Core Keeper
Explore a vast 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.
Core Keeper is a pixel graphics, open world survival craft and online co-op game
developed by Pugstorm
and published by Fireshine Games and bilibili.
Released on August 27th 2024 is available on Windows and Linux
in 13 languages: English, Simplified Chinese, Thai, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish - Spain, French, Italian, Portuguese - Brazil, Traditional Chinese, Russian and Ukrainian.
It has received 51,306 reviews of which 47,677 were positive and 3,629 were negative resulting in an impressive rating of 9.1 out of 10. 😍
The game is currently priced at 19.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Core Keeper into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Core Keeper through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- Processor: Intel Core i5-2300 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: GeForce GTX 460 / Radeon HD 5850
Linux
- OS: Linux (Ubuntu 20.04)
- Processor: Intel Core i5-2300 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200
- Graphics: GeForce GTX 460 / Radeon HD 5850
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
To preface this review, I'd like to say that I love Terraria, I love Stardew Valley, and I LOVE that rush that both of those games can make a person feel as they discover new places, make new equipment, or finally kill that one boss. Core Keeper is a fusion of both of those games, and more. It's the experience I wanted as a "casual-but-not-that-casual gamer". Great game to play alone, even better game to play with friends. This game is what you'd get if you condensed Terraria's caving experience into a single game, think back on when you stumbled upon your first Underground Mushroom Biome or went exploring in the Underground Jungle. It's all those experiences, mixed in with Stardew's combat, but more "focused". With that said, here's a list of some other notable features that I liked: Parrying - I'm currently playing through the game as a melee character, with an axe and shield in hand. With a shield, you can completely negate an enemy's attack by timing a block perfectly (normally, you would negate 70% of the damage, but timing it perfectly would perform a "parry"). Finding this out by myself during a boss fight was really fun, especially with how much I appreciate skill-based mechanics like this. And in Core Keeper with a very lackluster combat system comparable to that in Don't Starve, this is a very welcome addition, making combat vary from just kiting and hitting a boss or mob. Instruments - There are instruments in this game! They're all very cute and nice to have, they're also used to solve some puzzles in the game. Overall, they bring personality into the game and could make for some funny moments when playing in a group. I just wish there were more though! Farming - Farming in Stardew Valley, but infinitely faster and overall less of a hassle. Electronics - Think redstone from Minecraft, but less complicated. You can essentially make a system that mines ore for you while you focus on other stuff in the game. Really cool. All the little stuff - There are so much things you can find in this game, don't go into it expecting a speedrun or a challenge run. Just experience it for what it is, dig around, look for some shiny rocks, and maybe you might find some really cool stuff while you're at it. Looking forward to the full release on August 27! EDIT: Game is fully released now! Finally had time to try it again with my girlfriend and there's so much more to discover, please keep working on this beautiful game.
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Review after 100% solo play Rating: 9.5/10 I would say this is like a love child between Terarria and Stardew Valley, but I haven't beaten either of those games so I'll keep it a bit more original. I took the time to 100% Core Keeper (heads up this was like 160 hours, my time playing on Steam Deck wasn't added in idk why) and it was absolutely worth it. The game has so many different facets; farming, mining, fighting, fishing, base-building, collecting, etc. all built into a graphics style that makes me reminisce the GBA. It's hard not to find a reason to love this game. You can tell the dev put a lot of time and effort into crafting the littlest details about Core Keeper into something enjoyable. For example, I usually don't notice subtle sound effects and music transitions but with Core Keeper it's hard not too. The sounds are built seamlessly into the game and make it so satisfying even when meandering around doing pointless little tasks. The combat is no joke either. If you go into this game thinking you're going to stomp on all the enemies since you've played Elden Ring or similar like I did you will be humbled quick. You actually have to put time into leveling your character, looting gear, and matching up sets to get bonuses that make just that little bit of a difference to put your character over the edge. Plus, you can get a variety of pets that give stat bonuses and it follows you around everywhere. S'cute. The one and I mean the ONE drawback this game has it can be extremely grindy. Especially if you're looking to 100% it. For example, leveling up your stats to 100 takes forever depending on which stats you focused on throughout your play-through. This isn't deal-breaking by any means but still, it can be a bit annoying when you already completed everything else. But hey, beggars can't be choosers, especially when hunting for achievements. Aside from the grindiness, it was an amazing game. 9.5/10 for me. I'm sure this game is great in Co-op. I just didn't have friends to play it with.
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Core Keeper is not a revolution. It's a game with very tight design following the standards of games like Terraria with the crafting - exploration - boss battle gameplay loop, except it's top down. Familiar mechanics under a different guise. The charming pixel graphic aesthetic, combat that is simple but fun, a world that has a sense of mystery but is not steeped in complicated lore. There is not a wild amount of variety to the non-boss enemies you will be facing. With some exceptions they are reskins of each other with different variations in attack pattern depending on which biome you are in. Biomes and normal exploration can get repetitive, but then that's a sign you should be moving towards the next boss battle, which is how progression is unlocked. The boss battles are not astounding, but they deliver on the basic promise of this genre: each one is more difficult, and each one attacks in different ways. As you progress, combat requires preparation, and evasion reflexes become important. There is not a huge variety in gear and builds, so there is just a few different paths to take in terms of playstyle. This to me is a plus since I'm not in a place where I want to spend ages picking between different complex builds, but if you're into more complexity in this regard, I thought you should know. Once you've gone past the first major progression barrier, it is only the strength of your pickaxe that limits where you can explore. Systems like, farming, livestock, railways, boats, infinite resource nodes, automated drills, conveyor belts, and eventually portals will spare you a lot of the tedium of resource collection once you get into the midgame. Also most bosses have a waypoint teleporter close to them to make it easier to get back in case you die. This is one of those games I'll go to if I want to chill after a long day and listen to a podcast while I'm mining, farming, fishing and exploring. It's not breaking new ground (no pun intended), but it's a nostalgic, loving embrace from a genre I love, and it feels like coming home.
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I actually like this better than Minecraft for reasons I don't fully understand yet. It seems perhaps more streamlined or less confusing. I'm playing this with my two kids, aged 7 and 9 and it is complex enough to keep me, a 40ish year old man entertained, but easy enough for small children to grasp. Unfortunately there is no split screen type co-op, but that is understandable imo because otherwise you'd be tied to the same area or the screen would be too small. The upside is this motivated me to smash together a couple of old PCs into a new frankenstein gamish. It is an interesting evolution, from iPad kids, to playing on PC with Xbox controllers, and now eventually somewhat with the mouse. At least they're seeing it is way easier to navigate and aim using mouse rather than the controllers. Anyways, we're currently 4 hours in and having a blast. There is enough decorating and building for my daughter, enough exploring and fishing for my skittish son, and enough logistics, organization, combat, and complexity to keep my adult gaming sensibilities fulfilled. That's a pretty tall order if you think about it, and it makes sense why this game has such great reviews. Another benefit to the devs (and Steam for that matter) to this more cheap co-op game is now each kid has their own Steam account, own PC, and own copies of Core Keeper. Nice.
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I had to think about this for awhile, because while I do vastly enjoy this game for a variety of reasons, there is one major aspect that has continued to frustrate, only getting worse as time goes on. First, let's start with the positives. Adventuring and exploring is great, progression is delightful, and there are so many enjoyable easter eggs, and a decent variety of ways to play through the game itself. The coop experience is wonderful as well, and even though not everyone is able to get some of the legendary items due to limited availability in the world, the rest of the available gear is still comparable enough to make this a more minor issue. If you are a fan of Terraria or other similar survival/adventure games, then Core Keeper will likely be right up your alley. Now for the one major issue that I have with the game: the leveling system. I love leveling systems and talent trees, and while the talent trees in Core Keeper are relatively simple, they are nice. I would certainly love a more in-depth talent tree, or even some of the less-useful talents reworked, but that is not where my main complaint lies. My main complaint lies in the experience system specifically. See, most games follow a general pattern for gaining experience. Do a thing related to your skill, and you gain experience in that skill. The harder the thing, the more experience you gain. For example, slaying a boss would grant you more experience than slaying a minion, or a common mob. Crafting a complex and/or expensive item gives more experience than crafting a torch. Fishing up a tricky fish awards you with more experience than pulling up a sleepy, never-moving fish. Core Keeper follows this principle for some of their skills. See, for a lot of the skills in Core Keeper, you simply gain 1 xp every time you do something related to that skill, no matter how difficult or easy it was. Out of the 9 skills available in Core Keeper, 7/9 of them follow this rule. For some of them, such as Cooking, Gardening and running, this seems to work just fine. Maybe not ideal, but fine. For the rest, this rule ranges from annoying, to downright aggravating. On the simply annoying side, we have Fishing. While Fishing, you can either pull up a fish and start the fishing minigame, or you can pull up an item. In either case, you gain 1 xp. It doesn't matter if you pull up an easy fish in the beginning biome, or an epic fish from one of the lategame biomes. It doesn't matter if you pull up a piece of scrap, or if you pull up a piece of rare gear. It is all 1 xp. This leads to the strange conclusion that in order to level up fishing, you don't want to fish up fish. The fishing minigame takes more time than simply fishing up an item, and nets you the same xp, so if you want to level up fishing, it's better to fish up items, not fish! I am not a fishing fanatic, so this mostly is just annoying, but for anyone who really enjoys fishing in various games, I could see this being quite frustrating. (Also, what is the point of the talent that makes you fishing rod casts go further?? I could see this making it easier to fish from fishing shoals, but you can also build a dock easily enough to make this negligible.) For the frustrating, we have Ranged, Melee, and Mining. For all three of these, you get 1 xp each time you hit something. For Ranged and Melee, it's 1 xp for hitting a creature with a ranged or melee weapon, respectively. For Mining, it's when you hit a wall and deal at least 12 damage. Like most games with leveling, the higher the level, the more xp it takes to get to the next level. These xp requirements become egregious at the higher levels, especially if you do not understand the xp mechanic in the game. I spent the entirety of the game with a melee focused build, and even beat a couple of the end game bosses, including the Atlantean Worm . By this point, I was barely over level 50 (out of 100, for perspective). For further perspective, the xp required to get from level 1-50 is approximately one quarter of the xp needed to get from levels 51-100. I had not touched a single ranged weapon this game, yet I was at end end game and I was barely 1/5 of the way towards 'mastering' melee. It was around this time when I started scouring the wiki, and learned more about the various mechanics of the game, including the xp mechanics for the various skills. Like many others, I love gathering achievements and I wanted to find the most efficient way to get those delicious level 100 achievements. Imagine my disappointment when I realized that the best way to level up Melee was to fight an early game boss with my fists... over and over again. Not exactly exciting gameplay, and most definitely not intuitive for the majority of players. However with over 15 Hive Mothers slain by my fists, I had made decent progress on Melee, getting to about level 90. They last few levels are truly a slog, taking at least 1 boss fight each to complete. So leveling Melee proved to be viable, even if it was a bit of a slog. Though, at the rate that these last few levels are taking, I'm estimating at least 10-15 more fights before I get level 100 Melee...Ranged is not much better. In fact, you could argue that it is worse, since you have to use a ranged weapon, meaning that you kill enemies in fewer hits, which nets you less xp... and you have to contend with durability. The one that I'm dreading the most is Mining. In games like Core Keeper, Terraria, Minecraft, and so on, Mining is a fundamental aspect of the game. You mine constantly , breaking down walls to get to ores, to explore new areas, to build bases, to make travel easier, and so on. I love mining for ores, I love spelunking into the depths and exploring caverns. With over a decade's worth of experience of mining in Minecraft, my love for it still has not diminished. However, the process that will be required to even attempt to bring my Mining up to 100 in Core Keeper... is asinine. If you are playing like a normal player, you don't want to spend forever destroying each individual wall, so you increase your mining damage to destroy each wall in 1-2 hits. If you do this, you would have to destroy over one hundred thousand walls individually to get level 100. You can't even speed up the process by using hammers to destroy 6 walls at a time, because that still only gives you 1 xp, because it is '1 hit'. To help make sure that your world doesn't look like a strip mine, it's better to level up your mining by hitting one wall several times. Except, if your mining damage is too low, you don't deal damage to the wall. If you don't deal at least 12 damage to the wall after it's armor, you don't get any xp at all. You can try trial and error to attempt to find the 'optimal' walls to grind xp, but it's incredibly tedious. Your best way to do this is to once again use the wiki to find the exact stats for each wall, and then use that info to find the best wall to punch over.. and over... and over.... My mining is level 72, but that is just barely 1/4 of the way to level 100. Vitality and Crafting are the only two skills that do not follow this rule, with Vitality giving you xp based off of the max HP of the monster you killed (capped at 1000...), and crafting giving you more xp for the more complicated/valuable items that you craft. I think that Vitality could benefit from having the cap removed and the xp adjusted for later levels, but honestly, it works well enough as is and probably does need any adjustment. Crafting works well enough, so no further notes there. This review turned out a lot more long-winded and technical than I initially expected, so I'll try and summarize here. I simply ask that the xp system gets reworked for at least a few of the skills. I am not asking for gaining xp in various skills to be trivial, I am simply asking for it to be feasible. To be enjoyable.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 12 December 2024 00:43 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 20 January 2025 16:16 |
| Steam price | 22 January 2025 20:32 |
| Steam reviews | 22 January 2025 00:04 |
Online players
7,650
Developer
Pugstorm
Publisher
Fireshine Games,
bilibili
Release
27 Aug 2024
Platforms
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