For transparency’s sake I’m disclosing that I’ve been enjoying DRG Survivor a decent amount, and am almost certainly going to play a decent chunk of hours more than the 30 I’ve already played. However, I’m going to absolutely slate it in this review for its lack of design ambition, so, while you can certainly have fun with it, I think it’s got a long way to go (and it remains unclear if it’ll ever even get there) for it to be the kind of survivorlike game that you can sink an ungodly amount of time into.

It feels a bit "yeh durr?" to say this game's too much like original Deep Rock Galactic (DRG), like what exactly was I expecting other than that? But while Survivor beautifully emulates the DRG experience in its own survivorlike way, it still feels like it doesn't have anything of its own identity as a standalone game. It has all the quaint cosyness of DRG as you cheerfully (or frantically) chip your way through walls and minerals, brightly coloured rocks flying everywhere as you go, but that classic DRG cheeriness is the cover over the cheap knockoff vibe that pervades the rest of the game.

The survivorlike genre is known for its jazzy weapon designs, largely thanks to genre titan Vampire Survivors (VS), and given that this genre’s gameplay is so simplistic then you’ve got to get the weapons right because there’s not much else for the player to focus on while playing. Unfortunately, DRG’s armoury has been mimicked over as pale likenesses of their originals. Take the Gunner's autocannon for instance: in DRG it satisfyingly thuds out explosive tungsten rods that make these chunky booms on impact. Comparatively, Survivor’s version has an extremely basic .png standard bullet image representing its projectile. No explosion, no thuds, no booms. Similarly, the Scout's Zhukov and the Gunner's Burst Pistol look essentially identical when you fire them, save for the directions they fire in. Why not give one a tracer bullet effect to differentiate them? And then there’re the guns that don’t even behave like the ones they’re supposed to be replicating. The Driller’s Flamethrower and Corrosion Pump are both just rotating particle effects when, ironically, they were already perfectly viable designs from the original DRG that could’ve just been 1:1 copied over and would’ve been satisfyingly familiar while still fulfilling the interesting-to-use requirement of survivorlike gunplay.

I acknowledge that the source material (DRG Original) doesn’t focus on weapon effects much, but it’s like the developers haven’t even tried to have fun with the guns. You don’t have to go the way of Vampire Survivors (VS) and have every weapon behave like a firework of colour and light, but you’ve still got to give the guns some soul. I play survivorlikes to have my primate brain stimulated with flashing lights and poppity pings, and Survivor just isn’t serving those. Credit to the developers, the Voltaic Stun Sweeper is a great example of the kind of direction I’d like to see all the weapon design go in: good usage of effects and sparkle to give it its own zing, and interesting overclock options that really alter the feel of the weapon. More like this please!

Turning to build creativity in Survivor, I’ve always felt that Vampire Survivors nailed the weapon progression and build design ideas that made it the genre’s founding father. Take a weapon, give it a limited number of linear level progression, give it some crazy end evolution to make it feel powerful and nutty, watch the players pog off as the particle effects fly.

DRG Survivor has tried to take the direction I’ve seen some others go where you don’t get a set weapon path and instead you get to design your weapons as you go along. Conceptually, this has so many imaginative possibilities, but they end up maddeningly squandered in execution. Do I want +Damage or +Reload Speed? Do I want +Potency (whatever that is, there’s no tooltip for it in game) or +Fire Rate? I’m constantly flicking over to the weapon stats page to see if the reload speed stat has come down enough to justify stopping taking more reload speed reductions. It just isn’t as fun. What made build design work in VS is that you get a weapon that you know gets exponentially better with a given set of passives, then you find other things that also get utterly cracked with those same sets of passive, mix those actives and passives together and watch the mayhem unfold. It’s a simple system that offers you a sandbox of chaos that’s exquisitely rewarding to play in and almost never fails to deliver something interesting even if it doesn’t always meet the power requirements. DRG Survivor doesn’t have to be that, far from it, but at least make more overclocks that feel like they’re altering the way a given weapon plays in cool and unique ways.

Worst of all, Survivor’s lack of interesting weapon and build design is compounded with its other big problem: there’s waaaaaay too much grind. You do virtually identical runs for every little upgrade in this game: increasing weapon power, increasing class power, increasing map bonuses, special rule runs. Sure, some are shorter and some are longer, some you only get one weapon in, others you have to work around other restrictions, but you’ll be playing the exact same experience from the first mission you play all the way through with not a single iota of variety. Gameplay desperately needs more mission variety, enemy variety and build variety. Despite the grind, the developers have managed to make almost every run a challenge to complete – you never really feel like you’re walking over it when you’re playing on the right difficulty for your current progression – but you have to grind so many upgrades to ensure you’re able to keep up with the difficulty, and the one mission format the game offers just isn’t engaging enough to tolerate that grind.

Overall, as a spin-off, this was an opportunity to really showcase how the game could look different in this format. Worth noting that Survivor is being developed by a separate studio to DRG, and perhaps Ghost Ship Games (DRG's developers) are holding the reins a little tight on Funday (Survivor’s developers), but, at the moment, it feels like Survivor doesn’t have enough to say for itself other than being a spin-off. Maybe that’s fine, maybe it’s a money grab, but Ghost Ship have shown they value the player experience and I think it’s disappointing that their game world’s so half-heartedly realised in Survivor's vision.

For transparency’s sake I’m disclosing that I’ve been enjoying DRG Survivor a decent amount, and am almost certainly going to play a decent chunk of hours more than the 30 I’ve already played. However, I’m going to absolutely slate it in this review for its lack of design ambition, so, while you can certainly have fun with it, I think it’s got a long way to go (and it remains unclear if it’ll ever even get there) for it to be the kind of survivorlike game that you can sink an ungodly amount of time into. It feels a bit "yeh durr?" to say this game's too much like original Deep Rock Galactic (DRG), like what exactly was I expecting other than that? But while Survivor beautifully emulates the DRG experience in its own survivorlike way, it still feels like it doesn't have anything of its own identity as a standalone game. It has all the quaint cosyness of DRG as you cheerfully (or frantically) chip your way through walls and minerals, brightly coloured rocks flying everywhere as you go, but that classic DRG cheeriness is the cover over the cheap knockoff vibe that pervades the rest of the game. The survivorlike genre is known for its jazzy weapon designs, largely thanks to genre titan Vampire Survivors (VS), and given that this genre’s gameplay is so simplistic then you’ve got to get the weapons right because there’s not much else for the player to focus on while playing. Unfortunately, DRG’s armoury has been mimicked over as pale likenesses of their originals. Take the Gunner's autocannon for instance: in DRG it satisfyingly thuds out explosive tungsten rods that make these chunky booms on impact. Comparatively, Survivor’s version has an extremely basic .png standard bullet image representing its projectile. No explosion, no thuds, no booms. Similarly, the Scout's Zhukov and the Gunner's Burst Pistol look essentially identical when you fire them, save for the directions they fire in. Why not give one a tracer bullet effect to differentiate them? And then there’re the guns that don’t even behave like the ones they’re supposed to be replicating. The Driller’s Flamethrower and Corrosion Pump are both just rotating particle effects when, ironically, they were already perfectly viable designs from the original DRG that could’ve just been 1:1 copied over and would’ve been satisfyingly familiar while still fulfilling the interesting-to-use requirement of survivorlike gunplay. I acknowledge that the source material (DRG Original) doesn’t focus on weapon effects much, but it’s like the developers haven’t even tried to have fun with the guns. You don’t have to go the way of Vampire Survivors (VS) and have every weapon behave like a firework of colour and light, but you’ve still got to give the guns some soul. I play survivorlikes to have my primate brain stimulated with flashing lights and poppity pings, and Survivor just isn’t serving those. Credit to the developers, the Voltaic Stun Sweeper is a great example of the kind of direction I’d like to see all the weapon design go in: good usage of effects and sparkle to give it its own zing, and interesting overclock options that really alter the feel of the weapon. More like this please! Turning to build creativity in Survivor, I’ve always felt that Vampire Survivors nailed the weapon progression and build design ideas that made it the genre’s founding father. Take a weapon, give it a limited number of linear level progression, give it some crazy end evolution to make it feel powerful and nutty, watch the players pog off as the particle effects fly. DRG Survivor has tried to take the direction I’ve seen some others go where you don’t get a set weapon path and instead you get to design your weapons as you go along. Conceptually, this has so many imaginative possibilities, but they end up maddeningly squandered in execution. Do I want +Damage or +Reload Speed? Do I want +Potency (whatever that is, there’s no tooltip for it in game) or +Fire Rate? I’m constantly flicking over to the weapon stats page to see if the reload speed stat has come down enough to justify stopping taking more reload speed reductions. It just isn’t as fun. What made build design work in VS is that you get a weapon that you know gets exponentially better with a given set of passives, then you find other things that also get utterly cracked with those same sets of passive, mix those actives and passives together and watch the mayhem unfold. It’s a simple system that offers you a sandbox of chaos that’s exquisitely rewarding to play in and almost never fails to deliver something interesting even if it doesn’t always meet the power requirements. DRG Survivor doesn’t have to be that, far from it, but at least make more overclocks that feel like they’re altering the way a given weapon plays in cool and unique ways. Worst of all, Survivor’s lack of interesting weapon and build design is compounded with its other big problem: there’s [i]waaaaaay[/i] too much grind. You do virtually identical runs for every little upgrade in this game: increasing weapon power, increasing class power, increasing map bonuses, special rule runs. Sure, some are shorter and some are longer, some you only get one weapon in, others you have to work around other restrictions, but you’ll be playing the exact same experience from the first mission you play all the way through with not a single iota of variety. Gameplay desperately needs more mission variety, enemy variety and build variety. Despite the grind, the developers have managed to make almost every run a challenge to complete – you never really feel like you’re walking over it when you’re playing on the right difficulty for your current progression – but you have to grind so many upgrades to ensure you’re able to keep up with the difficulty, and the one mission format the game offers just isn’t engaging enough to tolerate that grind. Overall, as a spin-off, this was an opportunity to really showcase how the game could look different in this format. Worth noting that Survivor is being developed by a separate studio to DRG, and perhaps Ghost Ship Games (DRG's developers) are holding the reins a little tight on Funday (Survivor’s developers), but, at the moment, it feels like Survivor doesn’t have enough to say for itself other than being a spin-off. Maybe that’s fine, maybe it’s a money grab, but Ghost Ship have shown they value the player experience and I think it’s disappointing that their game world’s so half-heartedly realised in Survivor's vision.