There’s a cruel wind howling in the depths below. The moon gives off a sinister glow, casting shadows that seem to reach for you, clawing at you. Steeve is barking into the darkness, like he senses something you don't.

This can only mean one thing: Halloween is coming to Hoxxes.

The seasonal spook-tacular will return on Thursday, October 26th (13:00 CET), and it runs until Thursday, November 9th (13:00 CET). Management would like to emphasize that mining operations aren’t ramping down because of any alleged hauntings, and that company insurance policies do not cover exorcisms.

What do this event and a bad chiropractor have in common? They’re both gonna send a tingle down your spine! [HOLD FOR LAUGHTER + APPLAUSE] Scroll down to see all the event details.



Do you hear that strange music? Show some wicked clown love with the new Mad Cap Clown mask, coming to you straight from the depths of the dark carnival. All you’ve got to do is complete the Halloween Party Special Assignment, and this frightening bit of fashion is yours forever. Nothing scares a Glyphid (or the FBI) more than an insane clown. Whoop whoop!

In case you were trapped in a coffin last Halloween, you can still earn those seasonal cosmetics from the past. Complete the Last Year’s Horrors Assignment and we’ll dump a bundle of old masks in your locker. Mission Control isn’t too happy about his likeness being used for a mask, but it’s not our fault he’s got that ghastly scowl.

We’re hearing reports of shrieking skulls flying through the caves of Hoxxes. Management doesn’t believe in ghosts, but we might be able to sell the processed bone meal -- so if you see any skulls, bag ‘em and bring ‘em home. Doing so will earn you (and your team) a double mission performance point bonus.

It’s hard for trick-or-treaters to make it to outer orbit, but if they get up here, the Space Rig is ready. You can expect loads of spooky decor, including frightful ghosts, loads of candles (the scary kind) and pumpkins aplenty. The Abyss Bar dance floor is also being converted into a haunted swamp, complete with fog and live bats! Management spent so much on candles that there wasn’t any budget left for rabies vaccines, so don’t startle the bats.

The haunt begins on October 26th at 13:00 CET. Hold onto your butts.

Rock and Stone!

With Love,
-The Spooky Ghost Ship Crew

If you didn’t catch the announcement on our Ghost Ship Publishing: On The Horizon live stream, here’s the big news:

Ghost Ship Games is working on a whole new game! It’s called Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2605790/Deep_Rock_Galactic_Rogue_Core/

We’re really excited about this.
At the same time, we understand that your first thought might be, “Dang, we’re never gonna see Season 5, are we?”

Totally understandable. We’ve been a little quiet about Deep Rock Galactic development for a while. So we figured it’s a good time to update the roadmap, talk about how we’re balancing our projects at Ghost Ship Games, and how we’ll communicate all that moving forward.

Let’s get straight to it: we’ve got good news and less-than-good news.

Good news: Season 5 is coming. Season 6 will happen after that.
Less-than-good news: These seasons aren’t coming as soon as any of us want. Right now, we’re expecting to have Season 5 out in June 2024.

The reason for this delay is, as you probably guessed, Rogue Core. We’ll talk more about that below (scroll down to the FAQ section). But let’s look at the roadmap first, and then we can cover the details after.




If you’re familiar with previous Deep Rock Galactic roadmaps, you’ll notice that the ‘maintenance updates’ are new for this one. These are going to be patches which primarily focus on tweaks and bug fixes. They’re not adding shiny new content, but they are making sure the game stays in good working order.

Maintenance updates may include things like:

• Bug fixes of every size and flavor
  
• Weapon balance changes
  
• Nerfs and/or buffs to enemies
  
• Typo corrections
  
• Optimizations to improve game performance

You shouldn't expect big juicy bundles of new content from these. We’ll save that for the coming Seasons, though they might feel far in the future right now. Until then, we promise we’re not going to neglect the game, or let it fall into disrepair. These maintenance updates aim to keep Deep Rock Galactic in good health, until we’re ready to keep working on new content.



Especially since it’ll be a while until we get more significant in-game content in Deep Rock Galactic, we want to double down on our communications, and to share more about what we’re working on.

We’re taking an open development approach with Rogue Core, where we launch as Early Access and provide plenty of behind-the-scenes peeks along the way. We’ve brought on a full-time writer (hi, it’s me Aaron, the guy writing this) to help us tell more stories that connect you with what we’re up to, and how we approach game development. This applies to Deep Rock Galactic, too.

That means we’ll be sharing a lot more about Season 5 development than we have with previous Seasons, so you’ll be able to follow along as it takes shape.

In the future, you can expect more:

• Developer diaries and sneak peeks
  
• Interviews with GSG crewmates
  
• Long reads about big ideas in game development
  
• A re-launch of the GSG Newsletter
  
• Glimpses into daily life in the GSG studios
  
• Other fun stuff that we’re still figuring out

You’ll find all that coming up here on the Steam blog, as well as the blog page for Rogue Core.



Why can’t you just work on both games at once?
In a perfect world, we’d continue full steam ahead on Deep Rock Galactic while developing Rogue Core at the same time. But we’ve only got so many helping hands on board, and only so many hours in the day.

Instead of trying to do a little bit of work on each game every day, we’d rather block out bigger chunks of time where we give one project our full attention. This might not be the fastest path, but we think it’s what will allow us to give you the best games we can possibly make.

What if you all just worked harder to make this stuff faster?
We don’t believe in crunching here. We want to work at a pace that ensures our whole team is happy and healthy, and where everyone has the time and space to have fun with their work. If we cranked it to 11 and went into mega-overdrive to rush all this out, we’d lose a lot of goofy ideas, cool hats and fun details along the way. To us, that’s the stuff that makes a game great. We’d rather take our time, so we can be sure we’re making something we’re really proud of.

Do you have a specific plan for each maintenance update?
Not yet. We’ve put them into the calendar so that we can block out time to give Deep Rock Galactic a good amount of time and energy. We’ll figure out exactly what to focus on as each update approaches, and we’ll keep you posted on that when the time comes.

Are you taking so long because you’re still trying to figure out a use for Error Cubes?
Maybe.



We continue to be blown away by the support and enthusiasm of this community, and all the creativity, curiosity and connections that Deep Rock Galactic has sparked. It’s what motivates us to make these games, and to keep them alive.

If you’re feeling disappointed about Season 5 not coming sooner, we totally get it. We’d like it to come sooner too. But we really think that Rogue Core is worth our time and focus, even if that means a delay for new content in Deep Rock Galactic. We hope you’ll trust us on this.

We can’t wait to expand the Deep Rock universe, and we promise you’ll be hearing a lot more about what’s going on with that in the coming months.

You heard it here first: fun times ahead.

Rock and Stone forever and always.


With so much love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew

This patch contains a small number of fixes, including a fix to Rejoin game, which would fail if a host had previously hosted a game. We also added a Merch tab for the board game expansions!

With Love,
The Ghost Ship Crew

- Fixed issue where some weapons could do massive amounts of damage when shooting a puddle
- Fixed that rejoin game would fail, if the host had previously hosted another game
- Adjusted Large meteor carver to make rock cracker locations more accessible without mining
- Fixed a few typos
- Optimized contagion spikes a bit
- Added a Merch tab to the menu, currently shows the DRG board game + expansion kickstarter

There’s just under a week until we go live on October 5th at 14:00 CEST for Ghost Ship Publishing: On The Horizon, our big broadcast to talk about all things Ghost Ship.

Leading into that, two bits of news: The demos for Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and SpellRogue are officially live! We’ll be talking more about both of them during On The Horizon, and you can find links to the demos down below.

Okay, agenda time.
Here’s what we’ll be talking about next week:

• 14:00 - Welcome!

[/h3] CEO Søren Lundgaard and CCO/Game Director Mikkel Martin Pedersen say hello and get things going.

14:10 - Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is almost here.

[/h3] We’re happy to share that DRG: Survivor will be part of Steam’s Next Fest October 2023! Plus, the game has gotten an official release window – we’ll announce it live on the stream.

14:25 - Spotlight on SpellRogue.

[/h3] SpellRogue’s going to be part of Next Fest as well! We’ll take a look at the game, and also give a sharper idea on when you can expect a release date.

14:40 - Updates from the DarkSwarm devs.

[/h3] We’ll hear from Bitfire Games on what they’ve been up to, and the latest developments from this co-op tactical shooter.

14:55 - New game picked up by Ghost Ship Publishing!

[/h3] Expect a live premiere of the trailer for the fourth game from Ghost Ship Publishing. Hope you like dinosaurs.

15:15 - Hands-on with Deep Rock Galactic: The Board Game’s new expansions, and the PS5 Special Edition.

[/h3] Now that the Kickstarter for these expansions is live, we’ll crack open some samples of the Biomes and Space Rig packs for a hands-on look at what they bring to the table. We'll also take a quick look at what's in the box for the PS5 Special Edition of Deep Rock Galactic.

15:30 - Our plans for Deep Rock Galactic, and Ghost Ship Games.

[/h3] Last, but certainly not least: we’re finally ready to share an update on Deep Rock Galactic, and what we’ve been working on over here. :)

16:00 - That’s all, folks!

[/h3] Søren and Mikkel wrap things up by performing a musical number and dance routine, before getting on two white horses and riding into the sunset.*
[/list]
A note on the board game: We’ve said it before, but Deep Rock Galactic: The Board Game isn’t being developed by Ghost Ship Games. The whole thing has been developed externally by MOOD Publishing, it’s not our project, we’ve been busy working on other stuff over here. Just want to underline that, as we keep seeing some confusion about it online.

If you’re interested in trying the demos for Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and SpellRogue, you can check them out here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2437880/Deep_Rock_Galactic_Survivor_Demo/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2586850/SpellRogue_Demo/

Ghost Ship Publishing: On The Horizon is coming to you live on Thursday, October 5th at 14:00 CET. You can tune in on YouTube right here. Hope you’re able to join us!

With Love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew

*Disclaimer: We haven’t told Søren or Mikkel about the musical number or horse riding yet. That part’s still up in the air.

Mark your calendars: on Thursday, October 5th at 14:00 CET, we’re doing a big livestream to share some updates from Ghost Ship Publishing, as well as what we’ve been working on here at Ghost Ship Games.

We’re calling it Ghost Ship Publishing: On the Horizon. Very cool.

Søren Lundgaard (CEO) and Mikkel Martin Pedersen (CCO and Game Director) will be hosting the event, and we’re hoping to have some special guests join too.

We’ll share a full agenda for the livestream next week, but here’s a peek at what you can expect:

• Progress updates from Ghost Ship Publishing projects
  
• Revealing the next game picked up by Ghost Ship Publishing (!)
  
• Hands-on with the two new expansions for Deep Rock Galactic: The Board Game
  
• News about future plans for Deep Rock Galactic, and what we've been up to at Ghost Ship Games

More details to come! This is just to put the word out.

We hope you’ll be able to join us live on October 5th. We’ve got some news we’re super excited to share.

Also – in case you missed it, the two new expansions for Deep Rock Galactic: The Board Game have officially gotten their Kickstarter campaign primed for launch. It’s set to kick off on September 28th, and will run until October 16th! As mentioned before, this is an external project by MOOD Publishing. We’ve been working on other fun stuff over here at Ghost Ship Games.

You’ll be able to back the Kickstarter here when it launches, and you can see the official trailer below:


That’s all for now – we’ll be back in a week to share the full agenda for Ghost Ship Publishing: On The Horizon. Stay tuned!

With Love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew

Not like you dwarves needed another reason for drinking and dancing, but Oktoberfest 2023 is finally here! And we're celebrating in style:

• Introducing the new Lederhosen outfit, a traditional leather costume as practical as it is flattering
  
• Serving up the Sausagebucket hat, a glorious meaty bouquet for your head
  
• Decorating the Space Rig with inflatable pretzels and tons of hay and flowers (Management is not responsible for fatal allergic reactions)
  
• A special seasonal brew returns! Best Wurst Beer is now on tap at the Abyss Bar
  
• Double Season XP Bonus when you recover a lost beer mug down in the mines
  
• Two seasonal assignments: 'Oktoberfest Celebration' and 'Hunt for Lederhosen'

If that was too much to read, watch this:


Go out there and get while the getting's good -- Oktoberfest 2023 ends on October 3rd at 1pm CET.

Hope you brought your yodeling lungs!

Rock and Stone forever!
With Love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew

Hello Miners,

We’re trying this “Below Decks” series as a way to share more moments from the studio, and give a look into what’s under development. In the future, you can expect some bigger stuff and proper sneak peeks, but we’ll start with something light for this one. Hope you like it. :)

-GSG_Aaron (new content writer)

It’s a Tuesday afternoon in August, and Harpa’s focus for the day is troubleshooting the upcoming sausage hat. The sausages are simply too wiggly.

Harpa Ellertsdóttir, 3D Artist at Ghost Ship Games, is making a new hat for the dwarves. You might not call it a hat by any conventional definition, but the dwarves will be using it as such. It’s a metal bucket with a leather chinstrap, and a big bouquet of sausages flopping out the top.

But making the perfect wiggly sausage hat is easier said than done.

“Right now the sausages are very stiff. They used to be a lot more floppy,” she explains. She’s fine-tuning the hat’s physics setup using Unreal Engine. She punches in some numbers in the model’s properties, and the sausage links go limp, drooping down over the rim of the bucket. She resets the physics, then tests the individual sausages to see how they behave. Each one jumps when she clicks it, responding with a playful little bounce. But one sausage starts misbehaving.

“These ones are wiggling fine, but this one’s wiggling all on its own. It was wiggling normally before, which is concerning,” she says.

Christian Øelund, Senior Technical Artist, rolls his chair over to her desk to help troubleshoot the rogue wiggler. In Maya, they adjust the sausages’ properties for Dampening and Stiffness. But this only makes the rebellious sausage even more wiggly.

“I’m getting hungry looking at this,” Christian says.

“I’m not, I hate sausages,” Harpa says. She used to work at a gas station back in Iceland. “I had to do 12-hour shifts there, and every day I would come home smelling like hot dogs. It’s like my past is haunting me through this hat.”


The 'Sausagebucket' hat as shown its final form, with its bones showing, and with physics colliders visible.

Everybody knows you don't want your wiggly sausage hat to be too wiggly. But where’s the sweet spot?

When it comes to silly hats, Harpa’s approach is to make things as jiggly as possible, without causing problems. Wiggly elements shouldn’t clip through the dwarves’ beards and armor, nor should they completely freak out and defy physics in certain situations.

To ensure that Deep Rock Galactic’s wiggly hats behave “normally”, each hat goes through a rigorous testing regime.

On her second monitor, Harpa runs the prototype sausage hat through these trials, testing every situation it’ll meet once it’s in the dwarves’ hands. She cycles through all the armor models, to make sure there aren’t any stray sausages causing clipping issues. Then she cycles the test dwarf through different animations: dancing, getting downed, reviving, pressing a button, shouting “Rock and Stone” – and notes how the sausages respond. Somehow, the rogue sausage from earlier has fallen back in line.

Structurally speaking, this isn’t a very complex hat, but the wiggly sausages make it a bit of a rascal. ”Programming the physics makes this hat a little finicky. Not all hats are like this,” Harpa says.

Each new hat crosses at least five different desks at Ghost Ship Games, ping-ponging around between artists, art directors, QA testers, and the Founders. All told, Harpa estimates this sausage hat represents about 12 to 15 hours of work.


LEFT: Our muse. RIGHT: Two slappable, wiggly palm trees from the Space Beach Party.
Deep Rock Galactic certainly isn’t the first game with wiggly hats, but we do our best to contribute to this proud tradition.

As Harpa sees it, these jiggly elements are fun because they look a bit broken, but in a purposeful way. It’s hard to be serious when you’re wearing a floppy hat. She pulls up an image of a wacky waving arm inflatable tube guy, the type known to flap around in front of auto dealerships. “This is like, the funniest thing ever. It’s peak comedy,” she says.

Generally speaking, Deep Rock Galactic is at its wiggliest during seasonal in-game events, when the Space Rig gets special decorations and the dwarves get new hats.
Among all the wiggly items in DRG, Harpa gives special historical importance to the inflatable palm tree, introduced to the Space Rig during the summer 2022 Space Beach Party.

When designing that tree, she recalls a “eureka moment” in a conversation with Lead Artist Jacek Oczki that has since inspired the crew’s approach to wiggly bits.

“He saw the model for the palm tree, and was like, ‘Cool, but can you slap it?’ After that, everything’s been a lot more jiggly and slappable.”

The jiggly 'Sausagebucket' hat will be available during this year’s Oktoberfest 2023 celebrations aboard the Space Rig. The party kicks off this Thursday, September 14th, at 13:00 CET.

Rock and Stone!
With Love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew

Just a small patch today, fixing irremovable plague puddles and some unintentionally free items in the forge that management had forgotten about.
With Love,
The Ghost Ship Crew

- Fixed a bug that caused corruptors Plague puddles to not be removed when vacuumed
- Added missing prices for season 03 forge items
- Fixed a bug that caused the oppressor and bulk detonator to very rarely spawn in the tutorial
- Fixed some typos

In space, there are no smells. But if there were, you’d smell that harvest season is in the air. That’s why Management has approved the budget for the Oktoberfest 2023 celebrations aboard the Space Rig! These festivities start next week on September 14th (13:00 CET), and they’ll run until October 3rd (13:00 CET).

We hope all employees of Deep Rock Galactic will take part in this non-contractually-mandatory (but strongly encouraged) work event. Here’s the reveal trailer, with more details down below!



Make room in your wardrobe for the stunning new Lederhosen outfit! These bad boys are made of high-quality Glyphid leather, and they are not washable. Complete the ‘Hunt for Lederhosen’ Assignment, and these darling dungarees are yours forever – along with the hats from previous years’ Oktoberfest celebrations.


The brains down in R&D’s Couture Division have cooked up the meatiest piece of headgear we’ve ever seen. You can unlock the Sausagebucket hat through the 'Oktoberfest Celebration' Assignment, which also grants some credits, crafting materials, Matrix Cores, and brewing ingredients. If this hat makes your scalp smell of smoked meat for more than four hours after wearing, report to the Medical Bay immediately.


Due to popular demand, Best Wurst Beer is back on tap for a limited time. Served with a delicious dipping sausage, it’s the highest-protein beer on the menu. Heck, it’s practically a square meal in a mug! Speaking of mugs, we’re running low on those, so don’t expect anyone to wash them between rounds.


We’ve run into some issues getting all the Oktoberfest supplies delivered. This time, we specifically requested that Longbeard Freight send a pilot with a service record free of DUIs, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. Those numbskulls have fumbled the load once again, and now we’ve got thousands of Best Wurst Beer mugs scattered throughout the caves of Hoxxes.

We need your help to save Oktoberfest. If you can recover a mug during your mission, Management has agreed to grant you a doubled mission Performance Point bonus in exchange.


Last but not least, we’re decking out the Space Rig to fit the festivities. You can look forward to colorful fabric bunting, kickable hay bales and inflatable sausages (which do not belong in the Launch Bay), and even some real sunflowers. We’ll also be piping in some authentic biergarten chitter-chatter as ambient noise at the Abyss Bar, to make you feel less alone while you drink.

There’s a lot to look forward to! We can’t wait to hear those dwarven yodels echoing through the caves of Hoxxes. Rock and Stone, and yodelay-hee-hoo!


Also, a quick side announcement: we’re happy to share that Deep Rock Galactic is getting its first physical release! The PS5 Special Edition is under production now, thanks to our friends at Skybound. We expect it’ll be available for purchase in Q4 of this year. If you're interested in picking up a copy, you can find your nearest local retailer here.



Okay, that’s it. Rock and Stone again.

With Love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew


Note: Many clever miners have proposed renaming this event ‘Rocktoberfest.’ This is a good idea. But Management already ordered the merch with ‘Oktoberfest’ printed on it, and they’re not going to pay for all that stuff twice.

Another round of fixes! this time for stuck enemies, things landing in places they shouldn't and preparing for some upcoming events.


With Love,
The Ghost Ship Crew

- Hid debug lines on specific corruptor attacks
- Fixed a bug that caused enemies to sometimes become stuck after spawning
- The amount of corruptors Plague puddles is now limited to a maximum of 30 active in a level.
- Fixed a bug that caused the meteor warning sound to not be played for clients
- Fixed a bug that caused ‘A Journeys End’ soundtrack to not be played on some systems
- Fixed a bug that caused liquid morkite wells and machine events to sometimes spawn too close, blocking the well access
- Fixed a bug that caused rock cracking pods to land inside each other
- Fixed a bug that caused hacking pods to land too close to other entities and colliding with them
- Prepared for upcoming events