If you’re the naughty sort, legend has it that on Christmas Eve a portly bearded chap will descend down your chimney and leave behind a lump of coal. The dwarven heroes of today’s game are much the same, except instead of using the chimney they will deploy pickaxes and power tools to burrow straight through your living room wall, and will make off with any minerals in the house rather than leaving them behind in a sock.
]]>Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a delicious piece of mad science: what if you spliced the ale-sodden DNA of Deep Rock Galactic’s dwarven miners with tissue samples from a Vampire Survivors-like autoshooter?
It shouldn’t work, surely. It would be easy to look at this spin-off and question why it takes the co-op out of one of the best co-op games on PC, or to shovel it aside as a cynical attempt at latching onto the popularity of autoshooters/Survivors-likes/bullet heavens (delete as preferred). But you’d be a smooth-handed leaf lover, my friend, as not only does DRG’s mix of horde shooting and rock smashing translate remarkably well to the format, even this early access version is heaps of subterranean fun.
]]>Surprise, miners. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, the Vampire Survivors-like spinoff that puts a bullet heaven twist on one of the PC's best co-op games, is launching into early access just a couple of weeks from now. It’ll be out on Steam from February 14th, incidentially gifting the possibility for all kinds of cheap Valentine’s Day slogan gags. You are my Rock and Stone? My Ommoran Heartstone belongs to you? Drill you be Mine? Hilarious. Also, there’s a trailer.
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Have you recovered from the all the 100+ hour RPGs that came out last year? Well, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that everyone seems to be taking a bit of a breather in 2024, because (at time of writing at least) the official "big'uns" calendar is looking remarkably slim at the moment. There are still some heavy-hitters coming our way this year, such as Avowed, Star Wars Outlaws and Path Of Exile 2, but 2024 looks like another year where it will be the smaller, independent games that shine the brightest. They certainly make up the bulk of our most anticipated games list for 2024, which the RPS Treehouse has been feverishly putting together over the last few days. The bad news is that there are still loads of great games coming out. So come, join us, and see what's on our personal wishlists for 2024.
]]>The latest Steam Next Fest is upon us, bringing with it a freshly packed week of new, free demos to try until Monday October 16th. There are literally hundreds you could try installing if you were that way inclined - you can view the full list right here if you'd rather browse through it at your own leisure - but we've been playing some of these demos in advance to help make wading through its torrent of shiny new games a little bit easier. Below, you'll find 12 of our favourites so far, ranging from snazzy-looking shooters and big RTS games to neat little autobattlers, indie immersive sims and retro puzzle platformers. If you're in need of some guidance this Steam Next Fest, read on.
]]>Having hollowed out the Asteroid of Co-Op (Resource) Extraction FPS, Ghost Ship are sinking their drills into the Planet of Roguelite. The just-announced Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core is a crafty feat of genre-splicing in which one to four dwarven miners investigate an alien world whose "core has gone rogue". As in the original Deep Rock Galactic, which we loved, you'll be tunnelling down and fighting critters (exact species TBA) while harvesting precious ores. But this time, there's no returning to the ship once you've loaded up enough. The only way out is down.
]]>While the bug-squishing autoshooter is itself still in the larva stage, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor already looks like a worthwhile Vampire Survivors-like. It apparently helps to crib the mining, mineral hoarding, and maladroit approach to industrial safety that makes source material Deep Rock Galactic one of the best FPS games going.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is in the works at Funday Games, not original DRG devs and fellow Danish outfit Ghost Ship Games. But it does fall under the latter’s new publishing arm, Ghost Ship Publishing, and can trace its origins back to a casual meeting between Funday co-founder Anders Leicht Rohde and Ghost Ship CEO Søren Lundgaard – and beyond.
]]>I’m sure that describing Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor as a mix of Deep Rock Galactic and Vampire Survivors sounds like it’s betraying a terminal lack of imagination. But, come on, look at it. It’s a top-down autoshooter/bullet heaven where defeated beasties drop XP blobs that fuel an escalating series of weapon and stat upgrades, playing out in the whimsical sci-fi/fantasy/corporate nightmare universe inhabited by DRG’s dwarves. "It’s a mix of Deep Rock Galactic and Vampire Survivors" is the most apt and succinct description that currently or will ever exist for it. So there.
And yet, being derivative doesn’t always preclude the opportunity for bloody good fun. I’ve played just over three hours of a very early Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor build, and while it’s both missing some parts and could benefit from the odd tweak, it’s already capable of pumping out dopamine as efficiently as any established VampSurvs-alike.
]]>Earlier this month, the studio behind Deep Rock Galactic announced that they were branching out (or digging in) to publishing with their new initiative Ghost Ship Publishing. Today, the team held a fifth-anniversary livestream for their hit co-op shooter, and they also announced the first three games they’ll be releasing as a publisher, including a Deep Rock Galactic spin-off, a top-down shooter, and a spell-slinging roguelike - all coming from indie teams based in Denmark.
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