Underrated and overlooked, “Deep Rock Galactic” is celebrating its fourth anniversary and the end of its first ever in-game season. This season was packed with new enemies and a new game mode that made fans thrilled for what is to come.
“Deep Rock Galactic” is a game available on Steam and Xbox/Windows where the player is in the point of view of a dwarf that works for a corporation. This game feels like a combination of “Minecraft”, “Doom” and “Team Fortress 2”. The player can select different classes such as the Scout, the Driller, the Gunner and the Engineer.
Each class has its own abilities, benefits and cons. The Scout helps the team by setting out bright lights in the caves that are a minute in length and can scout ahead with a grappling hook. The Gunner carries a large machine gun and can set ziplines for the team to use to get around the maps. The Driller helps by getting the team to locations or getting quick access to the drop pod when the clock is ticking. The Engineer builds sentry guns and places platforms for the team.
Of course working for a corporation would not be complete without corporate greed. The dwarves are sent into different missions, such as a mining mission where the players collect a type of mineral to a refinery mission where the players must protect an oil refinery from incoming enemies. The players are able to pick the difficulty of the missions. These difficulties are referred to as ‘Hazards’ making the easiest mission a ‘Hazard 1’ while going up to a ‘Hazard 5’ level.
Each mission has its own benefits; some even have buffs, such as a gold rush or modifications to the mission such as a haunted cave. This makes the missions more difficult as the team has to avoid a transparent enemy that chases the entire team, attempting to knock down each player one by one, while the players attempt to complete their mission type.
The new mission that was introduced this season involves destroying the products of another corporation, The Rivals, that has invaded the planet called Hoxxes. This is the same planet the dwarves’ corporation is currently invading for their own profit.
The players must take out machines that shoot lasers, spawn bombs in the vicinity of players and send waves of bots after the team. This mission was inherently difficult, even for an experienced player like myself.
Ghost Ship Games, the creator and developer of “Deep Rock Galactic”, released an update to this after having the mission type released for a few weeks. The update brought down the intensity of the mission as even developers were concerned about the intensity, even on a ‘Hazard 1’ difficulty level.
Season two has been previewed to be a new level of horror in the game. The preview video shows what sounds like a dwarf calling for help but no one is seen. Fans believe that this may be a mimic bot or even old sound logs of the in-game myth, Karl, luring the team into a trap.
Season two releases April 28 on Steam and May 5 everywhere else. Fans are hoping for new enemies and new difficulties for season two. As always, “if you don’t Rock and Stone or you ain’t coming home!”