If you've got a preference for building stuff with friends while running from hungry and horrifying cave creatures, you may have spied Core Keeper when it launched in early access back in March. The crafty co-op game for 8 players blew past half a million downloads on Steam in just a couple of weeks, its combo of Stardew Valley-esque homesteading and cavern-survival creating a surprisingly effective balance between cosy and creepy. Now, developer Pugstorm is working on Core Keeper's first major update.
As revealed in the PC Gaming Show, the Sunken Sea launches on June 15, and is free to all Core Keeper players. The highlight of the new update is a biome of the same name: an underground sea packed with aquatic surprises and islands that you can navigate via boat. There are also four enemy types and a brand new Titan boss on the way.
"We've worked really hard to deliver an expansive and meaningful line-up of new content for Core Keeper players to discover with the Sunken Sea update," says Sven Thole, CEO and animator at Pugstorm. "We are listening closely to suggestions and feedback from our community and we are very excited for players to discover everything the Sunken Sea has to offer."
Some of these new quality of life features include portals to warp large distances across the map, sprinklers to automatically water plants, and vanity slots so you can customise the look of your cave-dweller. There are also new items, plants, weapons, ore, buildings—just about everything you need to keep expanding and defending your subterranean settlement.
Core Keeper is one of the most exciting games of the year so far, blending the likes of Stardew Valley, Terraria, and Valheim to create something that feels pretty fresh, so it'll be exciting to see what the Sunken Sea has in store.
You can discover its secrets for yourself when the update launches on June 15.
