Dome Keeper

Don’t let Dome Keeper‘s simplicity put you off: in fact, it’s that simplicity that makes it so great in the first place. Free of bloat and complicated mechanics, this game of survival against the odds will keep you coming back for more. And more.

Dome Keeper is a well-disguised time-management game with a great atmosphere and plenty of ways to engage with its content.

Literally and figuratively, there’s a lot to dig in Dome Keeper’s mixture of excavation, resource management, and defense stages.

Priced at under $20, Dome Keeper will keep you on your toes for several mining sessions. Its cyclical design is simple and executed fairly well, keeping the tension consistent throughout a run. However, upgrades quickly become restrictive in terms of effective builds, and both mining and defense become predictable in subsequent playthroughs. That said, the game has plenty of room for future updates that could help balance things out. Dome Keeper, without taking too many risks, fits simply and innocuously inside the world of the iterative survival genre.

Dome Keeper is still left wanting for more content to flesh out its addictive gameplay concept. At the ten-hour mark, many players will have seen the breadth of its unlocks and will then decide if simply pumping more time into it for the love or leaderboard placement is worth it; a special “prestige” mode is specifically geared towards a risk/reward competitive score style. It’s hard not to simply want more weapons, base mods, and artifacts, even if the gameplay otherwise remains the same. With enough sales, maybe the game will come even more into its own, but Dome Keeper’s unusual mix of combat, time management, and resource-drilling is a magical combo.