Core Keeper

Core Keeper

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.