7 Games Like Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor for Mining and Swarm Runs

Between alien attacks, dig procedurally generated tunnels and carry mined resources home. Spend them on drill, movement, and defense upgrades; relics and gadgets are separate discoveries.

Push farther for a better haul, or return before the dome is exposed. This is Survivor’s closest mining-pressure match, but its gunplay defends one fixed base. Co-op and versus modes are available; paid Lost Keepers adds two keepers and assignments.

The verdict

Pick Dome Keeper when the memorable part of Survivor is weighing one more resource trip against a looming wave. Its mining-to-defense loop is the strongest direct match, even though the gunplay is more stationary.

Zombie Defence links a shooting outing to a continuing resource plan. Its desktop development build uses cursor aim, firing, ammunition, and reloads; separate Scrap expeditions send you through a city to collect materials and extract. Scrap gathered in those outings is retained after extraction or defeat, subject to storage limits. That turns a run into a choice about what to invest in next, while remaining quite different from digging a route through a cave or destroying the terrain.

Back at the shelter, resources can feed production, weapon crafting, research, room and station upgrades, workers, or cultivation. Shelter investments persist through defeat, and food can support later expeditions. You can choose between short sector battles, open-ended scavenging, and Scrap expeditions depending on whether you want a compact defense, longer horde pressure, or a haul to bring home. Shelter layouts use upgraded rooms and stations rather than freeform construction.

The verdict

Choose Zombie Defence if you want combat resources to feed a persistent shelter more than you want the exact mining loop. Its stronger manual-input focus changes the feel of every horde, while the fixed stations keep the base side structured.

Brotato strips away mining and makes the build shop the resource puzzle. Weapons auto-fire by default, manual aim is available, and each potato can carry up to six weapons. You gather materials while dodging a compact crowd, then use the shop between short waves to tune damage, defense, speed, and other stats. The key decision is whether an item supports your current combination or solves the weakness that is about to end the run.

Its arena is much smaller than Hoxxes and there is no extraction objective, but the pace of collecting, upgrading, and moving through pressure makes it an easy recommendation for the Survivor half of the query. Characters alter the constraints on a build, while local co-op is available on Steam. Choose it for clear, frequent loadout choices rather than exploration or a persistent mining economy.

The verdict

Pick Brotato if you mainly want quick, legible build decisions while a crowd closes in. It captures the horde-and-upgrade cadence, but skips mining and the sense of crossing a larger cave.

Wall World gives you a mobile robospider instead of a fixed drop pod or a survivor wandering through a cave. Climb the wall, enter mine locations for resources and technologies, then get back before monsters attack. Those materials improve the exosuit’s movement and mining or the spider’s combat, and discovered blueprints let you build automatic turrets, repair stations, and resource harvesters.

The recurring question—how long to keep mining before the next fight—will feel familiar to a Deep Rock player. Combat takes place beside the spider and along the wall, so this is a side-view mining defense roguelite rather than a top-down bullet heaven. The separate Deep Threat expansion adds a story and more biomes, while the base game’s loop stays centered on mining, upgrading, and surviving the next attack.

The verdict

Choose Wall World when you want actual mining and increasingly dangerous defense in a compact loop. Its spider is a useful base to upgrade, but it does not recreate Survivor’s top-down movement through open caves.

Halls of Torment is a horde survival game with a pre-rendered, late-90s RPG look. Select a hero, descend into an underground stage, and build around traits, abilities, and equipment while waves lead toward a boss. It offers the subterranean mood and steady pressure of a Deep Rock run without its drilling: movement and build choices carry the action, while dungeon objectives give you more to do than circle a single arena.

Quest-based metaprogression, character and class unlocks, and unique items sent back to the overworld make a run feed the next one. That recovered-item idea is a good fit if you like bringing something home, although it is equipment and customization rather than mined ore funding a shelter. The large trait and item pool rewards planning, but it also creates more menus and combinations to learn than Brotato’s quick shop.

The verdict

Pick Halls of Torment for dungeon progression and a satisfying recovered-item loop. It shares underground horde pressure, but its long-term rewards are quests and equipment rather than a mining economy.

Yet Another Zombie Survivors keeps the swarm-survival frame but swaps alien caves for survivors fighting the undead. Characters aim and shoot automatically; during a run, choose perks and support skills, specialize a favorite survivor, and build combinations across the team. The result is closer to an auto-shooter than to manual mining, with positioning and squad composition supplying the main tactical choices.

Between runs, permanent squad upgrades and prestige support longer-term growth. The Survivors Base adds character missions, conversations, and radio transmissions, making it a small narrative hub rather than a production economy. That gives it a clearer zombie progression identity than the mining picks, but it has no diggable terrain or ore-funded mission objectives. A free Steam demo lets you sample its run structure before buying.

The verdict

Choose Yet Another Zombie Survivors if you want the horde, squad-building, and lasting upgrades with a zombie setting. It trades cave exploration and manual resource handling for team synergies and character-focused progression.

Soulstone Survivors is the build-depth choice. Steer a Void Hunter through hordes and large bosses, choosing active and passive skills that can combine into screen-clearing effects. Its listed 350-plus skills, multiple maps and modes, and curses give you many levers to tune a run. Compared with Survivor, the focus moves away from ore, pickaxe routes, and mission extraction toward ability combinations and weapon crafting.

Characters, a substantial skill tree, and more than 100 craftable weapons add a persistent progression layer. That is useful if you enjoy unlocking new options long after the first build clicks, but it makes menus and planning a bigger part of the loop. It remains a single-player fantasy arena game, not a mining sim; optional Steam items are the soundtrack and Supporter Pack rather than required gameplay expansions.

The verdict

Pick Soulstone Survivors when your favorite part is engineering a stronger build against waves and bosses. It offers more build surface than mining simulation, so it is a looser match for the resource side of Deep Rock.