Man, Deep Rock Galactic had been on my radar for ages, and worse yet, I’d even owned it for a couple of years now. We’ll get to my excuses later…
You play as a fairly archetypal dwarf (read: loves precious gems and rare ores, drinking, and long walks in dark caverns) who teams up with his dwarven miner buddies to work for the Deep Rock Galactic company. As hinted at by the “galactic” part, this is a sci-fi twist on those fantasy dwarf tropes, which of course means you and your crew have to defend yourselves against a variety of subterranean alien creatures, and with appropriately sick guns and other sci-fi equipment. I mean, I already kind of love dwarves, plus like every Warhammer 40,000 fan who got started back in the first edition, I have an extra special place in my heart for squatty space dwarves. I’ve also talked a bit about my fondness for voxel based mining in games like Minecraft and Astroneer, so yeah, this game sounded right up my alley.
“Gold! Man, I love how quick pulling out and swinging your pick axe is.”
Continuing with some of the gameplay tropes I mentioned with Helldivers 2, DRG is a session based first-person cooperative game which has you and your crew pick a mission with particular difficulty and set of objectives and get blasted down into a procedurally generated cave system to complete it. Some of the time this is almost pure mining, but even when it isn’t, you’ll always be mining, if only to gather some extra resources and create new routes to move through. As mentioned, there are obstacles to contend with in the form of attacks by the not-so-friendly denizens of these caves, environmental obstacles, navigational challenges, and even the darkness itself. A lot of these obstacles are specifically designed to allow for horde mode style defensive situations – requiring one person to slowly activate a device, or having to guard a device while it completes a process, for instance. Of course, there are random enemy rushes as well, just to spice things up a bit.
Oh, and the game is class-based, with 4 classes: a fast moving scout who is able to grapple around and shoot flares, an engineer who can deploy sentry turrets and build platforms, the gunner who carries massive weapons and can also deploy ziplines, and finally the driller, who has a super badass mining drill that shreds through terrain. In between missions there is a progression system that allows you to upgrade your dwarf’s skills and equipment, purchase cosmetics, etc. This is all done somewhat diegetically via an in-game hub area. Standard stuff, though I don’t mean to say that in a derogatory way, as DRG is definitely one of the games that helped refine this genre.
“But sometimes you need to clear out a few bugs first…”
One odd thing about DRG’s place in the genre is actually its business model. It definitely feels like a “live service game” – it’s frequently updated and its progression systems are designed in such a way that you’ll want to keep playing for months on end, especially with the addition of seasonal battle passes. Yet, the battle passes are totally free, there are zero micro-transactions, and the only DLC is a handful of packs of themed cosmetics that are entirely unnecessary. 🤔
Despite its relatively low fidelity, its stylized graphics and the general level of polish really help elevate it. In fact, one of the things I personally like the most about Deep Rock Galactic, both in terms of presentation and gameplay, is its attention to detail, with a lot of neat and probably totally unnecessary little features, and some immersive and sometimes fun to play with physics. I also love the lighting, with its use of bright colors, often from the numerous luminescent plants and minerals featured in each biome (and more games need throwable glowsticks!) contrasting with the ever present darkness that comes with being god knows how deep below the planet’s surface. In short, the developers went hard!
“Home sweet home! Back on the space rig hub area.”
Another aspect of DRG that definitely deserves a mention is the community. While I haven’t played many games with randoms, judging mostly from encounters on forums, Reddit, Discord, and the like, the DRG community has a highly infectious fun spirit founded on the light-roleplay elements of a mutual love of slamming back a space beer and greedily digging up some precious alien gems while obnoxiously shouting “ROCK AND STONE!” at literally every opportunity. Like Helldivers 2, the fact that the game is 100% PvE and players are pretty much always united in cooperation probably goes a long way towards enforcing this more fun and friendly atmosphere. Regardless of the reason, it feels like a breath of fresh air to encounter such generally positive players.
Unfortunately, my core gaming friends don’t number amongst them, with none of them seeming all too interested in DRG, at least not while I was. I eventually bought a copy when I joined a local gaming Discord community that had regular nightly DRG sessions for a while, though I never actually ended up joining them. It wasn’t until a friend who I’d never really gamed with mentioned that he’d been playing it that I finally dove in. He gave me a crash course on the basics and we completed a small handful of missions together, and while it was fun for me, I got the sense that he had already seen enough of DRG and had really only fired it up for my benefit. I continued on solo, which is a very different experience, but DRG is perhaps even less enjoyable of a solo experience than Helldivers 2 is. It’s totally doable, but the caverns are a little creepier, the enemies a little scarier, and missing all of the casual voice chat punctuated by occasional shouting during those more tense moments takes away from the entire gameplay experience. In any case, it always feels pretty obvious that these types of games were designed around multiplayer when you try to play them alone. Thankfully, DRG gives you an upgradable robot companion to assist you when running solo, which does help on the gameplay front, at least.
“I’m not really sure what this ugly thing is, but it dies just the same.”
So, not unlike Darktide and Helldivers 2, I regretfully have to leave Deep Rock Galactic behind before really spending all that much quality time with it, despite how much I really love about the game. If a true sequel is ever released (A spinoff, Rogue Core, is on its way soon!) I may jump in nice and early, crew or not!
Next up is a… *gasp* single player game all about mining, and all from the comfort of your own backyard!
A Game About Digging A Hole is… well, yeah, okay, the premise is the game doesn’t go much further than its title. You buy a new house on the cheap after being told there’s buried treasure there, move in, roll up your sleeves, and get to work. You’ve spray painted a big red X in the middle of your backyard, you’ve got your trusty shovel, and evidently, nothing but time on your hands. No day job? Man, this already feels like an amazing fantasy!
I got turned onto this game by hearing Anthony talk about it on Rebel FM, and the idea of an easy to pick up and play, quick to complete single player voxel based mining game had me intrigued, given that many of these types of games are multiplayer (like Deep Rock Galactic) and/or massive live service game slogs (also like Deep Rock Galactic.) Bought!
“Things start modestly enough…”
AGADAH’s gameplay loop is far from complex. You dig… a lot. Your energy depletes as you dig. You find the occasional valuable chunk of ore, gemstone, and other interesting junk and throw them in your inventory. Your inventory fills up and/or your energy starts to run out. You head back into your garage (the command and control of your grand yard destruction project) and sell these rare resources to get money to upgrade your equipment (which is all abstracted for instant gratification, of course.) Then head back out again. Eventually you’ll move from your shovel to a huge mining drill, you’ll get a jetpack to make going up and down the insanely deep hole you’ve dug easier, you’ll be able to upgrade your inventory size and your battery reserves, and even purchase some dynamite to spice things up a bit. Essentially, all things to make your job easier, and each run back down into the hole last a little longer. Of course, the deeper you go, the more dirt you’ll need to shift, the more obstacles you encounter, and the darker it gets. Naturally, this is offset by more and more valuable resources, and thus, more and more money.
It’s a seemingly very chill game that, for me and I suspect quite a lot of others, scratches that same addictive itch as games like PowerWash Simulator. You have an easy, repetitive task, yet somehow it’s just rewarding enough to keep you cleaning every last goddamn surface area on the level, or in this case, digging every last speck of loose dirt from your backyard. It’s also oddly charming, with its simple graphical style and its equally simple gameplay loop that conceals a very well-considered design. One that, as someone who has dabbled in game design myself, I’m jealous of the developer for coming up, especially given that they apparently just casually tossed this game together while on a work break for a few weeks. Anyway, eventually you reach the bottom of the hole and… well, I won’t spoil whether you find your promised treasure or not, but let’s just say the end of the game is definitely worthy of a fun discussion.
“But it’s easy to get carried away.”
One interesting thing about A Game About Digging A Hole is its achievement system. I didn’t get a single achievement until I beat the game. Indeed, I don’t believe you can get many of them without at least a second playthrough, at which point you’ll discover that not only have you probably already met the requirements to earn some more of them, but you can even track them via an in-game display in your garage. The game hooked me enough that I almost immediately started going into a second playthrough to get some of the achievements I missed without much of a second thought, but then I remembered that I don’t actually care that much about Steam achievements and snapped the hell out of it.
If this sounds at all like something you’d be into, then I’d recommend it. It’s 5 bucks and a few hours well spent.