Everyone plays for fun, or amusement, or pleasure, or... Well, you get the idea. Some want a masterpiece plot, others — brilliant gameplay, and some just want to live in another world. It's ideal when everything is there at once.
The original Deep Rock Galactic has no such problems. There is no deep narrative, but there is polished cooperative gameplay and a remarkably charming universe of harsh dwarves, who dig, shoot, and respect beer. The recipe turned out to be so successful that even after years, the audience on Steam is only growing.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is the same universe, but in the format of a "survival game" a la Vampire Survivors. Familiar dwarves, familiar caves, familiar hordes of insects.
Dwarves are the foundation of the entire setting: bearded hard workers with gold in their hearts and beer in their blood. Their black humor, rituals, and laconic mumbling create not an image, but a real man's job with a soul. The world here is learned not through dreary cutscenes, but through their jokes and drinking frothy drinks after a shift.
So if you are already familiar with the original, Survivor will greet you like an old friend. New players, however, will have to guess what the dwarves forgot in deep space. The game does not bother to explain who these bearded men are and what they are even doing on exoplanets. Take a pickaxe, dig into the rock, shoot back from insectoids.
Survivor features the same classes of miner-fighters:
- Scout — nimble and maneuverable, he is excellent with light weapons, but moves through rocks slower than others, and his weapons do not have the same crushing power;
- Gunner — a versatile fighter. He is excellent with automatic weapons, but not as fast as the Scout, and his passage speed remains average;
- Engineer operates various gadgets and turrets, allowing him to focus on mining while automatic systems repel enemy attacks;
- Driller, as expected, is the best at extracting resources and is a master of heavy weapons, paying for it with the lowest movement speed.
Each class, in turn, is divided into three subclasses with their own unique features and starting weapons. They do not change the gameplay dramatically, but offer certain bonuses and variability in the playthrough, allowing the player to adjust the tactics to their style.
As for the gameplay itself, it differs from what is in Deep Rock Galactic, although the basic principles of the universe are preserved. Our task is to extract various resources on exoplanets. But now we are acting almost alone. We are accompanied only by a small drone, which at the initial stages helps to ward off hostile fauna.
This, in essence, exhausts the direct legacy of the original Deep Rock Galactic in mechanics. In all other respects, the gameplay formula is almost entirely borrowed from Vampire Survivors, with minor changes migrating to our patient today.
You can have different attitudes towards Vampire Survivors and games similar to it. Some players, like our editor-in-chief Maxim Dragan, consider this project a disgrace to the gaming industry because of the "primitive gameplay", others, like our author Maxim Ivanov, consider Vampire Survivors an example of concentrated gameplay.
And, probably, one could say that if you like Vampire Survivors, then you will like Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, and if you don't like this kind of gameplay, then you shouldn't even try it.
One could say, but the situation with Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is more complicated.
The basis of Vampire Survivors gameplay is build creation. Rapidly leveling up during 30 minutes of survival surrounded by numerous mobs, we try again and again to assemble the perfect build. Even at the release of Vampire Survivors, there were many build options, and it was interesting to experiment with them.
Moreover, a properly completed build gave such a feeling of omnipotence, such a feeling of superiority over enemies, that it more than made up for all previous attempts and failures. Suddenly, from a cornered victim you turned into a deity of destruction, erasing entire hordes of opponents with just one movement. This powerful catharsis is the very "hook" that makes you start the run again and again in pursuit of the perfect build.
But in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, this feeling, this catharsis, is practically absent. The problem lies in the leveling system itself. The dwarf has only four weapon slots available, which gradually open and improve as the run progresses. Moreover, each class is assigned a strictly defined arsenal.
Firstly, this radically reduces the options for build creation and narrows the field for experiments.
Secondly, there is no synergy between the guns, which is the heart of Vampire Survivors. If in VS you are trying not just to assemble a strong build, but also to strengthen it through combinations, then in DRG: Survivor it all comes down to a small selection of available guns and their linear leveling. Want to diversify the gaming experience? Take another class — and get a new, but equally limited set of options.
Thirdly, even the most upgraded weapon does not give the cherished feeling of power. Enemies remain too tenacious, and even a mighty dwarf constantly has to dodge and retreat to survive. In addition, the main goal here is not survival as such, but in collecting resources (why they are needed, we will discuss a little later). So we are not surviving. We are collecting.
On the one hand, this approach introduces elements of tactics into the Vampire Survivors formula. You need to understand the features of the weapon, use it competently, despite the automatic firing, know the strengths and weaknesses of each class. But Vampire Survivors are not loved for this. It is loved for build creation for fun, and not for the need to constantly maneuver and competently position the fighter on the battlefield. Therefore, the ratings for Vampire Survivors turn out to be so polarized.
And so we come to the main question: how do we evaluate Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor? Build creation here is not entertaining, and the gameplay, although complicated by tactical elements, in terms of progression mechanics turns out to be heavily simplified. As a result, the line between different runs is blurred, and each of them turns into routine work to extract minerals.
And we spend the extracted resources on leveling up characters and "artifacts" — permanent improvements, an analog of equipment in ARPG. And again and again we collect minerals to level up the character, to open a new artifact, to level it up too.
All this turns the game into an endless grind in the same arenas. Moreover, the leveling is deliberately made slow and harsh — just like descending into a real mine.
The developers, of course, tried to diversify the gameplay. In addition to the traditional mode with several stages, they added an escort mode, where we extract fuel for a huge drilling rig. There are mastery missions, where we work only with a certain type of weapon, demonstrating skills (and попутно прокачивая его, sic!). There are also other challenges of increased difficulty. But… In essence, this changes nothing . The grind remains a grind, just sometimes you are offered to collect resources in a different order.
The sound design also let us down. The music is not catchy. The number of phrases that dwarves utter is small, and they do not spoil us with variety . The technical condition of the game is good, although it is not without bugs. Graphically, the game looks decent, however, it does not please with visual diversity and the number of biomes.
Diagnosis
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor competently uses the strengths of the original universe: familiar classes, enemies, locations, and the overall atmosphere — this causes positive emotions in fans of the original and provides the project with a solid foundation.
The main disadvantage of the game is that it adopts the Vampire Survivors formula, but misses its essence. Instead of deep and variable build creation, which leads to catharsis and a feeling of power, DRG: Survivor offers routine and grind. This turns the gameplay not into entertainment, but into "work", where each run feels like a mandatory grind for permanent leveling, and not as an independent adventure. But the whole point of roguelikes is that each run is an independent adventure.
As a result, the project will not be able to fully satisfy neither fans of the original, who appreciate Deep Rock Galactic for an adventure with friends, nor fans of the Vampire Survivors genre, who get catharsis from omnipotence every 30 minutes. For the former, the absence of a lobby and a bar with beer is already a deep omission and a fundamental change in the spirit of the universe. For the latter — fun — is a build, not a viscous grind.
In general, spoiling the Vampire Survivors formula is quite an achievement. Few others have managed to do it. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is saved only by the attractive universe and cool dwarves.
Pro:
- Successfully transferred setting.
- Charismatic dwarf characters and familiar classes from the original DRG.
- Good optimization and decent graphics, considering the genre.
- Low price.
Contra:
- Limited arsenal per class, lack of synergy between weapons, and insufficient feeling of power by the end of the run.
- Slow leveling and repetitive gameplay turn runs into a routine of resource extraction.
- Lack of co-op, hub, and beer(!).
- At high difficulties, enemies become excessively tenacious, which makes the passage protracted and tedious.
- Small number of biomes and enemies.
- Meager sound design.