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, is it worth completing?

All achievements were obtained on normal difficulty.

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.

Void & Voltage Update (1.2.0.3)

Five new achievements were added.

My partner and I decided to revisit Core Keeper this update using our old characters. The team added two new legendary weapons, two new bosses, and one new biome with a sub-biome. Of course, there's a lot more small things as well, but this is the most relevant. The other major changes they made effect new playthroughs of the game, such as reworking the entire boss summoning system. A few crafting tables in our base became obsolete and unobtainable, which is interesting. I'm glad they're still willing to make sweeping changes to the game, even after it's been fully released. All the changes made aim to make the game more enjoyable to play and much less grindy.

Along with everything new added, five new achievements were added. All five related to the new bosses and weapons, which we easily accomplished. What I wanted to discuss most, however, was how I feel coming back to games after content is added. I've never enjoyed watching shows as they've come out, I prefer waiting for the full thing. I also grew up in a time when a game was released, it was released. To get more content, we'd get an expansion, and later, a DLC. This set a clear boundary between the release of a game, and additional content. My brain can't handle free updates, or even DLC that melds together with the original release. On top of that, it doesn't work well with being a completionist. I don't want to have to constantly check to see if a game I completed got a free update and have to come back and do whatever they added.

Core Keeper is such an amazing game, that I'm happy to come back, even if it's hard. It took me a minute to pick up where I left off, and that never feels good to me. Once I got back into the swing of things, I was enjoying it again. While I wish there was more content, I took this opportunity to remake our base after we got all the achievements. I played for a handful more days once we finished with the new content.

Published 21 December 2025 @ 4:08:00 PM UTCUpdated 03 May 2026 @ 3:51:32 PM UTC

End of Game Information

Total Time Played: 95 hours, 10 minutes