I realized earlier that today was the last day of Steam Next Fest, and I panicked. Today I took a small portion of the day to download and play the Dome Keeper demo, which I used to. Bislang I had no choice but to download and play the demo for Dome Keeper, a wave-based survival game aimed at protecting your glass dome from alien invaders using a gigantic laser.
I''ve ended up playing it a little too long, and now I''ve left myself no time to write about why it was so fantastic. Oh my goodness, right?
Dome Keeper started life as Dome Romantik, a Ludum Dare 48 invention that touched a lot of attention last year. The game begins with you dancing outside your squat little dome, wondering what you''re meant to be doing. I spent the first 30 seconds looking around the world, observing the surroundings. I learned quickly not to trust the kindness. This game has no qualms about tearing your bubbly little home to shreds in ways that make you wonder how you might have done so
I noticed that there was a hole in the dome''s bottom, which leads underground, and I might bump my jetpack lad against rock tiles to mine them. Which is fantastic, given that half of the game will be spent mining, trying to locate precious materials and hoist them back home, so you may spend them on upgrades for your dome and character.
The other half of your time will be spent protecting your dome against attackers. Despite being able to see it later on, there''s a progress bar that repeatedly empties, and when the laser is removed, the next wave of enemies will come and begin hammering on your dome. It''s very Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime, by moving the giant death laser around the dome and blasting the approaching nasties to smithereens.
The underground is divided into several layers, each of which is harder to mine through than the previous. I quickly realized that I''d made a huge mistake in my first run, stricken all my resources into improving my dome health and my laser, because it turns out I should have put a little extra effort into improving my mining speed. It slowed by the fact that I''d dissect myself without seeing a couple of extra-hard pieces of granite, and then have to fly back up again to prepare for the next
After playthrough #2, I realised that it was a problem with that run, and my strategy (or lack thereof). In my second attempt I went in with a gameplan, and balanced my upgrades more sensibly, and it was a much easier and enjoyable experience.
It turns out that my time with Dome Keeper would be a theme. Every time I thought, "hm, that''s a bit of a black mark on this otherwise good game," the game would counter me with a new feature or upgrade that addressed my situation. For example: at the point where I was wondering if anything would appear to make the underground more interesting, I encountered a buried relic, which I took back home to unlock a new gadget (in this case, it was a secondary
When I unlocked a teleporter that I could use to easily locate where I wanted underground, which provided the perfect answer to my problems. Every time I had a complaint, it would barely survive in my head for 5 seconds before something happened.
I will say that it was a frustrating time playing Dome Keeper''s demo. It reminded me a lot of rymdkapsel, a wave-based survival game that I do adore but which awakens a lot of stress when I play it. In both games, the difficulty of the waves ramps up very quickly, causing me to spend longer underground, and less time traveling. I did end up beating the demo on my second attempt, but it was a very close run process,
It''s a fantastic foundation for what might become a powerful game. However, a little voice in my head said that Dome Keeper isn''t the thing that needs the most work. There are no caves, no ruins, nothing beyond the tools you need to get upgrades and then not provide you tons of interesting information to discover underground. It''s a terrible day to day, although it''s possible to get stuck in the whole game. It''s a savage feeling.
Dome Keeper has already got a whole lot of things right. It has a fantasticly sinister atmosphere, and a few fantastic ideas are executed beautifully. I just hope there is a lot of content in the entire release, because the game deserves it.
