Games

Did you know you can save Doretta's head in the Escort Duty missions? I make it my goal to always return home with her. No dwarf (or machine) left behind!

Deep Rock Galactic is my second-most played game on Steam, with about 546 hours. Which may not seem like a lot for you hardcore gamers, but with almost 3,600 games in my Steam library, it's impressive that I've put that much time into a single game. Their Halloween event just wrapped up this morning, so apologies for the Halloween decorations in some of these screenshots.

For the uninitiated, Deep Rock Galactic is an FPS bug-shooting and resource-gathering game, with dwarves as the playable characters. Except you're on a space station, mining minerals from Hoxxes IV, a scorched, tidally-locked planet orbiting the blue star Creus. Every mission, you board a drop pod and are dropped deep into the caverns of the planet to accomplish some sort of mining expedition.

You can have up to four players per game, and there are four classes to play as: the Driller, Engineer, Gunner, and Scout. You can play on a team with any combination of classes you want; you're not stuck with just one of each. There are also tons of cosmetics you can deck out your dwarf crew with. Here are each of the classes with my own custom cosmetics:

The Driller specializes in drilling tunnels and igniting alien bugs with his flamethrower:

The Engineer crafts sentry turrets to protect the team and can shoot platforms against the wall for easier vertical climbing:

The Gunner is the tank of the group, laying down heavy suppressive fire, and he can also shoot ziplines across rooms for the team to traverse:

And the Scout is the lightweight, able to travel quickly across the caves with his personal zipline and illuminate the darkest rooms with a powerful flare gun:

As you can tell, I've sampled all the classes, but I play almost exclusively as the Gunner. It's a running joke among my friends that I'm gold-obsessed (because I'm always making them harvest all the gold they can find in each mission), so I leaned into it and decked out my gunner in all gold. He even juggles a couple gold nuggets at the end of each mission.

There are nine separate types of missions to play, scattered randomly across 10 diverse cavernous regions within the planet.

You can either select random missions to play, or you can pick an assignment from the Assignment Board, which will have a series of specific missions you need to accomplish in order to achieve the assignment and collect its rewards. There is always a Weekly Priority Assignment and a Weekly Core Hunt, both of which have several missions to complete in order to reap the rewards.

There are several robots that aid you in your missions. First and foremost is the Mining Utility Lift Engine (aka M.U.L.E., or "Molly" as the dwarves refer to her). She's a walking mine cart, collecting all the minerals that you mine so you don't have to be weighed down during your missions. There is no limit to the amount of resources she can carry, so call her over to you and regularly empty your bags!

Then there's the APD-B317 (aka "Bosco"), who is a flying drone that helps solo dwarves with their missions. If you're not on a team, Bosco joins you. You can point him at minerals and he will automatically dig them up for you. Pointing at blank walls will cause him to illuminate the space for you. And if threats appear, like alien bugs, he will automatically engage them. Although he has weak firepower, so don't expect him to take on all threats on his own. You can change his appearance and color scheme on the space station, as well as upgrade his abilities, so have fun customizing him for your missions!

Finally, there is the Drilldozer (aka "Doretta" or "Dotty"). She appears only in escort missions, where you have to protect her (and refuel her) while she slowly ventures toward an Ommoran Heartstone.

Doretta will take damage from bug attacks, so make sure you hop on top of her and repair her damage as you go. Once she reaches the Ommoran Heartstone, she will begin drilling into it (when you're ready) and you need to protect her from waves of bug attacks, as well as several defenses from the Heartstone itself.

Don't forget to find and collect her head after the Ommoran Heartstone explodes open! She's still "alive," and I'm sure she appreciates being brought home.

Every mission has a primary objective and an optional objective, which can be seen at the top right of your screen while on the planet. The optional one is usually collecting a particular resource, but not always.

The main mission ranges from harvesting minerals or alien eggs, refining liquid resources, eliminating giant deadly aliens, and salvaging lost equipment left behind by dead teams. Every cave is procedurally generated, so you never play the same area twice. It's always a unique mining expedition.

Deep Rock Galactic has recently started doing seasonal content, and the seasons have brought more missions to the game, including industrial sabotage against a competing dwarven mining company, and deep scans, to pick up rare minerals buried very deep beneath the planet's cave structure. As well as various events to encounter within the missions.

The best part about their seasonal content is that you can always acquire all the season rewards, even if you're just starting the game today. Not only can all unclaimed cosmetics be found in various chests scattered throughout the game, but you can actually select which season you want to play and earn the rewards from that season. You're not forced to jump into the latest season. Which is awesome, because there are story missions connecting all the seasons together. You can play through them relatively quick and get caught up with what's going on with the in-game lore. Or just enjoy the unique events that only happen during specific seasons.

So grab a beer at the bar, dance to some jukebox tunes on the dance floor, kick some barrels into the launch bay (to annoy the bureaucrats in Mission Control), then go explore some bio-diverse regions of Hoxxes IV!