2.5/5 ★ – sirvalkyerie's review of Core Keeper.

Core Keeper is fine. It's an idle time killer for a few hours. It's not that good. It's not that deep. It doesn't play that well. But it is ~600 megabytes, free on GamePass and will give you a couple hours of joy with a sibling or spouse or younger relative or something. Controls and combat suck. Very Stardew inspired but with none of the charm or worldbuilding. Whole game is in a cave so its dim and dark. Game gives you no guiderails or structure, just plops you in and says go. It's inherently grindy and without a full group of like 5 to 8 people it just kinda feels a bit aimless and listless to play. Too much to do but also not enough to do nor is there any reason to do it. If all I wanted to do was build a base and plant some seeds, I could do that in any one of a million games, at least half of which look and play better than Core Keeper. That leaves Core Keeper's chief selling point being its tiny install size, the fact it can run on anything and the fact that it's on Game Pass. It's an easy skip. No reason to seek it out. But if you do have an evening to kill with someone and no idea what to play, it'll occupy your attention for a few hours.