Deep Rock Galactic Season 5: Digging Deeper

     Deep Rock Galactic is a game that, if you're a real co-op multiplayer gamer, needs no introduction. But if you aren't one, here's the basic premise: You and your dwarf coworkers must descend to the hostile planet of Hoxxes IV in order to carry out missions ordered by your employer, Deep Rock Galactic (which is an interplanetary mining operation). As you execute the orders given by mission control, you and your fellow dwarves must navigate dangerous terrain, combat lethal bug-like enemies, and explore the deep cave networks below the planet's surface.

    I've been a big fan of DRG for a couple of years now, in part to its fun, cooperative gameplay, but also largely due to the incredible art direction and positive fanbase that the game has made for itself. The developer studio, Ghost Ship Games, remains one of the best indie game studios I've known, with very criticism-receptive devs and an overall emphasis on maintaining a positive community through listening to the fans. Additionally, its take on common features in modern gaming, for example Battle Passes, reflects a more passionate and fan-friendly approach to typically exploitative practices in other games. 

Image of Battle Pass UI

    Using the battle pass example, while in most games there are season-exclusive cosmetics and items that are barred behind microtransactions, Deep Rock's battle pass is completely free, only requiring the player to spend time grinding out the pass to reach their objectives rather than paying to get them. And what's more, while in other games, once a season ends, all of the battle pass cosmetics are unattainable for the rest of the gameplay, Deep Rock simply adds any cosmetics that remained locked on the battle pass into the regular loot pool for all future seasons, allowing for players that missed out on previous seasons to have the opportunity to unlock cosmetics from those seasons.

    So, now that the newest season, Drilling Deeper, has been released to play, I was very excited to see what the devs have been cooking! Not only am I not disappointed by the new update, I'm actively very happy with the new additions and quality of life (QOL) changes made to the game. So let me run through some stand-outs from this season real quick!

New Mission Type: Deep Scan

An unearthed Resonance Crystal

    Arguably the biggest addition to this update content-wise was the inclusion of a new mission type: The Deep Scan. As soon as miners touch down upon the landing zone, they are tasked with tracking down the location of three separate Resonance Crystals, which must each be found and equipped with a Resonator in order to progress to the next stage of the mission. The method by which players find these crystals is innovative, if not a little difficult to get a hold on the first time playing. Each player gets an additional interface on the left side of their screen that dictates the distance between themselves and the nearest crystal, which updates every few steps with an increasingly flashing bar that quickens the closer they get to the objective (sort of like a Hot, Warm, Cold method of tracking the crystal).

    Once the three crystals are found, Mission Control sends down the Drillevator, an enormous platform that, once activated, bores straight down into the core of the planet, drilling towards a Morkite Geode- a rock formation filled with precious Morkite Seeds. However, as the platform makes its way down the earth, players have to fight off a constant swarm of the alien enemies as they crawl towards the Drillevator in an attempt to break the device. Once all of the Morkite Seeds are collected, the Drillevator deploys a set of jet boots for the miners, allowing them to make their escape back to the rescue pod at the end of the mission by flying straight up through the pit the Drillevator created, ending the Deep Scan mission type.

    As I mentioned earlier, the first time I played this mission type I was a little lost, since the Deep Scan mission is probably the most complex mission type in the game, as of the time of writing. While in other missions you just have to mine a certain amount of an ore, kill a certain amount of boss enemies, or collect a certain amount of objects, the Deep Scan mission is one of very few multi-stage mission types (The other three being Salvage missions, Industrial Sabotage missions, and Escort missions). So naturally it is a little confusing to suddenly have a brand new interface on the side of the screen that makes little sense to you (at least if you didn't look up the instructions like me, oops lol).

    However, once I got the hang of it, it was fun stumbling around the cave system with my friends in order to see who could find the Resonance Crystals first! And of course, the Drillevator sequence was a blast for me and my buddies, who could never tire of killing wave after wave of pesky spider aliens. By far my favorite part of this mission was the jet boot escape at the very end of the mission! While it wasn't super interesting from a gameplay perspective, it felt really cool and immersive and sort of cinematic, with the dwarf squad ascending from the pit we dug by flying past the aliens that were coming down the pit. I'm not sure if I make sense when I say that this mission felt like it was very carefully directed by the game designers- my gaming experience felt less like a case of "okay time to do this objective" and more immersive, as if I were actually working for the Deep Rock mining company and this was part of the extraction process. Overall, super cool new mission!

Hazard 5+

    Another important feature that was added to the new season of DRG was the option to scale the difficulty of missions even further than previously possible. While the game is by no means a cakewalk, I often found myself playing on the second hardest difficulty as a "relaxed" experience, where I would still be playing against decently hard enemies, damage, and cave generation, but I wouldn't be stressed or as-actively engaged as I would be in other games. Despite being the second hardest difficulty, I would be able to play the game with my brain essentially turned off, going on autopilot. Playing on Hazard 5, the hardest difficulty possible, would offer more of a challenge and require my full attention when playing, but I often found that the difficulty spike between Hazard 4 and 5 was just too great to be able to have a balanced gaming experience.

Cool Ass Picture of Last Season

    Therefore, the new overhaul of the difficulty system for the game was an unexpected yet welcomed feature of the new season- now offering not only an infinitely scaling difficulty system, providing a proper challenge to seasoned players, but also changing the way that difficulty levels work, allowing for customization of which variables players want to be harder, rather than dialing every factor to 100. For example, while I enjoy playing at a higher difficulty to experience bigger waves of enemies, the increased spawning of special threats, and increased cave generation complexity, I've always hated how playing at a higher difficulty meant normal attacks dealt more damage to me than I was accustomed to, which would often lead to me miscalculating risks I would take and screwing over my missions. Now, I can actively control the level of damage I take from attacks while not affecting the spawn rate of enemies, allowing me to still enjoy mowing down swarms of aliens without worrying about getting bitten every now and then.

Season Reactivation

    The final feature of this update I'm going to talk about is the Season Reactivation mechanic that was added this season (because this blog post is already long enough lol). Ghost Ship Games, in my opinion, is one of the leading game studios in game development simply due to their consistent consideration for the fan experience with each feature they add to the game. While other games with battle passes are looking to squeeze out some extra cash from their player base with limited time cosmetics, taking advantage of players' FOMO, the DRG developers have, as previously mentioned, provided a completely free battle pass with no time-exclusive content, allowing players the ability to unlock everything they want at their own pace. While other game developers work on DLC packs that lock new game content behind a paywall, the only DLC packs that DRG offers are purely cosmetic, allowing a player to show support for the developers simply because they want to, rather than because they want to try out new content in the game.

Here's one season I would turn off personally: Season 3's Rockpox!

    Because of developers making decisions like the one I mentioned (and more) I have always deeply respected and appreciated the developer over at Ghost Ship Games for continuing to innovate and provide their players with features that every game should offer. That's why I was pleasantly surprised by their addition of the Season Reactivation mechanic, which was likely a big technical undertaking by the dev team to simply improve the player experience. Now players have the option of playing through only one season's content (as opposed to playing with all seasons content by default) in order to grind their way through that season's past battle pass, or instead opt to turn off a particularly pesky season's content so they don't have to play with features they don't enjoy.

    The sheer customization of the player experience is unlike any I've seen in other games. Hopefully more up-and-coming indie games see what has been working for Deep Rock Galactic and adopting their ideas into their own games' development, because the consideration and care for the players that Ghost Ship Games exhibits should be considered a new industry standard. In short: Glory to Deep Rock Galactic, and may their success last for a hundred more seasons!