The spinoff Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor has been announced, and it looks like it takes some serious cues from last year's Golden Joystick Breakthrough award recipient, Vampire Survivors.
Deep Rock Galactic is a co-op FPS where you play as dwarf miner and blast your way through hordes of aliens and navigate procedurally generated and fully destructible cave systems. In the nearly three years since its launch, it's garnered 120,000 Overwhelmingly Positive Steam reviews and recently enjoyed a healthy boost in popularity thanks to a popular vtuber. Its follow-up, however, is a single-player spinoff that seems to have coined a new name for a growing subgenre of games: the "Survivor-like."
Denmark-based studio Funday Games bills Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor a "single-player survival-like auto-shooter," and it wears its inspiration on its sleeve. And while the top-down perspective, auto-shooting, and bullet hell action are undoubtedly Vampire Survivors-like, the roguelike and mining elements were already present in the first Deep Rock Galactic game, which predates Luca Galante's indie darling by a couple of years.
"The universe of Deep Rock Galactic is loved by millions of players, and now you can experience it in a whole new single-player-focused way!" reads Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor's Steam description. "Play each mission from a top-down perspective, navigating the caves of Hoxxes as you've never seen them before." The description also adds that "Greybeard Deep Rock veterans will recognize much from Deep Rock Galactic" despite the significant shift in direction.
When the early access version launches sometime this year, it'll come with four playable characters, more than 30 weapons, over 10 enemy types, 1-3 bosses, 3-5 biomes, multiple types of missions, and "a deep progression system of perks, artifacts, and upgrades." The full game will launch at an unspecified time after that and include more content in each category. There will also be brand new features based on the feedback the devs receive from the early access launch.
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