Dome Keeper divides me. There’s a part of me, each time I play, that’s really happy to return, to feel the ground give under my drill, to hoist my mined resources triumphantly to my command centre and turn them into upgrades to improve my base. This time, I tell myself, I will build better and survive longer and make my dome’s defences impenetrable. This run will be the one.
Dome Keeper reviewDeveloper: BippinbitsPublisher: Raw FuryPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on Steam for PC, Mac and Linux
Then, inevitably, it isn’t. Just as I get some real momentum going, a particularly savage wave of shadowy monsters overwhelms me, from both the air and ground, and my precious dome cracks and breaks and I am done for. Game over, try again. And the other part of me is peeved it failed. But I know this is how it goes, that these games are about trial and error and experimentation, and feeling your way to winning combinations of upgrades, so I grit my teeth and excavate the ground beneath my dome again.
But each time I repeat the cycle, some of the sheen fades, because the core activity in the game, digging, doesn’t really change. Every time I face it anew, it feels more like the laborious work it is, and I know it will be a while before I unlock the upgrades that make light of it. And just as I do, just as I build up that sense of momentum again, the inevitable overwhelming wave of enemies comes and I am dead again, and my willingness to start over wanes.
Let’s backtrack a bit. Dome Keeper is a game of two parts: a base defence game and a digging game. The base defence happens up top, under the domed roof of your base. You’re a spaceperson thumped down onto a hostile enemy planet, and this is the base you’ve popped up like a festival tent. It’s a small base and you won’t expand it, but you will upgrade the capabilities of it.