Core Keeper is a life-simulation strategy game set in a vast cave system where you construct a sprawling base. It crosses the exploration and discovery of Stardew Valley with the camaraderie and adventure of Valheim. In this way it combines unexpectedly deep combat with building and farming in a game you can enjoy on your own or with other people.

You explore a huge cave system, filled with lakes, caverns, and echoes of a lost civilisation. It's tough to start as you have to use what you can find to scrape out an existence. The world is procedurally generated, meaning that the cave systems are infinitely large and explorable and that no two games are the same.

To progress you use survival skills to hunt food and grow plants. Eventually you have enough resources to craft a simple base and wide array of weapons to help you fend off the ancient monsters that dwell in the darkness. Be sure to bring torches, weapons and gear along with you whenever you leave the safety of your base to deal with the pitch blackness and the varied monsters you share the world with.

There's also a complex skill tree that consists of nine branching avenues for character development. This enables you to customise your character to suit your play style, be that ranged or close-quarters combat, enhanced crafting, or quicker mining.

The result is a game that not only combines popular elements from other base-building, farming, crafting and dungeon-crawling games, but that manages to get them to work together to create a coherent whole.