One of the best co-op survival games of the past few years just popped up on PC Game Pass

Core Keeper â€“ Launch Trailer (ESRB) - YouTube

I played over 40 hours of co-op survival game Core Keeper when it first arrived in early access in 2022, and I'm about to dive back in for 40 more. Or more! That's because the subterranean sandbox graduated to version 1.0 today, bringing with it a new biome, several new bosses, and even a few new character classes.

If you've never played Core Keeper, here's two pieces of good news: with its 1.0 launch, Core Keeper has finally tunneled its way into PC Game Pass, and if you'd rather have it on Steam, it's also on sale for 20% off for the next 10 days.

Core Keeper really nails the two things I look for in a survival game. It's dark and dangerous—like Valheim, there's a massive procedurally generated world filled with monsters and some truly intimidating bosses—but it's also got the coziness of a game like Stardew Valley because you can build a home, grow crops on a farm, go fishing, and invite NPCs to chill at your base with you.

On its journey through early access Core Keeper added a ton of new stuff: more biomes, more boss monsters, underground oceans, boats and go-carts, animal companions, and new character classes. There's also now a creative mode if you want to build and explore without worrying about getting yourself killed. Core Keeper 1.0 also adds yet another new biome, three new Hydra bosses (you can see them in the trailer above) and a mysterious new final boss to the last chapter of the story. You'll find full patch notes here.

The downside for players who have already dug into Core Keeper in early access: the worlds you built aren't compatible with all this cool new 1.0 stuff. You can still play and build and explore those worlds, but according to developer Pugstorm, they "are not intended to be supported long term." If you're getting ready to dig into Core Keeper again, you should really start over from scratch with a new world.

"The game has a new world generation that will be used for any new worlds created," Pugstorm says, "and we strongly recommend players to create new worlds to get the full experience the game has to offer both during the 1.0 launch and moving forward."

That's a bit of a bummer: I did love my cozy little Core Keeper base. I'll just have to build it bigger and better this time around.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.