This game is my favourite Hat-Themed Beer-fueled Combat Miner simulator. You assume the role of one of the 4 dwarves in space as they work minimum wage in an Amazon Fulfillment Space Station while goofing around and drinking copious amounts of beer. Given the fact that this is, as of the time of writing this, my 3rd most played game on Steam, I feel like I should strap in and leave the Best Wurst review I can think of. Also, obviously Spoilers Ahead

The Ups

Core gameplay loop

The core gameplay loop is extremely well done. Swarms of enemies are nicely spaced out, giving players ample time to explore and gather resources. Core classes also work well with each another, while also having individual strengths and weaknesses in each mission type. Speaking of classes, I think all of them are relatively easy to grasp and play somewhat effectively from the get-go. From my own experience, the hardest one is the Scout, given his reliance on constantly being mobile in order to survive waves of enemies.

Variety and customizability

The ability to fully customize your loadout is a huge asset. An an Engineer main myself, I like that developers give me the option to fit the behaviour of my turrets to my needs. For instance, there is one upgrade that allows you to improve the efficiency of your turret in exchange for limiting its targetting area to just the front. Personally I do not like to use it because I prefer to cover a larger area with my turret, but the fact you are given an option to do so is great. Weapon customizability is also great. You want extra mobility on the Scout? Use Force-of-Natu- I mean Special Powder overclock to allow you to push yourself further with the Jury-Rigged Boomstick. You want more DPS on the already-overpowered Shard Diffractor? Use the Overdrive Booster and become a 2nd (or 3rd depending on your upgrades) turret for a while, while you melt all the enemies around you. And don’t even get me started on the cosmetics, because the amount of them we get for free by just playing the game is astounding. Finally, I like that the game encourages players to experiment with different weapons via the Weapon Maintenance section of the Battle Pass.

Mod support

One could say I am slightly biased on this one, given the fact I have like 40 mods installed in my game. However, in my honest opinion, if the game’s atmosphere is this quirky already, why not make it utterly ridiculous? If I want to listen to my Bosco quoting Doctor Coomer from “Half-Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware”, while Heavy TF2 is commenting on my mission progress, then I am able to make it so. On top of that, the post-mission extra-objective tracker mod has been a real help on my quest to get all the cosmetics. Though it is a shame that Season 6 broke my favourite “GLaDOS replaces Mission Control” mod.

The Mids

The battle pass… is a battle pass

First of all, let me clarify that I think it’s great that the battle pass is free and that there is no paid option. This means you can get pretty much all the cosmetics and weapon skins by just playing the game, save for a few very select paid ones. Another aspect of it that I like is that you can switch to a battle pass from an earlier season and level it up to get all the cosmetics from that season. However, as with any battle pass, there is some level of grind to it, which can get tedious outside of the seasonal events that double your performance points. Although, given some other games I play or used to play a lot had even more grinding than this (like Warframe and, even worse, Genshin Impact), I really should not complain.

The difference between Hazard levels feels inconsistent

I don’t know if it’s just me, but from my personal experience the difficulty only starts on Hazard 4. I played a lot on Hazard 3 and I never had any problems completing all the objectives (including Chests, Helmets, Core Infusers etc.), but the moment I started playing on Hazard 4, I could finally feel the intensity in certain moments. And it was not the matter of skill, as Hazard 3 was my go-to difficulty when I was just starting out. Despite all that, I decided to include this in the “Mids” section, since this provides a nice way to casually level up your characters.

The Employee of the Month Screen feels kinda useless at this point

When I was a mere greenbeard, which was around the time Season 3 released, the screen showing the Employee of the Month would actually show random players’ nicknames along with one of the company-approved achievements, like knowing what the Error Cube is for or winning a drinking contest against Bosco. Among those, one that would sometimes pop up was “You” with the picture of a Scout pointing towards you. It was a clever idea made by someone in the community, as the screen displays a name from the DRG Discord Server that currently has the Employee of the Month status, as far as I know. However, a while after I started playing the screen would cease to display anybody but “You”. I get that it’s the community that votes on who gets to be displayed on the screen. Nonetheless, I believe that the whole vote count should be reset to allow for more variety again or the function should be changed to, for example, display a random member of the community.

EDIT - 01-08-2026 I don’t know whether it’s just me, but the counter at the bottom is broken. It always shows 0. I doubt that the DRG Discord server has 0 people.

The Downs

RNG can make or break your run

I lately play mostly on Hazard 4 and 5 and I have witnessed that the success of your run very much depends on the RNG and to be fair, I find this annoying sometimes. I do vividly recall 2 runs in particular that fit this argument. In one of them I was playing with the “Lithophage Outbreak” modifier and I had all 3 Contagion Spikes be located in the same large cave, which meant I was getting swarmed by Rockpox enemies every 5 nanoseconds. The other time we got all of the following within one very small cave:

  • Tyrant Weed
  • Bet-C
  • A Greater Core Stone
  • Naedocyte Breeder
  • Brood Nexus
  • Core Infuser event

Shame I did not record this, but I do have a surviving screenshot.

Obviously we did not win this one.

Some elements of the game have unused potential

I am talking about a few very specific optional elements that in my opinion feel like they could be more. Namely Bittergems, Error Cubes, Tyrant Shards and, what is perhaps the most controversial, the Rival Nemesis. My main problem with all those is that the reward for getting those is just money and experience points or something that gets converted to the aforementioned. Since the chance of encountering those is small, I’d personally like to see those resources being utilised for some rare cosmetics, overpowered overclocks or maybe an additional weapon upgrade slot. Hell, even craftable Mini-mules. Also, technically, Error Cube collections are being tracked, but as far as I know it’s only for the achievement you get for collecting 5 of them. The developers did “vaguepost” about Error Cubes having lore-relevance, however that’s all there is to it as of the time of me writing this. Also, don’t get me wrong, I like both the Tyrant Weed and Rival Nemesis as enemies. I just feel like the game could reward better for defeating them.

Cave Leeches

“I hate Cave Leeches, I hate Cave Leeches, I hate Cave Leeches.” - said every player ever. Jokes aside, I have no clue why, but I could never hear the damn things as they were reaching for me. Even though I did check what they sound like, I could never reliably identify them by sound in game. I walked normally and next thing I know I am caught and on my way to get eaten. Interestingly, immediately after I installed a mod that replaced their sound with sounds of The Sniper from TF2, my ability to detect when I am about to get left hanging has increased dramatically. Also I get to troll the Leech by repeatedly entering and leaving its area-of-effect just to hear Sniper’s complaining.

Final Thoughts

I genuinely think this game rocks (and stones). The gameplay is nicely repeatable and despite a few drawbacks, I still the ups overshadow them all. Regarding everything I mentioned in the “Unused potential” section of the Downs, I think at least the Error Cube will get some use some time in the future, given the developer vagueposting and the Smart Stout quote about stuffing 5 of them somewhere. But with the developers being busy with Rogue Core, I doubt anything major will come out soon at least until they iron out its core gameplay. In the end I can safely say, I really dig it.