Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is an excellent horde survival game - 1.0 out now

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor 1.0 has now officially released, so you can deep dive into one of the best horde survival games around and dig for riches. Time for some more Rock and stone! Note: I personally purchased it a good while ago, but was given early access to the release build.

Regular readers will know by now how I seem to have a complete fixation on anything Vampire Survivors inspired, I try to play anything resembling it in the horde-smashing genre that we can never agree to a name on. When I say it's one of the best, I really mean it. This has a great mixture of everything. And thanks to Proton, it runs great across Desktop Linux PCs and the Steam Deck too.

Pictured - Deep Rock Galactic on Steam Deck

For those who haven't played it or any in the genre: you're one dwarf on a mission to mine for riches and upgrades. You go continually deeper through the Planet Hoxxes, mining through rocks and squishing every alien in the swarms that come running at you using your auto-firing weapons. Mining isn’t just a fluff feature here, it’s an important part of the game as it rewards exploration to find different ores needed for upgrades. You also need to mine-out specific areas for loot drops and to get away from swarms at times.

The key hook for these games are the build varieties, and how much you can ridiculously overpower your character to watch the fireworks. As you take down the bugs, they drop little experience orbs to pick up which allow you to level up and unlock some new weapons and upgrades.

Check out the new launch trailer below:

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What I especially like about this one is how descriptive it is. You always know what's going on and what's coming. There's a timeline always visible at the top of the screen, like a loading bar for your progress during a level. You know approximately how far away each swarm and boss is which is a nice touch.

Once you finish a level, all is not well — as you need to actually escape by running to the drop pod that appears on the map. Easier said than done, especially when you're completely surrounded (which can easily happen if you're not paying attention). That's another thing to love about it, the action is seriously intense and when you have to run to the pod it's dramatically amplified.

Steam Deck performance could be a bit better though, I've seen it drop right down to 30FPS when it gets incredible intense. I hope this is something they will actually work on later to improve it. Overall still worth playing and fun enough there. No issues with performance on Desktop Linux.

If you had played it previously, now is an excellent time to jump in as the progression has changed quite significantly. The new gear drop system does add some more features to make it worth it to keep coming back to it. You'll see gear drop during missions, and boss encounters can guarantee you a piece. You can then equip the gear between missions to give you various bonuses (and from the main menu for future runs). There's a really nice wide variety to the gear too and you can sell / upgrade specific gear and change them around any time.

Plus, a big new escort mission was also added, where you not only have to survive but protect a machine while it smashes through rock (players of the original Deep Rock Galactic will know it well).