Is this a keeper?
Explore an endless cavern of creatures, relics and resources in a mining sandbox adventure for 1-8 players. Mine, build, fight, craft and farm to unravel the mystery of the ancient Core.
After a glance of Core Keeper, you can see the inspirations it took from games like Minecraft, Terraria and Stardew Valley. It combines them into one package that left Early Access recently after 2 years there, but is now the right time for it to come to consoles or did it need to stay in Early Access a little longer?
You can play the game either solo or with up to 7 others online, there’s sadly no split-screen mode but I understand that would have been difficult to implement. You can choose from a range of different classes and get XP for skills based on what you are doing. For instance, you’ll get more mining XP for mining and so on.
The object of the game is to defeat the bosses that are randomly scattered across the procedurally generated world. You’ll also need to keep yourself fed as your hunger meter depletes as you play, so you’ll need to start a farm that is constantly growing food, as well as building other pieces of equipment to forge weapons, electricity for ovens and incubators and many other things.
All in all, its handled very well. I did wish there was more of a tutorial though, as opposed to being chucked in the deep end with the game having expecting you to have played a game like it before. Still, once you get the basics under your belt, you’ll be spelunking easily in no time.
I was happy to play with others and it did work well, though I’m more of a nomad when it comes to online games. So, I did play a big chunk solo as well and enjoyed it just as much. Sure, it was way more of a challenge, but at least I wasn’t insane enough to try it on the game’s permadeath mode!
The visuals are reminiscent of Stardew Valley, even some of the menu options look familiar. It does have its own style though, so it doesn’t feel like it’s been ripped off as such. The framerate is consistent and the music is decent overall.
The Verdict
You can get lost spend hours and hours digging away in Core Keeper. With online buddies or by yourself, it’s a great game to get lost in. Highly recommended to fans of the genre.