If you look back at some of my favorite games, I tend to like games that I get absorbed in. Last year, Balatro was that. A few years before that, it was Vampire Survivors. This year, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor might be vying for that honor. I’ve only put in about eight hours into the game, but I can’t put it down. Even with no prior knowledge of the series, I’ve been having a blast.
Simple concept with so much depth
Like Vampire Survivors, this is an auto-combat game. While also fending off aliens, you’re mining for minerals. The missions are simple: mine, defeat foes, and repeat. From what I’ve played, each mission involves five stages. You start each stage looking to lure out the main monster. So, you’ll spend that time mining and killing the other alien foes that continue to spawn.
Along the way, you’ll have a few swarm sections. When these begin, you’ll get swarmed from all sides and need to survive. This will happen at least once more before the main stage enemy makes their appearance. At that point, you need to kill them in quick succession. The longer the boss alien is alive, the more powerful they and the other aliens get. So, you don’t have time to waste.
I’m enjoying the progression system thus far. While your goal is to find and kill the Dreadnaught alien on the fifth stage, you still need to mine and level up. Mining is important in helping you buy extra skills for your weapons between stages. Meanwhile, you want to defeat as many foes as possible to level your character. The higher the level, the more powerful arsenal of weapons at your disposal.
A lot to try
There are so many weapons, and each of the four characters you unlock has its own set of skills. The randomization of loot drops means that each run is different. So far, I’ve found the Gunner as the most enjoyable character to use. That’s not to say that the three others aren’t as good, but he’s a solid character early on.
All four characters also have three roles to unlock. With the Gunner, they start as a Weapons Specialist, but you then unlock Juggernaut and one more role. The more you play with each character, the more you can customize.
The same is true for weapons. There are so many different weapons at your disposal. Some weapons, such as turrets, are for one character. So, the Driller has access to turrets, which you can upgrade so that they follow you around. All weapons can be “overclocked” in different ways. Sometimes they are stats boosts, but you also adjust what they do. So, if you want to change the flamethrower to shoot lightning, it might happen.
Harder than it looks
In my 7+ hours, I haven’t gotten very far. The first few missions were easy, but it wasn’t long after that that I was getting stuck. This is a challenging game. In Elimination, the game’s main mode, once I got to “Gate 1,” I hit a bit of a wall. The enemies are more aggressive, and I struggled for a bit. Now in Sector 2, they introduce missions with variables, including limited visibility. I am getting killed in the second or third stage.
To be fair, the game does tell you that it’s hard. I don’t mind the difficulty spike here because I was expecting it. These kinds of games want you to grind so that you can improve your skills. But on the flip side of that, it feels like this is something that’s not explained well.
If you’re familiar with this concept, this isn’t anything new. You have to go to Upgrades to improve your starting stats, such as Reload Speed, Armor, and Luck. By upgrading those, you’ll fare a lot better in the later stages. But the game doesn’t encourage this when you fail a mission. You can either retry or go back to the main menu. It would have been nice if upgrades were easier to manage.
Tons to unlock
I’m still unlocking content. On top of still having character job types to unlock, most of the game’s other modes are still unavailable. Right now, I can only play Main Missions, which involve Elimination and Escort Duty.
As the name implies, Escort Duty puts you in the role of a defender. You have to watch over a driller as it makes its way through a stage. It only moves when you’re beside it, so you have to manage its movements and fend off voes. In this mode, I haven’t been able to complete the final stage of the first mission. The last “boss” scenario is a real challenge for me. So I need to upgrade a few more stats.
I recently unlocked Masteries, but I still have a few more modes locked away. These only unlock after completing objectives in Elimination or Escort Duty missions. Mission objectives are very specific. Some include upgrading a specific weapon. So with randomization, you might not encounter that weapon enough to complete it. So, it might be a while before I earn enough to unlock the rest of the game.
More to Discover
At blog posting, I’ve spent over eight hours in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. There is a lot here, and I’m still learning and discovering new things. This is a game I’ll be returning to from time to time. I only hope that it doesn’t take another 10-15 hours to unlock the other modes.
