In Core Keeper, Terraria meets Stardew Valley – and thus the nerve of many Steam players. The indie game is already earning very positive votes in Early Access.
Do you like to plant fields and harvest crops in Stardew Valley? At the same time, is your courage big enough to explore branching caves, collect materials and defeat bosses like in Terraria? Then Core Keeper might be just to your taste.
The indie game by developer Pugstorm combines the strengths of both games and lets you explore a huge network of caves with up to seven friends. You can already get a first glimpse in the trailer:
Core Keeper: Terraria meets Stardew Valley in Early Access
In Core Keeper, you take on the role of a self-created researcher who sets out in search of an ancient relic. This is the eponymous The Core , which is located in the middle of a procedurally generated cave. The problem? No one knows exactly what this core actually does.
So it is now your goal to uncover the secrets of the relic. To do this, you dig your way through the cave, mine minerals, collect various plant seeds, make new tools and better equipment and regularly have to fight monsters. There are even real bosses waiting for you, who will give you a particularly hard time if you’re not careful.
You can experience the whole thing either alone or in co-op mode with up to seven players – and since 8 March 2022 in Early Access on Steam. The scope of the game is as follows:
- Singleplayer and multiplayer support
- Over 140 items to find or craft
- Base building, blacksmithing, farming and cooking as activities
- Various biomes to explore
- 3 big bosses
- Support for mouse and keyboard, as well as gamepads
- By the time of the planned release, which is currently scheduled for probably the end of 2022, the developers want to add more biomes, enemies, bosses, items and story elements. In addition, the individual game mechanics will also be further refined during the Early Access phase.
Steam Reviews: A very positive start
The mix of Terraria and Stardew Valley is going down well with Steam players. In the first few hours, Core Keeper has already recorded over 12,000 concurrent players – and the trend is rising, as (Steam DB) points out:
Player numbers on Steam are on a good path, as SteamDB’s graph shows. And the reviews also show a clear picture so far: 93 percent of 417 submitted (User reviews) are positive. As a result, Core Keeper currently has a rating of very positive. Above all, the aspect that the game creates an exciting mixture of Stardew Valley and Terraria is praised.
The Steam user Janissary From Age of Empires 3 writes something like:
Basically Stardew Valley + Terraria had a baby and this is the offspring. It’s really fun with friends and I recommend the game if you’ve played either Minecraft, Terraria, or Stardew Valley.
ThothReturns sums it up similarly – but a bit more pictorial and detailed:
The best way to describe it is as if Stardew Valley and Terraria had a baby. And that baby grew up and got involved with Minecraft after prom. I don’t think they stayed together after they went off to college…. I mean, they said they would try my long distance relationship, but it just didn’t work out. Sometimes they think about each other…
There is also praise for the amount of content the Early Access version already includes and for the technical state. According to most reports, Core Keeper runs quite bug-free and without major problems. This also applies to the co-op mode, as (Acierocolotl) mentions:
Most importantly, it works well in co-op. I played the entire time in co-op with my buddy and everything ran smoothly.
If you now get a hankering for Core Keeper, you should take a (look on Steam). On the occasion of its release in Early Access, the indie game is still available for under 12 euros until 15 March.
And if you’re currently looking for even more insider tips, then take a look at our overview article, in which we introduce you to twelve exciting games:
What do you think of Core Keeper? Can you get excited about the mixture of Terraria and Stardew Valley with a big co-op mode or does the game concept leave you rather cold? Let us know what you think in the comments!
