Deep Rock Galactic Survivors devs were alarmed the roguelike wander can also now now not sell, however thankfully they beget “one of the indispensable most active communities on this planet”

The developers of Deep Rock Galactic Survivor had significant concerns about implementing a roguelike adventure in the now-expanding cooperative shooter, but fortunately for them, the inebriated dwarves dedicated to mining interstellar gems are a highly enthusiastic and loyal crowd.

As the title suggests, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor is an auto-shooting top-down roguelike akin to Vampire Survivors. The unique twist in the DRG universe is that players take on the roles of dwarves navigating procedurally generated caves while dodging extraterrestrial creatures and manually extracting precious resources.

“We were quite apprehensive,” noted game director Anders Leicht Rohde in an interview with Edge Magazine’s latest issue, available now. “We noticed this genre rapidly gaining popularity. Some games broke through the noise and thrived – but there’s a sharp drop-off after the top five.”

With a plethora of Survivors-like games saturating online platforms daily, Rohde felt the need to act swiftly, leading to the game’s announcement just six months following a meeting between developer Funday Games and the founders of Ghost Ship Games. “[Ghost Ship Games] boasts one of the most vibrant communities globally, and they yearned for a new experience,” he explained. “We received an overwhelming number of wishlists,” which surprisingly eased everyone’s concerns about entering a crowded subgenre.

Rohde is certainly not mistaken. If you had any doubts regarding how connected the DRG fanbase is, just look at the $380,000 that Deep Rock Galactic enthusiasts raised in just one day to fund mugs that will cost around $85.

While Vampire Survivors may be the cornerstone of the subgenre, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor drew inspiration from various emerging titles too. “We dissected other games into specific features. For example, ‘we want this mechanic from Soulstones Survivor, and this atmosphere from Rogue: Genesia…’ It wasn’t solely about Vampire Survivors,” he continued. “There were four or five key reference games.”

Deep Rock Galactic Survivor is currently in early access but already features three distinct biomes and over 40 different weapons.

A Deep Rock Galactic player transitioned to a real-life explosives miner as “a direct outcome” of the “silly little dwarf game.”