The trending game genres are shifting all the time. But if we had to commend one of them for staying relevant for the most surprising length of time, that commendation would sure go to the open world survival craft genre. It’s been quite a long time since it rise up to its position where it remains mostly untouched, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Core Keeper has players explore an underground world for clues on a mysterious core. As they explore the cavern and fight bosses, new equipment and machinery becomes available for crafting so that they can go farther and find new challenges while they develop their bases and reawaken the core.
The first time we’ve played Core Keeper was in March 2022, when the game’s Early Access version officially became available on Steam. Often referred to as “top-down Terraria”, the game had us interested but couldn’t keep us entertained for long, which is why we decided to wait until its release version landed, which happened just a couple of days ago.
The launch trailer shows off no shortage of epic adventures to dive into and bosses to challenge. But that’s not the whole picture — at least not in our experience.
For starters, throughout all of our 1.0 play sessions, we’ve experienced an annoying issue where everybody but the session’s host lagged to a point their characters controlled as if they were ice skating. This issue has already been reported by other players, but remains unsolved as of the release of this review.
As if this wasn’t already discouraging enough, we’ve soon come to discover our biggest gripe about what was offered in the Early Access version remains unchanged: Ghorm The Devourer. In Core Keeper’s early game, players have to beat three bosses before they are allowed to progress further into the world. Ghorm is one of them, a giant worm that constantly moves in a circle-shaped tunnel around the starting area and can only be stopped by playing Ranged and being patient or by setting up tin spike traps in its way.
If you get it right, the boss fight proves to be little more than an unfunny joke. But if the tin spikes you’ve created were not enough to bring his HP all the way down and you have died, you’ll have to mine more tin to craft new traps and set them all over again.
For the most part of the game, boss fights play exactly the same, mainly because the players never evolve. They are held back by super slow fire rates and can barely deal any damage without relying on stacking as many potions and food buffs as they can while wearing the very best gear they can obtain at said point. The low enemy and low weapon variety don’t help change things either.
To give credit where it’s due, the low weapon variety has been partially addressed with the addition of gear pieces and Magic weapons that can be found in the wild. But since they are part of the 1.0 update, they haven’t undergone tweaks based on player feedback and are still not enough to turn exploring into a fun or useful activity.
With so many disappointing elements, we’re left with little more to talk about. And even if that make us look merciless, we have to bring one more issue to light: downgrades. Several features have been changed or even removed from the game on the arrival of version 1.0, including the previously endless map, which was abruptly replaced by a small one instead.
Final Thoughts
5 (Average) according to the reviewer
Core Keeper still has a long way to go before it lives up to its inspirations. While update 1.0 added promising features, it also brought downgrades, technical issues, and didn’t completely address many of the game’s downsides either. Besides, its own twists — such as the skill tree system and underground setting — have little to add to the overall experience at the end of the day.
The art style and soundtrack are great, but unless the gameplay is reworked into a more rewardingly exciting experience and the aforementioned issues are solved, we honestly see no reasons to play Core Keeper over Terraria, which has endless content thanks to over a decade of updates and mods.
This game was reviewed with a digital copy acquired by the reviewer.
