“Season…6…” I gasp through a parched throat and unwashed beard. “Need…season 6…of popular subterranean co-op shooter Deep Rock Galactic, developed by Ghost Ship Games…”
Mr. Ghost Ship himself stands over my skeletal body, knees and elbows shredded to the sinew from nearly a year and a half of crawling through the update desert. “How about Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor’s recent 1.0 release, or our upcoming, if sadly delayed, roguelike spin-off Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core?”
“I mean…they’re alright,” I croak. “But season…siiiiiiiiiix…”
“Okay, okay,” he concedes. “It’s called Relics of Hoxxes and it’s out in Q1 2026, which in English is between January and March.”
“Ah…nice.”
Nice indeed. OG Deep Rock’s season 5 left the sci-fi dwarf delver in good shape before its developers shifted focus to getting Rogue Core ready for an early access release. But, an unexpectedly lengthy investment in the latter has in turn pushed back a return to DRG Prime’s seasonal schedule. Ghost Ship have now announced that while Rogue Core is being delayed further to Q2 (April to June) 2026, season 6 – which was originally going to release after the spinoff – is instead coming first, having been put together under supervision by fellow Danish studio and Neighbours: Suburban Warfare devs Invisible Walls.
Outsourcing is a risky business, but I’m liking how meaty Relics of Hoxxes looks. Set after your mineral-hungry employers tunnelled into the unexplored pits of bugworld Hoxxes IV, it adds the first new biome in years: Ossuary Depths, an eery, decaying cave realm where the bones of the dead litter the ground like McDonald’s wrappers on Woolwich high street. Yours might join them, if your mining team falls foul of the new breed of Ossiran enemies. In contrast to the spider-like Glyphids, the Ossiran come bearing bitey, stag beetle-ish pincers; confirmed variants include the pesky flying Scrab and the Pit Jaw, who lies in wait underground before chomping on intruders like a hungry landmine. We’ve been kindly provided with these behind-the-scenes images showing how, precisely, they’ll fuck up a Driller.
Step 1: Don’t do this.
Step 2: No, idiot, you did this.
There’s also the Bone Collector, a cowardly sort who’ll flee into Ossiran-dug side-tunnels when spotted. You can track them back to their nests and loot their hoard of valuable minerals, provided you can survive any counter-ambush by the bugs whose home you’ve just ransacked.
A new mission type is part of the season 6 package, too. Heavy Extraction excursions see your crew locating and digging out a vast chunk of amber somewhere on the map, before strapping it with rocket boosters to send it soaring back up to the Space Rig. It doesn’t sound as intricate or as dramatic as, say, season 5’s Deep Scan missions, which crescendoed with a silly-fun ride on a massive drilling platform, but look, it’s been seventeen months. A dwarf’s gotta eat. Heavy Extractions will immediately start appearing in the weekly Deep Dives too, once the new season lands.
Attribution
“We’ve worked closely with our friends at Invisible Walls to help shape season 6 into the best possible experience for our community,” Ghost Ship game director Mikkel Martin Pedersen said in a statement. “After six months of working together and exploring different concepts for DRG expansions, we’re confident in the team’s vision for the upcoming season, while we work hard on the future of the Deep Rock Galactic franchise and Rogue Core.”
On the topic of Rogue Core, a delay to mid-2026 means it’s missing its original 2025 window. I think that’s for the best – I’ve played some of the current closed alpha and it’s promising, particularly in a “Hey, this actually does feel different to regular Deep Rock” kind of way, which I didn’t expect upon its reveal in 2023. But it’s also, quite clearly, still working itself out. The synergy between classes isn’t as enjoyably tight as in DRG, and while I see the basic appeal of a more dangerous, action-heavy approach, the builds I’ve played have thus far felt slightly too sweaty for me to see myself putting another…Christ, 553 hours into Rogue Core like I have with the original game.
In fairness, an alpha is but an alpha, and it’s still getting substantial updates. Just last week, Alpha Update 04 added a brand new dwarf class: Retcon, a time-rewinding trickster who can revert to an earlier state to gain back health and ammo, or even salvage a run if the whole team gets downed at once. I’m obviously more desperate for the nourishment of season 6, but I’ll be checking in Rogue Core’s continued progress.
