There’s an oddly momentous feeling to the idea of Deep Rock Galactic Survivor introducing a new class to the DRG universe. After all, the original four have been the only ones we needed for eight years now. What can you possibly add to a quartet that’s stood the test of time for that long?
I love that developer Funday Games’ answer is: “What if a dwarf had a car?”
Introduced in the new Heavy Duty expansion, the Demolisher class has a full complement of new weapons and three subclasses, just like the core four. But unlike them, he thought to bring an industrial vehicle that’s basically like if you tried to turn a go-kart into a bulldozer.
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Perhaps stupidly, even after seeing that this was the new guy’s USP, I didn’t actually expect him to control like a car. But nope, sure enough, instead of running around freely like the other dwarves, he has to accelerate, reverse, manage his turning radius, and in my experience do a lot of dodgy three point turns. (And yes, the car does do a little beeping noise like a truck when it reverses. Adorable.)
You really feel the weight and heft of the vehicle as you play—and that has its advantages too. Smaller enemies can be rammed out of the way with the front plow, for example, and it also mines through terrain faster than a pickaxe.
All together it completely changes the feel of Survivor’s action. After 150 hours with the game, I’m suddenly having to retrain my muscle memory. No longer is survival about juking around the hordes, slipping through gaps in their formations and setting off explosive bugs with agile feints. The car’s not only not nimble enough for that, it’s too wide and bulky.
Instead, I’m looking for the parts of the swarm free enough of the bigger, tougher bugs that I can simply slam my way through, and planning out wide, circular routes through the level that avoid the dangers of sharp changes of direction and take advantage of faster digging.
I’m picking health and armour upgrades far more than I would normally, and artifacts that trigger on damage, so I can safely spend more time in the thick of it. That lets me get the most out of the Demolisher’s new weapons, which largely focus on close-range damage and leaving a path of destruction behind you. Carving a path through the hordes laying elemental mines as I go and blasting a jet of flame out the back is a whole new kind of power fantasy for the game.
Also included in the expansion is a new biome, Glacial Strata. It isn’t too revolutionary—slippery ice, falling icicles, and frost exploders mix things up a bit but feel like light touch features compared to the challenges you face in some of the existing zones. Retroactively adding a Glacial Strata level to every existing sector certainly gives you a lot of new levels to work through, though, which is very welcome.
Much more exciting is the new mode: Egg Hunt. The objective is to… well, hunt for eggs buried in each level, and bring them back one at a time to a containment cell in the centre of the map. It’s a different rhythm to Elimination—rather than systematically clearing the map, I’m making repeat trips back and forth, encouraging me to carve out useful repeat routes.
My immediate instinct is to make things as easy for myself as possible by digging out all the eggs and a clear path in one big loop and then going back for each one. But that kind of min-maxing has its own drawbacks—every egg triggers a swarm event when uncovered, which can quickly get overwhelming if stacked up at once. There’s definitely some nuanced strategy there to (ahem) dig into.
The best bit, though, is the final sprint. Once you’ve deposited three eggs in a level, the drop pod arrives—but instead of leaving right away, you can stick around to try to grab the last two remaining eggs for extra rewards. The pod does wait a bit longer than normal—two minutes rather than 30 seconds—but it’s still a frantic dash to get them without being left behind that adds a fun burst of adrenaline to each level.
After three stages and a lot of eggs comes the finale: a giant worm monster bursts out of the ground and rudely demands you give them all back. It’s another refreshing change of pace—while Elimination’s dreadnoughts chase you around, making movement speed and mining bonuses a must, Egg Hunt’s brood nexus boss is rooted to the ground, presenting a whole different kind of challenge.
If I simply circle it pumping shots into its fleshy body, I get quickly swamped by the swarm, especially as it summons its own extra bodyguards. Sneakier tactics are required. One method is to keep doing big loops, drawing the horde away before sprinting back to get some damage in, and then running off again.
Alternatively, I’ve had success focusing on weapons with enough range and piercing to penetrate through the swarm to the fleshy boss within, and then sticking close, weaving through the bugs and trusting to some health and armour upgrades to keep me alive.
As a veteran of so much time with the game already, it’s thrilling to be in this kind of headspace again, trying to crack new strategies and playstyles. And for the price—$10 / £9—it’s a huge amount of extra content for a game already bursting with reasons to replay.
Those of you pinching pennies aren’t left out, though—alongside the DLC, a new patch has launched, adding a robust endless mode for true sickos, an expanded tag system for weapons that comes with new upgrades and overclocks, and new mastery milestones that allow you to earn yet more bonus stats to help you on your runs.
If anyone feared that coming out of early access would slow down the pace of support for gaming’s best Vampire Survivors-like, they can certainly put those worries to rest this week. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got another 150 hours to fit in somewhere.
