Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core – Ghost Ship Games’ attempt at plunging the co-op FPS spelunkery of Deep Rock Galactic into an even deeper, darker pit of roguelike tension – is out today in early access. I tried it last year, during one of the early alpha playtests, and it was okay? Ish? Already a functional multi-dwarf shooter, as you’d expect from something built upon the excellent DRG, but also close enough to the original that it resembled an ambitious side-mode more than a standalone game.

These days, though, Rogue Core appears to be doing a better job of carving out its own subterranean space. Last week, I played an updated build with lead game designer Mike Akopyan and game director Mikkel Martin Pederson, and enjoyed a much more distinct delve – even if its heightened brutality made our run one of the bloodiest Danish-English endeavours since the Viking Age.

Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core - Narrated Trailer

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Much of Rogue Core, to be sure, occupies familiar DRG territory. Your day begins with getting shitfaced on a space station and picking out a preferred beard style, before a rocket-powered commute into the crust of Hoxxes IV. Here, though, you’re not one of the rank-and-file miners that star in the original: you’re a Reclaimer, a better-equipped crisis specialist. To investigate the company’s lost mining facilities, you would walk five hundred miles, and to clear them of invading interdimensional horrors, you would walk five hundred more.

Well, I say "better equipped." Naturally for a roguelike, you gear up as you go, save for the class abilities wielded by each Reclaimer. As a Falconer, I would whip out an avian attack drone to electrocute the attacking Core Spawn, while Pederson’s Guardian launched defensive AoE stun attacks and Akopyan’s Spotter marked the bigger baddies with crit-boosting darts. I regret not going for the Retcon, admittedly – her Tracer-style time rewind power could have undone a lot of claw lacerations.

Other roguelike staples have also been Deep Rockified, if – like the proc-gen cave networks – they weren’t already. Instead of intangible XP, for instance, you mine and collect a mineral called Expenite, which is only added to your tally once manually loaded into the accompanying mule-drone. Descending down a mine level can also prompt a team vote between one or two 'Risk Vectors', which are essentially enemy-buffing mutators – but will reward bullheadedness with opportunities to grab new weapons and mining tech.

Not every change from DRG is as easy to embrace, mind. Mobility tools – the Engineer’s platform gun, the Driller’s handheld rock-deleters – are still available as class-agnostic upgrades, but they feel less vital. Where DRG’s caves often throw up deep pits and sheer walls that would be impassable without the right tools, the caverns of Rogue Core are relatively walkable. Simultaneously, they’re also much, much more likely to serve as mass dwarf graves. Rogue Core is, by design, harshly punishing of inattentiveness, its enemies broadly comparable to DRG’s Glyphids in terms of grunt/tank/disabler makeups yet faster, tougher, and more aggressive. There’s also a threat level meter that’s constantly rising, in contrast to how 90% of DRG dives can be taken at your own pace, and the filling of which almost immediately had me and two senior developers eating alien dirt.

This intensity bump does, at least, serve two purposes. One is that it jerks awake people like me, who’ve become so accustomed to the gentle ebb and flow of original-flavour Deep Rock that I can (and still often do) play it without thinking, instead dedicating focus to my friends’ weekly Discord chat about how rubbish The Boys has become. More importantly, it helps to fill in the teamwork void that the lessened emphasis on traversal tools had hollowed out: stay together, move together, and fight together, or you’ll perish far more surely than in vanilla DRG.

Teamplay is also built into the upgrade system. Some boons are only unlocked through abandoned machinery that requires coordinated play to fix up, and while there’s a trickle of purely individual upgrades, the big ones – those earned through hoarded Expenite – are presented to everyone simultaneously. Thus begins a brief period of contemplation and/or arguing, where Reclaimers can claim one of the offerings though chat or pointed cursor movements. Only after this deliberation phase does everyone take turns picking their upgrade, the delve continuing once all are equipped.

This sharing of potential enhancements creates a sense of communal responsibility, including the need for acceptance that sometimes a desired boon would be better deployed by a teammate. It's another departure from DRG, where outside of a general preference for balanced class picks, there’s minimal drawback for individual loadouts lacking synergy. Pederson describes Rouge Core’s approach as an expansion of singplayer roguelike convention: instead of creating a build for yourself, everyone is collaboratively creating a build for the team. Four beer-addled combat engineers, toiling in harmony.

Not that it saved the three of us from waking up in the station’s medbay, though back here, there are other little improvements and tweaks too. Gone is the main game’s dull cosmetics shop – instead, Ghost Ship have taken the pick-and-mix unlocks system from DRG’s seasonal battle passes and just made it permanent. Those passes have always been free themselves, but the change does mean a steady supply of microtransaction-free dwarf drip throughout early access and beyond, regardless of whether BPs ever come to Rogue Core as well.

The station’s bar also puts a cute twist on DRG's traditional pre-mission drinks. Before the foamy nectar goes on sale, players must pump iron in the attached gym, collectively burning enough calories to offset the imminent chugging. I should hate this – it’s an added step, delaying one of the most charming rituals in FPS gaming – and yet with willing allies, it only cements the camaraderie further, everyone egging each other on like a gang of hairier Mr Motivators. And, as everyone who’s cracked so much as a post-walk Diet Coke will know, the tastiest drinks are the ones you’ve earned.

I don’t know if Rogue Core is going to supplant its progenitor as my mates and I’s Thursday night co-op game of choice – that will likely depend on how well we adapt to its intensified difficulty. I do know that in its current state, it’s much more than Deep Rock Galactic in a fake roguelike beard, and deserves to be tackled as its own, distinct challenge. For an early access game, that’s no bad place to start.