The ‘Survivor’ subgenre – kickstarted by the immortal Vampire Survivors – should be a one-trick pony. It’s not as if there are many controls to vary, as the shooting and combat is automated. If we’re being reductive, they are run-away! sims, pushing players to avoid death by finding gaps in waves of enemies. How many different ways can you dress up running away?
The answer should be ‘not many’, but 2025 has proven that to be false. Because if there’s a little-genre-that-could for this year, it’s been the Survivor. Achilles Survivor complicated matters by adding some base-building. You’re not just evading, you’re building stuff as you go. Megabonk (Xbox version soon, please!) added a whole load of WTF, as your evading was liable to lead to bizarro upgrades and vendors. In Megabonk, there’s every chance you could end up as a surfing skeleton or giant baby.
Mining For Gold In The Survivor Genre
And now we have Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, perhaps the most unlikely of all. Its source material, it’s worth remembering, is a cooperative, team-based mining sim. That’s not immediately dovetailing with ‘single-player escapeathon’. But someone at Funday Games has clearly had an epiphany, stolen some of the models from DRG, and made it happen. Because Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is very much in the Survivor genre, and it works.
The dense, genius core of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is simple. In a Survivor, or any other shooter for that matter, the walls are your enemy. They hem you in and narrow the options available. But what if – and the frenzied Charlie Day conspiracy meme comes to mind here – what if the walls are your friends? What if the walls represent safety and security?
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor achieves this thanks to its source material. You are a miner. Walls mean nothing to you. You can drill through them at speed – perhaps even at walking speed. Your enemies, however, cannot. Suddenly, walls are your escape: as soon as a wave of bugs encircle you, you can dive into a large block of ore like it is a wardrobe to Narnia. Poof, you are gone. The enemies can only follow you inside, and they certainly don’t have the wherewithal to anticipate where you might come out.
From this single difference, everything else flows. In the walls and rock are seams of ore, and they represent a host of things. Some of them, like gold and nitra, can be used as currency to buy upgrades between levels. Others are subject to objectives: if you collect enough of them, you get some of that gold and nitra. Other ores are the good stuff. They have meta-appeal, making headway on permanent, persistent upgrades that can be bought at the end of the run.
So, not only is rock an escape, it can confer riches too. The rhythm and flow of this is lovely. If you’re anything like us, your eyes will be flitting to the scanner, looking for ore on the radar, all while keeping a wall to one side of you as a potential escape route.
Guns, Lots of Guns
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor doesn’t neglect the good stuff of a Survivor, namely the weapons, enemies and progression. These are the table stakes, the things you would expect. But they’re handled with a deal of love.
The weapons in particular are an eclectic suite. They could have been variations on machine guns, shotguns and rocket launchers and, to be fair, those are all present. But there’s only really one of each, as Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is interested in Tesla coils, turrets, radioactive clouds that puff about you, throwing axes and – our favourite – flamethrowers that rotate around the player like a twirly tutu. Even within these weapon categories, there is such a variety of branching upgrades, chosen at level up, that turn them into something different. Our flamethrower could fan out to have dozens of flames, or they could paste the floor with napalm, leaving a deadly red carpet for the enemies.
The enemies aren’t quite as much of a home run. That negative is mostly down to the bosses, of which there are, well, two. They’re not particularly differentiated, being a single dreadnought-like creature and a pair of dreadnoughts which are individually weaker but heal. They both charge-attack, they’re both bullet sponges. But what the bosses lack, the mob enemies make up for. They’re faceless, just as they are in Deep Rock Galactic, but they have just enough disparity in how they fly, cut through rock, explode or hunt the player without pause. Any more complicated and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor would have been a cognitive nightmare, so they’re positioned well.
What might actually bewilder is the many ways you can progress in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. We’ve mentioned the Upgrades, which are persistent benefits like improved critical hits or starting nitra. But there’s also loot, sparingly given from the missions and fully upgradeable themselves. And then there are masteries, allowing you to zoom into the inner-workings of the game and upgrade pretty much everything. Your class, weapons and even the biomes that you mine through can all be dialled up via a quick run through a sequence of levels.
It gives Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor an incredible moreishness. You are fighting to upgrade the most minuscule nut or bolt in the machine: a damage % on one specific weapon perhaps. But that nut or bolt could be the difference for a future run, as the margins are so fine. With the powered up grenade, you might just be able to unlock Gate 3 and get even higher-levelled rewards…
All That Glitters Isn’t Gold
If there was a single wish, it would be more ways to play. The original Deep Rock has a multitude, as you are just as likely to be making a minecart railroad as you are fighting waves of enemies. And we shouldn’t forget that Deep Rock is multiplayer, when Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor very much isn’t. It almost feels contrary to the spirit of DRG.
With a cooperative mode and more activities (you’re largely limited to Elimination, a sequence of levels and minibosses, and Escort Duty, which has you following a mobile drill) this would have pocketed a perfect score. Nitpickers could point to Vanguard Contracts and Lethal Operations, which attempt to remix things, but they are largely just handicaps applied to the run.
The end result is that Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor can eventually fatigue, certainly after dozens of hours or long play sessions. With another couple of scenarios this wouldn’t have been a consternation at all.
A Near-Perfect Nugget
But what is fatigue to a game where you can just pick it up for fifteen minutes and carve out – quite literally – a run? For us, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor has become a near-perfect nugget of gaming while waiting for other games to download; a burst of adrenaline where we hope to emerge with slightly better loot and a tiny increase to our mining speeds.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor might be a curious choice – a single-player cousin to a game that’s the epitome of co-op play. But it’s no cash-grab, and everyone from DRG fans to Survivor stalwarts should give it a chance.
Important Links
Ready for some Bullet Hell Mining? Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Launches on Xbox Game Pass – https://www.thexboxhub.com/ready-for-some-bullet-hell-mining-deep-rock-galactic-survivor-launches-on-xbox-game-pass/
Download from the Xbox Store, via Game Pass – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/deep-rock-galactic-survivor/9phgqprbbsxk
Or grab a Deluxe Edition – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/deep-rock-galactic-survivor-deluxe-edition/9P9C9WXLZNW9/0010
