Do you remember playing games as a kid (or you might have ADHD like me) and a game would take over your mind. It would consume your thoughts, you’d find yourself thinking about it at all times of the day. The hyper-fixation was so intense.
For the first time in years, it’s happening to me again.

Developed my Pugstorm, Core Keeper is a survival sandbox game with features similar to Minecraft and Stardew Valley.
You wake up underground. You have a health meter, a magic meter, and a hunger meter. You need to stay alive down here. Your underground world is procedurally generated meaning that every save file feels different. I am always on the hunt for good indie games. There are gems that bring something new and revitalise a genre or art style in a way that I struggle to find from AAA games.

Core Keeper places you in a vast cavern you can explore, with cool enemies, environments, great base-building options, and a detailed skill tree. I am not usually a survival game player, there are too many things to think about in survival games and I tend to forget my character gets hungry, and needs water and shade. But in Core Keeper I haven’t had this issue. Between having reason to return to my base either because my pockets are full or hitting a wall that I don’t have the tools to deal with yet. There is always a reason to drop back home, level up, cook some meals, and have a little nap to get some health back.

Since starting my first game file, this game is living rent-free in my brain. I am thinking about gathering resources to build enclosures for the farm animals I have come across while driving. I am thinking about what sort of fighting type I want to prioritize, there’s a classic sword and shield as well as a ranger and mage options. It’s basically infested my brain in a way that a game hasn’t done in a long time. Every time I go to play I have the feeling on sitting in the car with a new game in my hand waiting to get home and play it. That anticipation for a game I know nothing about where its going isn’t something I have experienced for a long time. With being chronically online, I have seen so much of the games I want to play before I play them. So I know what I am going to be faced with usually. Core Keeper, I never know what is on the other side of the wall I am mining through.

The experience and play style can be so varied it really feels endless in nature. I have barely scratched the surface of the map layouts with about 40-50 hours across platforms, I have yet to hit an edge I haven’t eventually found a way through.

Some of the community has created insane expansive bases, I have not gotten that far yet. My bases are a strong work in progress. After a collective 40 hours across my PC file and my Switch file, I am obsessed. In my PC file, I have encountered more bosses and high-level enemies than I have managed to find in my Switch cavern but I have made more base-building progress on my Switch. The generation of the world does have a difference between save files in your experience playing the game. I will come across those environments, resources, and bosses eventually but my routes to explore the caves so far have not got me there, where in a different file I came across them (and ran away from them) very early on.

This is a great game with adjustable difficulties and elements to fit your play style. This is a survival game that feels accessible to all players regardless of ability, experience and play-styles.

Core Keeper is available on PC, Consoles, Xbox Game Pass, and now Nintendo Switch.