Available on PC (Windows, macOS); Consoles (Steam Deck, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
I have but three words:
ROCK AND STONE.
This game is. Just. So. Fun. You’ve got upgrades, a robot friend (or two!), mining, dwarves, guns, and bugs! There are plenty of things to be done, and in many ways. And, you can customize your characters— yep, that’s right, plural— to be as funky or as beardy as you want.
In Deep Rock Galactic, you work as a space miner for a company called Deep Rock Galactic. Your job? Go to different planets to mine. Simple enough, right? Not.
These planets are overrun by all sorts of critters and riddled with environmental dangers. Still, you get to choose the missions and the difficulty, and you’ve got full freedom in choosing your own loadout. When you start off, you will not have much. But as you play on, you can use the resources you’ve gathered to unlock more things. And this includes cosmetic items!
This is so F2P-friendly that there’s no need to buy any DLCs or cosmetics because you’re spoiled for choice even without shelling out more real-life money. However, there’s no “plot”. It’s just you, the mines, capitalism, and survival. If you’re looking for something where you can just turn your brain off and finish some tasks while occasionally being in danger, then this is the perfect game for you.
Deep Rock Galactic feels like a horror game when played solo. There have been moments where, in the middle of playing, I’ll hear skittering and not know where it’s coming from, only for the bug to be right in my face when I turn around. And because it’s dark and you’re alone, you can only rely on your own flares to light up the path. But the devs also accounted for the difficulty of playing solo, so you actually have a drone companion that helps you with hard-to-reach places. You can direct the drone to mine, and it helps you attack bugs. Bosco has been the MVP for some solo missions; he’s saved me more times than I can count.
But this game, oh boy, it skyrockets in quality when you play with other people. Be it friends or random queuing, it’s just such a blast to play. I prefer playing with friends while being in a Discord call. Just being able to coordinate and strategize what to do for some missions is such a relief. You don’t know what you’re missing if you’re only playing this game solo.
There are four roles to choose from: Driller, Engineer, Gunner, and Scout. Each role is provided with three primary weapons and three secondary weapons, and they all come with a different support tool and traversal tool.
I chose Driller when I first started playing. It’s a great class; you can change the course of the game if you can map out a good way to get across the map to finish objectives. But it’s a struggle to play solo because of the lack of range.
Engineer is my least favorite because I suck at placing down platforms, and this role makes me feel panicky, as though I were surrounded by bugs and near death. This is the easiest one to mess up. However, the turrets are very appealing and help a lot in solo games.
Gunner is fantastic in a group game and horrible in a solo game unless you don’t mind being slow as hell. I enjoy shooting things up and just playing music while I mine, so I don’t mind this as much. And I do prefer the Gunner’s traversal tool over the Engineer’s.
Then there’s the Scout. Man, this one? I recommend you do this one last. Otherwise, you’ll just want to zip around (like Spider-Man), clear objectives, and never move on. One con with this is that when you play solo, you’ll be the weakest in terms of combat and have to keep running away from it. In a co-op game, you’ll have to make sure you haven’t completely left the group to dry in terms of traversing the map. Find the best path to everything, including back to the ship. While zipping around the whole place is fun, don’t forget to do your job because Management surely won’t!
My main complaint about this game is that it doesn’t have an anti-bug mode. So anyone who has some type of insect phobia will have to sit this one out. But if that’s the exposure therapy you need, then hop on the ship, miner!
All in all, this is worth gaining a thousand laughs and many memories. It has a nice, lively community (we find each other every time we say “rock and stone”, or any similar phrase). This game isn’t region-locked either, so you can play with your friends no matter where they are. As someone who plays with people from all over the world, that’s always a plus in my book.
If you like games like Helldivers 2 or Risk of Rain 2, then you might like Deep Rock Galactic!
