Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Early Access Review

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 can simply meander around the map annihilating everything in your path.

The Engineer has a quite different and engaging playstyle as well, relying mostly on stationary turrets that spawn around you when you’re standing still, which then disappear after a short time. I found this class especially difficult to play at first, since the bonus objectives and special enemies on each map often require you to move around a lot. But once I got the hang of looping swarms around obstacles and placing my turrets for maximum effect, I started to enjoy how different the Engineer was from the other three options. It only gets more fun when you unlock multiple turret types later on as well, like ones that chain lightning between them and make for a potent trap.

Then you have the Driller, who is all about digging through solid surfaces to channel enemies into death traps or escape dicey situations. I found that if I could get one specific upgrade that grants you XP every time you break a rock, I was almost playing a different game, sweeping the entire map with my spinny arms and mostly ignoring enemies. It’s a totally unique way to snowball. Each class also has unlockable specializations that can completely change your playstyle, like making the Gunner into what really amounts to a bearded battle tank.

There’s also the Scout. He’s… fine. A totally okay starter class, but one I found far less interesting than everyone you unlock later.

One way that Survivor is a bit less satisfying than the original Deep Rock Galactic is that the delves are so short – just a couple minutes each. This makes it very sessionable, but it also got on my nerves a little on certain maps when I really wanted to do more exploring, or had to get a bunch of specific items for a bonus objective, and I was out of time before I felt like I’d even gotten started. I’d love to see some longer levels or maybe even an endless mode in future updates.

The short runs are even more apparent when you factor in that rare minerals are the only way to unlock permanent upgrades, and they represent another thing for you to get distracted by that could jeopardize meeting bonus objectives. You need specific minerals for each category of upgrades, like Jadiz for bonus XP, but you can trade different minerals at a two-to-one rate or buy them outright. That’s a helpful inclusion, because it means will slowly climb up the meta progression ladder simply from earning cash even if you’re not going for those mineral veins proactively.

There are also only three biomes so far: the eerie Crystalline Caverns, boiling Magma Core, and overgrown Hollow Bough, each with their own set of enemies, obstacles, and opportunities. There are five hazard levels to unlock for each that introduce new enemies and bosses, as well as interesting milestone objectives to strive for like upgrading a specific weapon to its max rank. These nicely encouraged me to try out new playstyles and get out of my usual routine.

However, it did feel like I ran out of stuff to do pretty quickly. It took me around six hours to clear every level on the default difficulty, and by that point I had already unlocked all of the classes and most of the alternate specializations. After maybe a dozen hours, I didn’t feel like the rewards I was getting were worth continuing to grind for – though that central shooting and looting remained fun on its own.

This is Early Access, so the slimmer set of options are understandable at this point. But I would love to see some more map variety and game modes eventually arrive. At least the arsenal of unlockable weapons isn’t at all lacking: from flamethrower turrets to deadly revolvers to a chaotic zap gun, it’s hard to feel that I’ve stumbled into a bad build, because they’re all so fun to use. The satisfying sound effects and enemy death animations make it even better.