Someone mashed together Minecraft's mining and survival chops with Stardew Valley's pixel beauty and mind-boggling plethora of options in the excellent Core Keeper, which just exited early access after two years, and no surprise, it's blowing up in popularity.
The central premise of Core Keeper has you trapped in a procgen underground cavern that stretches endlessly, entirely submerged in shadows until you spread torches about the place, and there's nowhere to go until you mine your path outward.
Like Minecraft, there's not an explicit goal to grind toward, but there is a mysterious core (hence the title) that lays dormant right where you wake up. From there, you're off to discover the various hulking creatures, slimes, cattle, and biomes hidden in the depths.
What stood out to me most was the RPG progression, where the more you garden the more your gardening levels up, for example, and the untraceable number of systems to dive into. There are mine cart rails you can build. Farms you can foster. Electrical gadgets that need power. Crafting. Fighting. Fishing. Summoning. Boss fights. There's always a little nugget, a new discovery, to work toward that makes hours fly by like nothing.
I'm not the only one who's under Core Keeper's spell since its August 27 release either. Director Fredrik Präntare jumped onto social media to celebrate some of the game's amazing feats so far. "We are feeling so grateful and amazed," he tweeted, alongside a screenshot showing Core Keeper's concurrent player peak of 45,800 on Steam, which has been steadily going up over the entire week, not to mention the 26,000 user reviews that are 91% positive. "I must be dreaming," he tweeted a few days ago.
If you'd like to get lost in the subterranean labyrinths, Core Keeper is available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Game Pass now - and it's coming to Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One on September 17.
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