Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Review Overview
What is Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor?
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a solo survivor-like auto-shooter that throws you into Hoxxes IV all on your own. Armed with the full arsenal of Deep Rock Galactic, you’ll be blasting through endless waves of bugs, digging up riches, and stacking upgrades to keep yourself alive—it’s one dwarf versus the entire planet.
Every run has you mowing down swarms, juicing up your gear, and digging deeper into the caves to haul back whatever minerals you can. The guns fire automatically, so your focus is on moving, mining, and surviving while your dwarf turns aliens into mulch.
Like the original, no two missions ever feel the same thanks to procedural cave layouts and unpredictable enemy waves.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor features:
⚫︎ Top down action roguelite gameplay
⚫︎ Four classes with multiple specializations
⚫︎ Overclocks to modify weapon behavior
⚫︎ Procedurally generated maps
⚫︎ Two main gameplay modes on release
⚫︎ Daily and weekly challenges
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
 Steam |
$12.99 |
 Microsoft Store |
$12.99 |
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Insanely Replayable Objective-Based Modes Audio Punches Hard |
Insanely Grindy No Twin Stick Functionality Not Enough Rock and Stone |
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Story - 7/10
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor has no real story. After all, it doesn’t need any. Sure, a bit of lore here and there would help for some immersion, especially for those who haven’t played the original game (which didn’t have a real story, either). But at the end of the day, it doesn’t actually hurt the game by any stretch of the imagination.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Gameplay - 9/10
If you’re in the market for a solid action roguelite, you’ve come to the right place. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a standout Vampire Survivors clone that carries over a lot of the charm from the original co-op shooter. There’s a class for every playstyle, multiple modes to mess around with, and even a grindy endgame for anyone who enjoys suffering—though to be fair, that grind ends up feeling more punishing than rewarding due to balance issues.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Visuals - 8/10
For a top-down game to deliver such a claustrophobic experience is honestly impressive. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor really makes it feel like you’re in your dwarf’s boots—despite the detached POV—thanks to its clever use of light. That said, the devs might’ve gone a little overboard with the visual effects, since late-game screens get cluttered fast with bullets, fire, and explosions, easily obstructing your view of the models, which aren’t exactly high quality to begin with.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Audio - 9/10
Immersion really is the name of the game, and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor does a great job of pulling you off your chair and into the caves with hollow echoes and booming explosions. A lot of the original’s endearing voice lines are here too, giving each class some personality that both fans and newcomers can enjoy. But, much like the visuals, the audio in the late game can get overwhelming; there’s just so much noise flying through your speakers that it ends up drowning out the game’s otherwise great background music.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Value for Money - 10/10
For something this replayable to go for just a cent under thirteen bucks feels almost criminal—a sentiment even fans of the original co-op shooter share, constantly begging the devs to give them more things to throw money at. With its abundance of builds, daily and weekly challenges, and the addition of Escort mode at full release, it’s the kind of game you can sink a hundred hours into without even realizing.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Overall Score - 86/100
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a faithful reimagining of the original co-op shooter that’s almost guaranteed to click with action roguelite fans. Yeah, the balance gets shaky in the supreme endgame, but that’s not something most players will bump into right away. And even if you do, nothing’s stopping you from stepping back until the next content drop pulls you right back in.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Review: Rock Solid!
From One of the Best Co-op Games of All Time
Deep Rock Galactic is one of my favorite co-op games of all time. I’ve got about half a thousand hours in it with my friends, most of that spent deliberately making our lives as hard as possible—or endlessly chasing the elusive Fat Boy overclock (even though my friend got it on his first try). I’ve even met new people through it and stayed connected outside the game, which only reinforces my belief that video games aren’t just hobbies for the lonely dwarf.
Equally unsurprising, I’ve also logged well over a hundred hours in Vampire Survivors and its clones like HoloCure. So of course I was going to pick up Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor—it’s basically a marriage between one of my favorite genres and one of my favorite co-op games.
Sure, it stings that this one isn’t co-op (yet), but that’s always something the devs could add later. And honestly, even as a solo roguelite, the experience so far has been nothing short of ecstatic, with the original faithfully recreated in such an unlikely genre.
For Karl!
Deep Rock Galactic is about four dwarves working for a corporation as miners on another planet. Their job: extract precious minerals and collect ancient artifacts, all for the company’s profit.
But they’re not the only ones with a claim to the planet’s riches. The glyphids—spider-like creatures native to the underground hemispheres of Hoxxes IV—are the most infamous, attacking dwarves on sight with endless, swarming numbers. Other threats lurk as well, from the flying Mactera to the jellyfish-like Naedocyte, along with a host of enemies in all shapes and sizes.
The dwarves, armed with nothing more than picks, guns, and an arsenal of gadgets, have to survive Hoxxes IV’s worst… all in the name of corporate profit—for bare minimum wage and no benefits?
Drilling Into Hoxxes IV
The original Deep Rock Galactic was a first-person co-op shooter that thrived on the synergy between four wildly different classes working together. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, on the other hand, flips the script into a top-down action roguelite shooter that looks a lot like Vampire Survivors or HoloCure.
The biggest change? You’re on your own. No more teammates to cover your blind spots, ping loot, or drag your sorry arse from the brink when you’re down. Instead, the company arms you to the teeth: four weapon slots instead of two, Gears that let you tweak your stats however you like, and randomized but free Overclocks that push your weapons into ridiculous new forms.
Even the missions feel different now, with it being closer to an extraction shooter than the original’s glorified mining runs. You drop in, shoot through waves of bugs, then get out. Mining’s not the end goal anymore; it’s just there to grease the wheels by giving you resources for upgrades.
You start every mission with a single weapon, and the company makes sure you earn the rest. Kill natives, scoop up the experience they drop, and pick from randomized upgrades to build out your arsenal. Every five levels unlocks another weapon slot, while every six upgrades of those nets you a free Overclock—ridiculously strong modifiers that can completely change how a weapon behaves.
But shooting isn’t the only thing you’re good at. You’re a miner, and Hoxxes IV’s terrain bends to your pickaxe. You can carve tunnels to grab rare minerals for upgrades—or just to make a last-second escape route when a swarm of glyphids comes crashing in.
Your ability to mine, along with your health, speed, experience gain, and more, can be upgraded too. They’re usually not as exciting as raw firepower, sure, but in the right context they’re the difference between limping back to the drop pod or becoming the native creatures’ new chew toy for the company’s profit.
Where’s My Rock and Stone?
If you’re an old player, or at least someone who’s spent some time with the original Deep Rock Galactic, you probably spotted the problem with Survivor right away. This was a game that built its entire reputation on how perfectly it encouraged teamplay and camaraderie, all summed up in the dwarves’ signature catchphrase: “Rock and Stone!”
What does that mean? Nothing, really, at least literally speaking. But the moment a fellow dwarf raises their pickaxe and yells it, you’re required to respond in kind as a sign of mutual respect to one another. It’s also used whenever you finish a grueling mission together, before you start a dive, right when you kill a boss, just as you see the last patch of Morkite required to finish the mission (god I hate Morkite missions)—Point is, you yell it whenever you want to, and it is dwarven culture for others to yell it back.
This informal, unwritten pact between players is entirely missing in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. Being a solo experience, even if you had a hotkey to yell “Rock and Stone!” with, nobody will respond in kind. That alone, I feel, makes the entire experience somewhat empty of the original’s spirit; one that will never be present until the developers somehow work co-op into it.
It’s a Solid Survivor Game
That said, a lot of the original’s DNA has been reworked surprisingly well into the action roguelite formula without stripping away much of each class’ personality. Engineers are still the lazy man’s class (I would know, I main Engineer), Gunners are still the wasteful, trigger-happy dolts, and Scouts still somehow manage to get bodied by life itself just by existing.
That faithfulness comes from how each class’ specialties carry over into this new format. Engineers still rely on turrets to do most of the heavy lifting, Gunners are walking firepower, and Drillers can, uhh, dig faster. What’s missing is the need for cooperation—terrain navigation was the glue that held the foursome together, but with maps flattened out into mostly open ground and ledges, you don’t need the Engineer’s platforms, Gunner’s ziplines, Scout’s grappling hook, or Driller’s C4 anymore.
Mechanics-wise, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a Vampire Survivors clone, just without twin-stick controls. Weapons auto-fire in the general direction of enemies, or in preset ones, and stack together instead of needing to be swapped, which means everything’s blasting away at once without you lifting a finger. But that lack of twin-stick functionality hurts directional weapons like the Gunner’s minigun—you can’t fire backward while kiting, which feels awkward. Everything else, though, slots into place just fine.
The Audiovisuals Are as Claustrophobic as Their Settings Suggest
One thing I absolutely love about the game is how well it captures what working in a mine might actually feel like. Even with the top-down perspective, it still feels claustrophobic—the way your light bends and leaks through cracks, paired with the echo of gunfire and explosives against the skittering of hundreds of legs crawling toward you, really sells the atmosphere.
The audio in particular is fantastic. Every sound feels grounded, pulling you into your dwarf’s boots despite the detachment that comes with the overhead view. It’s not just for flavor either—you can use it to tell how many enemies are just out of sight, track where a boss spawned, or even pinpoint where your drop pod touched down.
Or, you know, you can just look at the minimap. That works too.
It’s Extremely Grindy, Though
Unlike most Vampire Survivors clones, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor’s stages are objective-based instead of just asking you to dodge death for as long as possible. The main goal is usually to kill the bosses at the end, but every stage also has side objectives that dish out bonus experience and resources if you complete them. Most of these are collection-based—things like picking mushrooms or mining Morkite (god I hate Morkite missions).
Still, they’re worth chasing down, since more experience is always good, especially with how nasty the final bosses can get.
The real shake-up comes with the escort missions. Unlike regular dives—which mostly boil down to boss fights scaled by difficulty—escorts throw in an extra wrinkle: you have to guide Bob (what happened to Doretta, though?), the corporation’s giant mining machine, from each of its landing points to the end of every level. Once it’s in place, you set off explosives to drop it deeper underground before finally delivering it to the Heartstone. Then it’s a straight-up defense mission, holding off the natives while Bob drills the artifact free.
Each mission, no matter which type you pick, usually clocks in at around 20 minutes. Pretty normal, right? But once you hit the endgame, everything shifts to upgrading your weapons and stats—and each run only bumps them up by a measly two percent or so. That means you’re sinking an hour into dives that, on Hazard 5+ (the game’s highest difficulty), might not even end in success.
It’s absurdly grindy, and the RNG doesn’t help. Don’t get the Overclocks you need for your build? Congrats, there goes a dozen minutes of your life down the drain. Or maybe the game just refuses to hand you higher-rarity weapon upgrades—that’ll tank your run too. In some ways this feels like a balance issue on the harder difficulties, and honestly, it comes across like those tiers didn’t get nearly enough playtesting.
That said, you’re never forced to play at that level. Just like the original, you can enjoy Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor at whatever pace feels right for you. And in the end, the game stays remarkably faithful to the spirit of Deep Rock Galactic—enough that it deserves all the Rock and Stone salutes you can throw at it.
Now give us co-op. Please?
Is Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Worth It?
By Karl, It’s Great
Despite my complaints, which aren’t really complaints anyway and more like grievances, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is an excellent action roguelite that any, especially fans of the original game, should try out. It’s cheap, looks gorgeous, has a healthy amount of variety, and is even an excellent entry point for the massively successful and wholesome co-op shooter that it’s based on.
So, yeah, I recommend it. For Rock and Stone!
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
| Steam |
$12.99 |
| Microsoft Store |
$12.99 |
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor FAQ
Does Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor have co-op?
No, it doesn’t, sadly.
Do you need to do deep dives to unlock Overclocks?
Overclocks are organically acquired and no longer need to be grinded for like in the original
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Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Product Information
 |
|
| Title | DEEP ROCK GALACTIC: SURVIVOR |
|---|---|
| Release Date | September 17, 2025 |
| Developer | Funday Games |
| Publisher | Ghost Ship Publishing |
| Supported Platforms | PC, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Action, Shooter, Roguelite |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | T |
| Official Website | Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Website |
