The world of cooperative horde shooter Deep Rock Galactic is getting adapted to a new setting: A survivors-style auto-horde-shooter where a single dwarf takes on the buggy hordes all on their own. The trailer (opens in new tab) for Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor dropped today alongside a Steam page and a loose Early Access release date of “2023.”
The spinoff will release into Early Access, where it promises to have four characters, 30-some guns, 10 or so enemies, 1-3 bosses, and 3-5 biomes to explore in the same mission-based extraction gameplay that has you escape with your loot to buy permanent upgrades for future missions. Perhaps the most intriguing bit is that you’ll still be mining stuff and that it’ll still have the same kind of procedural cave generation that Deep Rock Galactic is known for.
“Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a single player survivor-like auto-shooter,” says the very excited game description. “Wield the full arsenal of Deep Rock Galactic, take on hordes of lethal aliens, mine riches, and unlock powerful upgrades. It’s one dwarf against all of Planet Hoxxes!”
(As a brief aside, can we… not call them “survivor-likes?” We’ve already got survival as a genre and this is uncomfortably close.)
The trailer and screenshots available so far show off a variety of guns, from pistols and miniguns to flamethrowers, shotguns, and autocannons. There are also some classic-looking spinning orb shield things. You know the kind: Enemy hits the orb, enemy goes boom, orb comes back a while later. Interestingly, the player seems to have some kind of weapon slot system, meaning maybe you switch between guns rather than fire everything all at once like in other survivor games.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor will be published by DRG’s original developers Ghost Ship, but it’ll be developed by exterior studio Funday Games. Not too surprising, as the success of Deep Rock Galactic prompted little Danish studio Ghost Ship to get into publishing in the first place, and it’s very cute to see DRG getting franchised out.
You can find Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor on Steam (opens in new tab). It’s set to release this year, in 2023.
