Rock and stone and lots of cash.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor released in early access in February, and developer Funday Games and Ghost Ship Publishing have announced that the spinoff of Deep Rock Galactic has now sold over a million copies. A Vampire Survivors-inspired take on the joys of dwarves space-mining in extreme peril, the initial reception has been positive and left our own Robin Valentine "much more hooked than I expected."
It's good times for fans of beards, with the OG Deep Rock Galactic having now sold over 8 million copies itself and gearing up for its fifth season (which starts in June). Deep Rock Galactic released in early access in 2018, moving into full release in 2020, since when it's followed a live service style seasonal model and gone from strength to strength. Deep Rock Galactic Survivors is published by Ghost Ship Games, a publishing label established after the original game's success, and there's more to come: cooperative roguelike spinoff Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core will enter Early Access later this year.
The direction the original game has taken is proving consistently popular among the playerbase, and season 5 will allow players to dust off the older seasons and play them in their own dedicated game modes (previously they'd been mothballed once the season was over). Season 5 is called "Drilling Deeper" and features a new deep scan mission that sees the hardy dwarves going further than ever before in search of treasure, using new tools to locate the loot and then going in with the excellently named Drillavator. Needless to say, the depths are not just filled with lovely things.
Getting back to Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, the news of a million sales (which was actually announced in March) came alongside some other impressive dwarven stats. Players have managed to put in 13,626,025 hours since launch, spread across 94,220,323 miners (36,850,079 of whom were never to return). Together they've annihilated 6,652,132 Dreadnoughts, mined 9,037,541,252 gold and 3,886,238,739 Nitra, although only 3.7% of all players (36,413) have managed to complete a Hazard 5 mission (the hardest difficulty).
The game's latest "living roadmap" shows what players can expect in the future, which in the short term includes new biome goals for the Salt Pits, new elites, a new boss, and UI improvements, with other new missions, monsters and weapons coming further down the road. "We hope this will sate your ravenous appetite for Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor content," says Funday Games but, going out on a limb, I think these dwarves are going to take anything thrown at them, and come back demanding more.
