Traditionally known for its wholesome, welcoming community, Deep Rock Galactic has just taken a rare step towards something significantly less wholesome after its procedural cave generation system served its developers a big stone penis.
In a tweet earlier today, developer Ghost Ship Games shared a clip of a character nonchalantly wandering around a cave, throwing lights as they go. Out of the corner of their eye, however, you can glimpse a particularly phallic-looking rock formation. As the players' brain computes what they just saw, there's a lovely bit of cinema - a tiny smash-zoom akin to some bulging eyes and a Metal Gear Solid alert sound - as they visibly double-take.
It took five years, but our cave generation finally delivered.Alternative title: Hey look, it's the Sample Rock from Helldivers 2! pic.twitter.com/0fpBjthUQ7August 7, 2024
A couple of in-game voice lines really add to the effect, the Dwarf appreciably intoning "oh, nice shape" and "I like it when it looks perfect." The caption reads "POV: You've been single for too long," but that doesn't fit with my personal headcanon - some of those dwarves have spent far too long alone on that space station to not become more than friends.
My personal highlight, however, is that Ghost Ship is praising the cave generation system that procedurally created this particular outcrop, suggesting that the team has been waiting five long years for this kind of payload. Better still is the fact that other players are chiming in to show off what the system has offered them in the past, including one particular specimen that's made of an unfortunately flesh-colored stone. It looks like the generation system might have a dirty streak.
Earlier this year, Deep Rock Galactic joined forces with Dwarf Fortress to get a themed tag on Steam.
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I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.