REVIEW | DREGS

In what will undoubtedly be the year of co-op looter survival games, Dregs will likely stand out as one of the more ambitious entries with its different take on fail conditions, much larger shop offerings, and a danger slider that makes some runs almost impossible with its extremely high loot target. But despite launching in a crowded market, T-Minus Zero Entertainment has released in early access, meaning everything you read here is subject to change.

Despite having played every major friend slop game in existence over the last three years, Dregs does try to innovate at least on the formula by offering additional gameplay mechanics on top of established working gameplay loops. Does it pay off? Or does it fall short and complicate an already oversaturated market? Read on to find out more.

Things I liked!

• The Shop | Dregs has an impressive shop with a ton of things on offer, that can make your looting expeditions better. There are better backpacks, which let you hold more oxygen as well as items. Other cosmetics such as hats, different helmets, and suits. But the best items come in the form of weapons and extra items that you can take on board your ship that have more practical uses. There are shields to help you defend against enemies, better weapons, and even power cells, so you can get a head start on some of the better treasure offerings within the level.
  
  After each run, you are free to return to the mother ship where you can spend your remaining money that is stored in your piggy bank. Money is global and shared between all of your friends, so deciding on what is best for the crew is up to your team.

• Chaotic Gameplay | Gameplay can get pretty chaotic in all the right ways. Dregs has a lot going on within the environment, and that is its greatest strength. There are multiple ways to explore each planet with air ducts, teleportation devices, jump pads, and elevators. Rooms are sometimes locked with keycards and will require you to find them to get to the extra treasure, but equally these rooms will be filled with more traps, more enemies, and more environmental obstacles, which then turns the chaos up to eleven.
  
  There were some genuinely funny moments as a result, with people running by a corridor, getting chased like they do in a Scooby Doo cartoon.
  
  
• Graphics | Graphics are nice, with a mixture of low-poly and cartoon-like graphics. While it isn’t anything groundbreaking, it works really well, and the playful character designs and monster designs benefit from it overall. Design-wise, the game feels extremely cohesive, and nothing feels out of place. Usually this happens when assets are just thrown together, but it is nice to see that everything is custom-made for Dregs.
  

Mixed & disliked!

• No Lose Condition | Dregs currently has no lose condition. I found this quite weird because the whole purpose of these looter-extraction survival games is to make sure you survive. This could be an early access thing at the moment, in which they have yet to add, but it still made the whole point of finding loot pointless if we were just going to survive anyway. Sure, you can argue that finding loot gives you access to more money in the shop, but since it stacks anyway, it just means I can play a few extra rounds and just grab what I need to ultimately get what I want.

• No Tutorials | The worst part about Dregs is how it just throws you in with no explanation of how the game works, and since it adds all of these additional mechanics to the game, it would have been a smart thing to include. We spent the first thirty minutes or so just messing around and figuring stuff out ourselves. A simple tutorial would have alleviated this and allowed us to get straight into the game. We only figured out how the biomatter clone machine worked because we were messing around, recycling each other into it for fun.
  
  
• Ridiculous Loading Times | Dregs seems to have loading screens for everything. Booting up the game took well over five minutes to load, and that wasn’t just me. That was each one of the four players we had. Clicking options brought up another loading screen, applying your option changes also brought up a loading screen. Start game, loading screen, and then selecting the slot you wanted to start a save with also prompted another loading screen. I don’t mind that loading screens are used, but the load times were far too long. Now combine that with every time you want to change an option, and you end up with a fair bit of waiting.
  
  
• Very little variation | Dregs works a little like Lethal Company where you get to choose from a series of planets to visit. Once you arrive, the hangar doors open and you are given fifteen minutes to loot as much as you can, bring it back to the ship and leave before the ship’s autopilot leaves without you. During our time playing, there were a total of four planets offered to us, plus the mothership where we can buy new weapons and equipment.
  
  However, unlike Lethal Company, even if you land on the same planet, Lethal Company adds a random level layout so no play session is the same. Unfortunately, Dregs does not, and this creates the problem of knowing your way around way too quickly. On the Apollo level, we played, we knew our way around after the first playthrough, so when we went back we absolutely smashed the loot quota.
  
  
• Complicated Alternative Gameplay Systems | Dregs tries to implement existing mechanics by adding in additional gameplay loops such as adding in clone counts, meaning you can only come back to life so many times. If you want to go above that limit, you must dispose of corpses in the biomatter chamber where you can increase your clone count, ultimately giving you another life. This seems fine on the surface, but when everything is attacking you and you die repeatedly, the game tends to shift from being a loot collector to a “collect your corpse” game and ends up making you miss the loot goal.
  
  When our team of four played, we essentially had one teammate on corpse disposal so we could keep looting, but it was a close call every time as a result. We also had the cat table, or the “CKWD Key” which can be used to unlock certain chests that are locked. However, the kitty tablet would get angry and start attacking us, causing traps to explode. All of this combined with zero tutorials for any of its additional mechanics created frustration among all of us.
  
  
• Sound Design | Dregs is an unusual outlier when it comes to its sound design. Normally I would expect music, and a ton of ambient sounds, however Dregs is an almost vacant game when it comes to its sounds. First up, there is no music, and this was obvious by the lack of a music audio toggle in the options, and the rest of the game is just very minimal on sounds. There are enemies but they don’t really make sounds all that much, and when they do, it is very lackluster. Items in the world have some interaction sounds, and some of the traps also have sounds, but largely the soundscape is minimal and it detracts from the overall experience.

• How long did I play the review before publishing? 4 hours
• How long to beat the story? No Story
• How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? No achievements to be earned
• How long to get 100%? | n/a
• You’ll love this game if you like these | Lethal Company, REPO, The Mound

Score: 40/100

Dregs overcomplicates the simple friend slop formula and creates a somewhat frustrating experience by refusing to explain anything. Planets aren’t randomised and layouts can be memorised easily, and with no lose condition, you aren’t penalised for just grabbing what you need and leaving. Despite being an early access game, Dregs needs to sort these issues out before people move on to better offerings in the genre.

Aaron

Gaming is in my blood.  Be it handheld games, Xbox, PC, Switch or Playstation, I am all over it.
I make my own games as part of my profession and love playing co op games with friends in my spare time. Avid dog lover and camper van enthusiast.