Like most games I play these days, Core Keeper was recommended to me by my partner. She's a big fan of co-op sandbox RPGs, so she's been asking me to play it with her since we met in 2024. There's been so much going on in our lives since then, we weren't able play it until the very end of 2025, where we are now!

As I said before, Core Keeper is a sandbox RPG that was styled after Stardew Valley and Terraria. I'm sure there's some Minecraft inspiration in there as well, because what sandbox game isn't inspired by Minecraft in some way. You build your base, upgrade your gear, fight bosses, all the things you'd expect from both Stardew and Terraria.

From a gameplay perspective, Core Keeper can lean on the easier side. During my playthrough, I was sometimes wishing that we played on hard instead of standard. The balance of the game isn't quite like Terraria or Stardew, which force you into specific tool and armour progressions. You can go to new zones and farm ores without having to do certain bosses, allowing you to become much more powerful than the boss expects you to be. Other than that, the gameplay loop felt wonderful. Even as I write this, I want to load another world and play it again right after completing the game. Setting up and actively expending the base felt rewarding, upgrading your gear and feeling yourself become stronger felt fun, and stumbling into structures while exploring felt exciting.

So, was it worth completing?

Core Keeper is almost a perfect game for any completionist. Getting every achievement will let you know when you've completed the game, but there are extra things you can do to extend it. The one aspect that keeps it from being a perfect completionist game is that there aren't enough achievements. That aside, some achievements have unique ways of getting them, which left me skeptical at first, but I came to appreciate in the end.

The game has a decent number of achievements you'll get just by playing through the game, and some you'll hunt down. During your playthrough, you'll end up with a ton of armour pieces, usually part of a set. You can craft a mannequin to equip these with, and decorate them around your base. By the end, I collected every piece of armour, showing them off on armour stands for their respective sets.

Alongside the armour stands, every enemy has a chance to drop a trophy. These trophies of themselves can be used to set up mob farms, or simply decorate your base. I combined both the armour sets and trophies to make an awesome spoils room.

Automation is something that can add some extra fun as well. I challenged myself to both make an item farm in the form of wood, and a mob farm. They were a decent challenge to figure out, although, I do wish they were a bit more fleshed out.

That leads me to what disappointed me about completing Core Keeper; needing to suggest ways to extend your playthrough. I mean it when I say getting all the achievements doesn't feel like enough. Every part of this game was so enjoyable, that I yearned for more achievements and more things to do. Setting up an automated farm, or getting a certain number of armour pieces, should have been achievements on their own. I found myself getting—what I thought—were big accomplishments, only to have no achievement associated with them. I know some people hate games with a long list of achievements, but I would have loved so much more.

Something I ran into while searching efficient ways to get achievements was people recommending people cheat to level up their class skills. This rubbed me the wrong way at first. I was confused why the prevailing strategy was to simply cheat, or use macros like Auto Hotkey. Once I started levelling up my skills, I started to see why. Thankfully, the version I started playing on patched out these methods, which forced people to get a lot more creative. While some things like mining had to be farmed normally, combat skills like magic, summoning, ranged, and melee could be farmed using unique mob farms. I created a mob farm that would funnel enemies towards me, allowing me to hit them without them hitting me. Figuring out how to do this was, logistically, extremely fun.

Core Keeper is a fantastic game, not just as a completionist, but as a casual player. While I have some gripes about the completionist content, some progression scaling, and class balance, they're ultimately minor compared to the overall experience you'll have playing the game. If you're in a slump, regardless of what kind of gamer you are, you'll find a lot of enjoyment here, especially with a friend or two.

_{Published 21 December 2025 @ 4:08:00 PM UTC}

End of Game Information

Total Time Played: 80 hours