Deep Rock Galactic

Deep Rock Galactic is a cooperative first-person shooter. Gameplay primarily centers around missions that take place in fully destructible, procedurally generated cave systems; each with varying terrain generation, objectives, hazards, and enemies depending on the selected biome and mission type. Upon landing in a cave via an orbital drop pod, players must complete a mission objective, such as mining resources or repairing abandoned equipment. While doing so, they must fight hostile aliens, manage a limited supply of ammunition, and navigate the maze-like environment.

Once the objective is completed, players can start an extraction sequence, where players must backtrack through the cave to an escape pod in order to safely exit along with all collected resources. Optional secondary objectives are also available, such as collecting a number of specific objects or mining enough of a unique mineral, offering players additional credits (in-game currency) and experience. Players can play missions solo or with up to three other players. Before starting each mission, players choose one of four playable classes: Scout, Engineer, Gunner, and Driller.

Deep Rock Galactic is the first game developed by Ghost Ship Games. The studio was founded in the spring of 2016 by a team of five former employees of Press Play after that studio's closure. The company was funded by the Danish government's Cap Nova, which focused on video games. CEO Søren Lundgaard was invited to join the company shortly after by game director Mikkel Martin Pedersen.

Lundgaard and Pedersen had previously been co-workers at the defunct game studio Deadline Games for over ten years. The team has stated that they took inspiration from both Minecraft and Left 4 Dead, and felt that a problem with Left 4 Dead was that it was unbalanced for new players who wanted to play with veterans, instead wanting to design a game where all teammates would be on even footing regardless of experience.

The early access version of Deep Rock Galactic was received positively by critics, who praised the game's atmosphere and challenging levels. Multiple reviewers compared parts of the experience to Left 4 Dead. Following Early Access, the full version of Deep Rock Galactic received "generally favorable reviews" according to review aggregator platform Metacritic.

Nic Reuben of Rock, Paper, Shotgun liked how the game's classes meshed together, saying that "each class is both viable and enjoyable". Matt Miller of Game Informer appreciated how the unique secondary objectives gave the game a risk/reward dynamic. Phil Iwaniuk, writing for PC Gamer, enjoyed the tension that the exfiltration phase brought to each mission, and the persistent upgrades that let the player customize their dwarf. Leana Hafer of IGN praised the distinct abilities of each of the dwarves and the low-poly visual style, but criticized the game for its connection issues, saying "About one in every five missions, I’d run into connection issues that could cause other players to lag severely and disconnect."