Core Keeper Review:
Uncovering Ancient Secrets Of The Underground in Co‑op

Core Keeper was released into Early Access in March 2022 and has since received several big updates. The version 1.0 release was on August 27, 2024, including a long list of new features and exciting game elements. If you played Core Keeper during its Early Access phase and would love a short update on what's new, you can read all about it in our 1.0.0 highlights article

During the last few years, there have been a lot of great sandbox survival-craft adventure games, with a rising roster of these with co-op implemented. With this in mind, is Core Keeper capable of standing out? We say yes, and wholeheartedly.

Few games have been able to blend exploration, crafting, base building and survival mechanics as charmingly as Core Keeper has. In a huge voxel-based game world consisting of caves inhabited by walking mushrooms as well as bauble-y slimes and ruins left behind by ancient and futuristic life forms, you will dig and mine your tunnels in search of better ressources and unique, hidden landmarks. As the game map lies in complete darkness, you will never know what awaits you behind the next wall of dirt. Besides mining, you will farm, fish, garden, craft and build to your hearts’ content, to expand your territory and improve your equipment. And with co-op being open for up to 8 players per world, you will never have to adventure alone.

In this review, we will be talking about the general gameplay, the core mechanics and endgame. All this with our usual focus on co-op aspects, as well as possible issues in gameplay and technical (spoiler: there are hardly any issues). By the end of this review, if you are still on the fence about trying out Core Keeper by yourself, we will offer you an overview to help you decide if you should ‘pick it up or leave it be’.

So for now, let’s explore Core Keeper together and see if this will be your next co-op highlight!

To start out, we will give you a rough idea about the storyline, narrative elements as well as character development and how you interact with the game world. All of this will be free of main storyline spoilers, aside from what you will experience during your first 10 minutes of playing Core Keeper.

After creating your avatar, you see a cinematic about your mother being right in telling you to keep your hands to yourself and not go touching random objects that fancy your interest. During what seems to be a jungle expedition, you reach out for a glowing conch-shaped object laying in the forest, getting transported to another place. You find yourself in a small, dark cave with only the faintly glowing conch structure from before sitting in the center - the Core. The structure lays silently and, upon inspection, seems to be lacking a power source. Three stone statues sit around the Core, connected with energy lines.

You as a group have to set out to explore the area and find out why you ended up here in the first place and how to return back to the surface and home. The story line starts out by just pointing you into one direction by giving to clues on what goals to pursue. Later in the game, you will receive clearer goals to work towards (if you decide to follow the guidance) and you will meet a handful of docile NPCs to interact with.
But let us start at the beginning.

After waking up, you find yourself surrounded by earthen walls and darkness. With little to no tools in your pocket, you decide on a direction and start digging. In the distance some glowing objects or something mysterious sparkles guide your way. Piece by piece you get to craft more equipment and tools for yourself at your workbench. With every novel item you find, you unlock new recipes that naturally allow you to progress further again. This is the simple, yet rewarding gameplay loop of Core Keeper. With its focus on exploration and resource gathering, crafting and building your base camp, you will always naturally know what to focus on next. And if you aren’t sure at one point, you can always just set out to explore in a new direction you haven’t visited yet. While out on your field trips, you will encounter different unique biomes which are inhabited by different creatures and hold unique resources and points of interest. Some creatures are docile, while others will attack you on sight. Continuously finding something new and exciting behind every other wall is a fantastic motivator that feels natural and logical. There is a story quest you are following, but the objectives are rather in the background and are achieved by progressing on.

Performing any activity levels up your character’s skills. As mentioned before, you can invest different skill trees. There are 11 in total, including more lifeskill oriented ones like mining, crafting, cooking and fishing and gardening. More offense and defense-oriented skill trees running, vitality, melee and range combat, as well as magic and summoning. The two latter were introduced into the game with the 1.0.0 launch and lean more into typical RPG magic elements, with magic being more spell-casting oriented, while summoning is about conjuring magical creatures to aid you in battle (additionally to the optional pet system).
You can choose to focus on only a couple of skills, or progress in all of them. Whatever "class" you pick during character creation does not restrict your weapon or skill choices at all, but should rather give you a very small boost to start out.
The higher your skill level, the more advanced skills you can choose in the skill trees. There is a sense of character customization, as you will have to pick-and-choose between splitting skilltree branches. If you find yourself unhappy with your choices later, don't worry, you can redistribute any skill points after investing a small payment in form of Ancient Coins. You can find these as random drops or earn them by selling valuables to special merchants you will encounter later (earliest after defeating the first slime-type boss).

And this is one of the aspects, where the multiplayer aspect of Core Keeper shines: sharing the workload needed to progress further and dividing tasks while still going for the same goals and working together. In our playthrough, we divided some of the tasks to be more time-efficient. While one of us tended to the farming plots and cooked meals, the other gathered materials, crafted more advanced gear for us and - automated part of the gathering. By midgame, you are able to place mining drills at special mining spots that are unlimited. Those can be connected to conveyor belts to help you automate some of the work and save you the time of running around hunting for resources.

With that in mind, playing at least as a duo also lowers the game’s difficulty. The host has to choose the game’s general difficulty before starting a new game. This decision influences the overall difficulty, of course. But sharing your tasks, exploring and fighting together makes it so much more enjoyable. If you are playing with the maximum amount of players, which is 8, you will most likely never have an empty storage ever again.
We enjoyed the design of the boss enemies and the fights themselves. Each fight felt unique and required a strategy, preparation of resources and sometimes even of the arena itself and teamwork. For some battles, you really have to think outside the box and get creative to counter your enemies’ skills. Some of those bigger boss encounters did lean a bit more to the overpowered side though (or a skill issue on our side?). So we waited longer than what felt to be the intended time to challenge a boss just to have better gear. The downside of this is, of course, outdated loot and postponing your progress for a while.

A bit disappointing for some groups playing together might be the fact, that regarding the best equipment in the game, some of you might have to do without. There are currently only 3 legendary weapons and one legendary tool. Unfortunately, each one of them requires a unique item to craft with one instance per world. Other than those, any type of equipment, tools and weapons can be farmed, forged or crafted for everyone in your co-op group.

One of Core Keepers strengths is its replay value. The world map is generated procedurally and was said to extend infinitely during Early Access. With the 1.0.0 launch, fixed maximum borders were implemented. When using seeds on world generation, players are now able to recreate exact copies of previous worlds, with boss fight arenas and key points of interest being at the exact same spot. The map might feel smaller now, but to make up for that, lots of new scenes were added into the game, to make exploration more exciting.
If you enjoy exploration and completion, you will get a lot of playtime out of the rather low price of the game. As resources are limited (aside from some mining nodes which do not deplete) and will not respawn, you will have to set out regularly in search of materials for your progression, building plans and to stock up.
We set ourselves some goals which kept us interested for a very long time. For example: setting out in all directions, laying mining tracks to every biome, securing at least one node for every type of ore, building a big garden with all plants available in the game and building little rooms themed after our favorite biomes near our base camp. Aside from this, there are also achievements for all achievement hunters out there, leveling all skills on your skill tree to 100, uncovering (all of?) the world map and so on.

If you prefer just getting your toes wet a bit and not sticking around for a longer time, one playthrough will take around 20 to 40 hours. This depends strongly on how easily you are side-tracked by shiny and interesting things and how straightforwardly you follow the main objectives given to you by the Core. Otherwise, if you enjoy your time in the underground, you will have a long time of fun and exploration ahead of you. Especially, since the developers announced that Core Keeper will still receive free updates after leaving Early Access on August 27, 2024. There are also time-limited seasonal events like Christmas and Halloween that reward special items. Good news if you enjoy a nice all-year christmas/halloween or easter-feeling: you may also activate those outside of their event period by using the "Override season" option in your game's settings.

One big part of why the game is so charming is the pixel art style. The environment, creatures, characters and items are unique, interesting and outright lovely. You will encounter different biomes which all harbor resources, enemies, creatures and secrets that are unique to them. As you never know what awaits you within the next three swings of your pickaxe, it doesn’t get boring to roam around the map looking to uncover something new. Core Keeper’s aesthetic roams from cozy and cute to adventurous and thrilling. It never disappointed us in presenting something new. We unearthed old ruins, found unique treasures and collectibles to build our own museum-esque exhibition. There are equipment sets and different pets to join you on your journey.

And not only does Core Keeper look great, it also runs very stable with a stable frame rate that keeps up even during effect-heavier encounters. Besides logging into your game, you will not encounter any loading screens. Even when racing across the map on mine carts, there is no texture popping, which adds a lot to immersion. Even on lower-end PCs the game should run without issues. The system requirements recommended by the developers are Windows 10 with at least an Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Processor, 8 GB RAM memory and a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti / Radeon R9 280X graphics card. We didn’t encounter any noticeable bugs or technical issues.

Core Keeper is a great co-op game with a lot of strengths and only few weaknesses. It is equally recommendable for veterans of the genre as well as new players looking to try out something new and even beginners completely new to gaming as a whole.
Here, we listed some pros and cons for you, to help you decide if you should pick it up or better skip on Core Keeper:

In conclusion, we believe that Core Keeper is a fantastic sandbox game that is visually pleasing thanks to its pixel-art graphics and the level of attention to detail and love that was placed into everything from the designs and artwork to the sound effects and music. Additionally, we thought the gameplay was fun, intriguing, diversified, relaxed, and simultaneously challenging. Simply exploring the world Pugstorm created for us players, with all of its creatures, biomes, surprises, and environmental storytelling, makes Core Keeper a more than rewarding experience.

We gave Core Keeper a rating of 4.3 out of 5 and hope you will join the ranks of Explorers that came to love this game so dearly.

4.3 / 5.0