What Did We Play Yesterday?

Core Keeper is a survival crafting sim. It's a little different than similar games in that it takes place entirely underground. The story, such as it is, is that you touch an articfact while exploring and are transported to an underground shrine with strange statues. The game emphasizes base building and exploring to find ways to restore power to the statues. Gameplay is the usual digging, exploration, looting, and crafting increasingly powerful items to make the aforementioned easier, and one of the goals is to defeat the boss of each biome.

Currently there is a holiday event and some of the enemies have been replaced with snowmen and found items include things like Santa's Hat and milk and cookies. This is cute, but I think it might appeal more to players who are already familiar with the game.

Since I love digging, I figured a game that was entirely digging was a no-brainer for me, but in practice I found it oddly claustrophobic and missed being able to go "outside."

I tried this game a couple of months ago and stalled out after a few hours when I had issues finding tin, which is the second resource needed after copper. On my return, I started a new game but encountered the same problem--I've begun to find gold ore pockets, but no tin. This feels like an unintentional bottleneck to the crafting progression. My previous game I found the slime boss and honestly hated fighting it, so I'm not interested in hunting down the bosses just yet, and exploration alone isn't enough to motivate me because the biomes are too samey.

I usally don't mind trying Early Access crafting/mining sims because I generally get a lot of enjoyment out of these games even if they're not finished, but this one still feels a bit underbaked to me. I think part of the problem is I've played so many of these games now, if the progression and discovery isn't on-point I lose interest. The mechanics are no longer novel or addictive to me, so I need an interesting world to explore and a good crafting progression to keep my interest.

I want to give credit where it's due, because I was such a stinky little bitchard about now Nintendo is allegedly too stubborn to ever fix anything. I actually have noticed some nice QOL improvements:

• The new recipe book helps you remember recipes you've discovered. You have the option to look up a potion or food by recipe if you select one of the ingredients. This has encouraged me to experiment a bit more with cooking, and I'm actually having a lot of fun fusing weird things together.
• If you open a chest and your inventory is too full, you're given the option of to drop items before you pick up the chest item.

My favorite thing right now is the mundane sidequests. I patched someone's wagon and hitched a horse for them the other day, and the reward was negligible, but it was strangely satisfying. Many of the sidequests have been top-notch:

• I stumbled across the Gazette newspaper office. This opens a series of side quests that reward the froggy suit, which prevents slipping. I will try to fit this into my busy days of hoarding apples and catching bugs.
• It turns out there's a lot of armors to be discovered via a great treasure hunting sidequest series, Misko's Treasure. A fashionista bandit left cool armor in caves, and some of them require solving riddles. Wandering fashionistas and treasure hunters will give clues as to where to look. Accumulating and upgrading armor is extremely fun for me, and I am here for it.
• A weird little dude wants bubbl gems, and gives me weird cosplay stuff as a reward. He's doing his best ok.
• Giant faeries demand music. Who am I to argue?

Treating Zelda like a cozy sim is continuing to work out for me.