I checked out Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor on a festive-feeling Friday afternoon at Gamescom last month. It was one of the final games I played, and it was the perfect time for a survivor-like. Sitting down with Søren Lundgaard, CEO of Ghost Ship Publishing, and Emil Stidsholt, head of marketing for Funday Games, one of the first things we talked about is what to actually call games like this that take inspiration fromVampire Survivors. Lundgaard went for “survivors-like”, so that’s what we’ll use here until we’re a few more years down the line and the genre has fully cemented itself in the zeitgeist.
Both Stidsholt and Lundgaard told me Vampire Survivors had been a staple of their lives for many months, just like almost everyone else on the planet. But the genre has since evolved and changed across titles like Halls Of Torment, 20 Minutes Till Dawn, and Soulstone Survivors. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor brings the universe of hole-hungry dwarves to life in the survivor format - you’re armed with a pickaxe and a bunch of weapons, from turrets to launchers. With so many moving parts, one of the most important parts of getting a survivor-like right is the balance.
RELATED:We’re Missing The Point With Xbox Buying Nintendo
“During the playtest earlier this year, our players told us that it sometimes felt like they were missing that big, explosive kind of power that is really fun in these games,” Lundgaard tells me. “So for this version, we’ve basically introduced new stages of power, where you’ll get that massive, screen-filling fun.” It’s a tricky thing: you want the player to feel powerful, but you don’t want every build to just spiral into total, all-powerful chaos, otherwise there’s not much challenge. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is still trying to find that balance, but even with a pretty powerful build I still managed to die to the final boss. Oops.
Bringing the world of Deep Rock Galactic to this much simpler format was also a bit of a challenge. Stidsholt tells me that Funday Games wanted to match the “atmosphere” and “attitude” of the dwarves in the game, and from the aesthetic of the levels to the range of weaponry (plus classes you’ll recognise from the main game), and they’ve done a great job of meeting player expectations. The mining pickaxe stands out as a unique mechanic that differentiates this from other Survivor-likes but connects it to Deep Rock Galactic as a whole.
Armed with the pickaxe, you can alter the layout of the level, digging tunnels and clearing escape routes. This also means you can drag enemies around tight corners and toy with the AI, giving you a bit of time to heal up or regenerate an ability. Much like your weaponry, the pickaxe can receive major upgrades. “Yep, grab the pickaxe upgrade, it’s powerful, you’re going to want it,” says Lundgaard, who is watching over my shoulder and offering advice. I want to impress them, because I had luckily been a part of the very limited playtest previously - one of only a few thousand players who got a chance.
My run went pretty well, with a lot of turret synergy. I got a few upgrades that meant my turrets exploded when they were timed out, splashing out in massive AoE damage. This character had already unlocked a lot of the meta progression in the game due to the fact it was the end of the day and other people had already played, which means I did have an advantage with those passive upgrades. Wave after wave, with the guys cheering me on, until the final boss - which pinned me in a corner and destroyed me with a poisonous explosion. It happens. It happens.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a truly polished Survivor-like experience, and while the team is still working on introducing new characters, weapons, and general balance, I can see this being an absolute perfect time-sink in the future. In the meantime, I’ll return to the mines of Deep Rock to get my dwarven fix.
