Hello miners,
The Early Access and Game Preview launch has been an exciting journey for us as developers. We feel humbled by the response from our community and would like to extend a big thank you to everyone that has played the game so far. Today, we want to take a step back and look at some of the things that have happened since we went live on February 28th and also look to the future.
Our two main priorities so far have been to listen to our community and fix as many of the issues that you have uncovered as possible, while also adding features and content to really flesh out the experience of playing Deep Rock Galactic. Since launch, we’ve released five big updates, and here are some of the things that have been added:
New cave content
We’ve added a lot of new rooms and corridors to our procedural cave system and started separating them to be unique to different biomes. To add to further differentiation in how the biomes look, feel and play, we’ve added more biome specific flaura, fauna and hazards. These include sticky goo in the Fungus Bogs, electro crystals in the Crystal Caverns, non-hostile flying jellies in the Dense Biozone, and swarmer tunnels where Glyphid Swarmer live.
New enemy - The Mactera Spawn
Our first all-new enemy has been added to the game. The Mactera Spawn is a flying enemy that will attack you from a distance and will pose a threat even if you’re travelling on a zipline.
Single Player Buffs
Our friendly drone Bosco has received a lot of love. He’s better at fighting, at rescuing you from cave leeches, will be less in your way and will now join you when you start hosting a game. This way you can start mining with Bosco assisting you, while you wait for your friends or strangers to join your game.
New animations
We have begun updating the reload and idle animations for the weapons in the game. The Glyphids have also gotten destructible armor that will fall off if you do enough damage. These changes help make the combat feel more juicy!
New death cam and improved Spacerig
When you die, you can now spectate one of your friends who are still alive while you wait to be revived. There have also been things added to the Spacerig. There’s now a trading terminal where you can buy or sell minerals, a button that temporarily removes gravity, tons of new customization options and at least one new dance.
Balance, bugs and tweaks
We reworked and/or buffed some of the weapons for the different classes. The driller’s flamethrower is now much more effective, and the gunner’s gatling gun no longer needs to reload. The experience of getting kicked from a mission or otherwise failing has also been significantly improved. And we’ve fixed a ton of annoying bugs, including the invincible scout bug!
Over the coming months we will be adding more content to add to the replayability and depth of the game while also reworking some of the major systems in the game. We want to have more and different enemy types that will challenge you in new and interesting ways, a more diverse set of challenges unique for each biome, and we’re also looking forward to finally inviting you to the Abyss Bar.
Once again, thank you to all of you who have shared this journey with us so far. And to those of you still waiting to enlist, we hope to see you on Hoxxes IV soon!
Rock and Stone!
-- Ghost Ship Crew
