart from them. Starting as one of four distinct classes with auto-firing weapons, you deploy into a hostile environment to squash endless insectoid enemies. The unique angle Survivor brings to that formula is mining, as you'll need to dig up gold and nitra to buy upgrades between floors, harvest rare minerals to unlock permanent upgrades on the main menu, and rush to collect specific resources on each floor to complete a bonus objective for a big payout.

I wasn't sure if Deep Rock Galactic's charm would translate so well when playing all by myself, since the original is very much based on comradery and cooperation. But from energetic dialogue barks to the bombastic soundtrack, Survivor definitely delivers on those good vibes. Deep Rock is almost a subculture of its own within multiplayer co-op at this point, and there are plenty of welcome little nods to the community and player-made memes that show this spin-off was thoughtfully put together.

My favorite class is, unsurprisingly, the same one I usually play in the shooter version: the Gunner. It simply never gets old mowing down hordes and hordes of bugs with a torrent of lead from up to four different nozzles. Survivor also introduces the concept of reloading to this genre, though – and since you can't trigger a reload manually, you have to keep a careful eye on your ammo bars and plan ahead if it looks like two or more guns are going to hit empty at the same time.

Because of this, I found myself prioritizing reload time upgrades out of the randomized options I could pick from at each level up, which was an interesting new dimension to crafting a successful build for tough runs. Especially playing as the Gunner, whose best weapons reload very slowly by default, it could be the main difference between being a walking death machine and getting completely overwhelmed. And it's just as satisfying as it is in any other Survivors-style game when you hit that point of lethal critical mass and