Core Keeper's Journey to 1.0 | Akliz Game Server Hosting (2024)

core keeper

There is no shortage of games with exploration and survival mechanics. Core Keeper, however, offers a unique and extremely polished take on the genre that easily sets it apart from the crowd. If you haven't played it, you're missing out. But luckily for you, Core Keeper is about to release version 1.0 on August 27th.

What is Core Keeper?

Core Keeper is a unique 2D, top-down, voxel-based game about exploring, mining, fighting, and building. It takes place underground, in a procedurally generated, but very tightly controlled and guided, set of biomes, structures, bosses, secrets, and mysteries. The world is not infinite, and every part of it has a purpose. This is a nice change, compared to some other games with procedurally generated worlds that go on forever and have many areas that serve the same purpose. I won't spoil too much, but you get a vague goal at the very beginning and are let loose to achieve parts of that in any order, however you'd like.

Core Keeper feels reminiscent of Terraria, with its unique gear and combat paired with interesting enemies and unique exploration that spans from beautiful, quiet fields to dark and horrific hellscapes. The pixel-art style of the game is truly wonderful. Every new area or location you stumble upon is a feast for the eyes, and yet can be run smoothly on even the most modest of hardware. It has had a multitude of seasonal, holiday, and other regular events as well, which are remarkably well-done for a game in early access. These offer new reasons to keep coming back to the game between major content updates.

A Smooth Journey

Core Keeper, developed by Pugstorm, was first revealed in June 2021, and released in open alpha in early December for a limited time. There was a short demo during Steam Next Fest, and it finally released into early access on Steam in March of 2022. Immediately, players noticed the high level of polish, which is uncommon for many early access games. That level of polish would be sustained and even improved as the game continued to be developed. Since then, it has had multiple large content updates, including a crossover with Terraria, which I will let you discover for yourself.

All the while, the developers post community updates once per month which include behind the scenes development news, lore, community activity, and more. This has kept wind in the sails of the community and buzz around the game throughout its development. Along the way, Core Keeper has won 2 awards, including "Best Social Game" at the TIGA Awards, and "Best Debut" at the Swedish Game Awards. It was also nominated for "Best Early Access Launch" at the Golden Joystick Awards.

The 1.0 Announcement

On May 16th, the developers made a Steam News post and announcement video detailing the 1.0 launch date for PC and consoles. The 1.0 update will feature a major content update, along with entirely new features and other improvements. They are keeping the details of this new content close to their chest, as they tend to do with major content updates.

They do have one more update before launch that will focus on performance and bug fixes, and the content that was planned for the summer update has been rolled into the 1.0 update. They did also share one cryptic picture at the end of the article with no explanation. Nobody can tell what it is for sure, but personally, I think it looks like some sort of teleportation circle.

A Short Wait

I personally am very excited for the release of this game. If you hang out in the Akliz Discord server, you might remember that we had a few community game nights where we played Core Keeper. I loved every second of it, and we will certainly do it again once it releases. This game works very well with a group. Some fights are very tough solo, and the exploration aspect is made so much better if you get to experience it with friends.

When I first played the game with a group, some of my friends stayed at the base and crafted, built, and farmed, while others went on excursions to explore and fight. You have plenty of content and gameplay to have fun with even if you don't want to engage in some of the gameplay elements. With the quality of the previous content updates, I can't imagine what could be in store for 1.0, but I know it will be fantastic. I can hardly wait.

Now that you’re up to speed on what’s happening with the release of the game, don’t forget to rent a server for you and your friends to play on come release day! Core Keeper runs with very little RAM; you can play it on our cheapest 2GB plan. Get it here!

If you want to join us for our community game night we'll have the Friday after release (which should be August 30th), be sure to join our Discord server here! The game is definitely more fun with friends. We will build, explore, and fight difficult bosses together. It’s going to be a great time.