After a long time spent in the oven and a recent beta playtest, Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core is finally ready for its Steam Early Access release date: May 20, 2026. Its coming to PC only for the time being, but the original has ventures to consoles later in its lifetime, so it might do so too.
While on the surface it might look like DLC material, it’s actually a proper, full-blown spin-off, taking the original’s FPS co-op basis and weaving a roguelike formula around it to become the co-op roguelite FPS for the ages.
What is DRG Rogue Core about?
While it’s being developed by the same studio, Ghost Ship Games, Rogue Core replaces the original’s intrepid miners working their 9-to-5 with a crew of elite Reclaimers, special operatives sent to address problems above a normal space dwarf’s paygrade.
The special problem we’re dealing with in Rogue Core are numerous mining facilities going dark in a phenomenon dubbed “The Greyout”. As the elite security force of the Deep Rock Galactic corporation, you need to enter they Greyout and make the lost facilities operational again to resume exploitation of the multi-biome planet Hoxxes IV.
Unfortunately for you, the Greyout barrier disables technology, so you’ll need to make do with your pickaxe and whatever you manage to claim inside. Good luck.
What does it mean? The gameplay
In practical terms, it means that, while the base remains a first-person co-operative action/shooter game for 1–4 players, with each mission happening in the procedurally generated caves of an alien asteroid, Rogue Core adds roguelite progression to the whole thing. Every run starts you out with nothing but your pickaxe and skills, so you need to acquire weapons and upgrades during the run.
Of course, it’s still a DRG game, so mining *something* will be necessary. In this case, it will be a resource called Expenite. The Reclaimers will be able to process the gathered mineral and cash it in for various upgrades which might well make or break the run.
The narrated trailer Ghost Ship Games released recently explains the idea very well:
Each facility will have multiple levels, accessible only through an elevator you’ll need to find and activate before the aliens native to these layers of the asteroid, the Core Spawn, will gather in numbers large enough to overwhelm you. Get in, get geared up, do your job, get out.
Simple loop, lots of potential.
Home away from home
In the core DRG, our base of operations is the scrappy Space Rig 17 station, but the Reclaimers operate out of the Ramrod, an even scrappier spaceship. Like the rig, it features various facilities to have fun with and get new persistent enhancements.
New classes
Since Reclaimers are from a fully different branch of the fictional corporation employing our character in the DRG games, it was an excellent opportunity for Ghost Ship Game to come up with new classes. They are as follows:
- Guardian – the tank deploying defenses and running aggro
- Falconer – specializes in electric attacks and operates a handy drone which can revive others
- Spotter – the crack shot of the team, he can open target for critical damage, and scan for hostiles
- Retcon – has the ability to zip back to a previous state/location. You know, like Tracer.
- Slicer – the close-combat class, with a big stonkin’ blade on his wrist, high mobility, and a directional anti-projectile shield
You can only have up to four players per run, so one class will remain unrepresented. On the other hand: it creates a bigger team composition diversity, especially when combo’d with randomized weapons and upgrades you’ll find on any given run.
Context: the third in the franchise
Rogue Core is the third video game in the series, and in a way blends its predecessor’s ideas together.
The original was a smash hit, with its co-operative gameplay, lighthearted tone, and delightfully diverse gameplay. It certainly doesn’t hurt that it has reasonable system requirements and is playable solo as easily as it is playable in co-op. It was also undeniably fun to abuse the game’s destructible environments to create new passageways, impromptu stairs, etc.
Then came DRG Survivor, which tried to get in on the popularity of the Vampire Survivors and its clones, but brought a lot of its own unique gameplay identity. It was also the series’ first foray into roguelite mechanics, since you gather new weapons and upgrades during a run and lose them after the mission ends. It was also, but all accounts, a big success, and even got a new class in a recent update.
Rogue Core’s moment-to-moment gameplay is much closer to DRG’s, with first-person action at various ranges and utilizing various gadgets to fight, explore, and survive. It also has Survivor’s randomized upgrade acquisition and multi-stage runs instead of a single large map like in the original.
Whatever else might happen, we can probably expect a resurgence of the evergreen “Rock and Stone” memes, first a rallying cry of everybody who played the original, but also, on a broader scale, an expression of appreciation for the general concept of “dwarves being a cool fantasy species”.
Conclusion
Rogue Core is about to become available for everybody to buy and test, for now in Early Access, having cleared most of the roadmap so far. Can this mixture of playstyles and objectives work well? It remains for the community to verify, once the game has its proper, non-beta launch on May 20th, so, in other words: Tuesday.
Rock and Stone!