Another beautiful week has gone by and things have been as busy as ever with the Core Keeper community! We hope our friends in the Northern Hemisphere are all keeping warm as autumn sets in and that the shorter days just mean longer nights cozied up playing video games Also, not to be those guys but...we've just realised that it's Friday the 13th! Seasonal Events Re-Cap!

Portal Crafted at significant expense, players can teleport between Portals placed anywhere in the world. Greatly speeding up returning to key locations.

feels like a dungeon crawler that you’re creating. You gather materials by mining square tiles, and for most of the game, you’re surrounded by walls that conceal explorable areas.

You can't really make these items until you get to the mid-game, either, so take advantage of the Core's Waypoint in the early game and build your base near it!

Early on, I adored this simplicity, even as a solo player. It was ideal for a two-screen PC setup with YouTube or Netflix playing on the side. Toward the end — and admittedly, in Early Access, there isn’t really an “end” — I started to feel tapped out.

While it doesn’t reinvent the wheels of its genre, Pugstorm’s Core Keeper emerges confidently out of early access and I’m looking forward to revisiting it over and over again in the coming years.

Slow-moving slimes may not seem like much of a challenge, but if you stumble across a good-sized bunch, things can take a turn quickly. Not only do they do a surprising amount of damage, but if you die, you’ll also need to head back to that area to reclaim just about everything you had in your pack (only equipment and whatever was in your quickbar will respawn with you).

The workbenches chain from one to the next, as players progress through biomes and their ores. There is no requirement to beat bosses, initially. The Core:

It’s pitch dark, so you’ll need to plop down some torches, keep an eye out for glimmering deposits to crack open, and consult your slowly materializing map from time to time.

Salvage and Repair Station: Allows you to repair and reinforce your equipment in exchange for Scrap Parts. It can also be used to break down existing tools, weapons, and armor to get Scrap Parts. It's best to craft Core Keeper Gameplay a few cheap tools and destroy them so you can repair your good tools.

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Pretty much all enemies spawn based on the tiles placed on the ground. If you remove them, enemies won't spawn in that area any longer. Each type of tile spawns different kinds of enemies; you can collect these tiles and place them down elsewhere in order to make monster farms.

I’m not convinced Core Keeper can match the quality and scope of its best-in-class inspirations, but it’s already worth a look in Early Access, and if the rest of the pieces fall into place leading up to the full launch, it’ll be fondly remembered. [Early Access Review]

Core Keeper is a strong survival game that can easily chew through the hours, providing a great balance between adventure and homesteading. There's a sense that pelo idea was left out, whether that be a constant pet companion or minecart rail lines, and while these may not get fully fleshed out, this is a rare occasion where quantity manages to make up for depth. The pet levels up and sometimes enemies drop treats that give it a nice experience boost, and that's all it needs to do.