Dig Dug was a roguelike, right? I mean, I guess every arcade game was kind of a roguelike by the loose definition we now use, but that’s not important. What is important is that Dome Keeper is like Dig Dug except instead of the enemies being cute dragons and weird diver dudes underground, they’re horrible shadowy blob monsters that try to assault your dome-y home.
Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/iWExePAft1k
The Home Dome
The premise of Dome Keeper is simple, you come blazing down from space in your vaguely spherical home and slam onto one of those aforementioned blob creatures just minding its own business on the surface of an alien world. That’s essentially all of the narrative there is to glean from the entirety of the game. Yet, there’s plenty to discover and explore within the depths.
The gameplay is split between two very distinct facets, digging underground and maintaining the dome on the surface. The surface doesn’t have a lot of interaction outside of the times when it’s under attack, but it’s the part you do everything else to maintain. When it is attacked, your initial counteraction is to take control of the massive laser that tracks along the outside of your dome and use it to blast those alien creatures. After each wave, you’re treated to a pleasant reprieve where you can repair any damage and head back down to dive into the heart of the gameplay underground.
Into the Depths
Despite the game-ending importance of maintaining the integrity of your dome, the majority of the gameplay involves you grinding through rocks underground. It’s as simple as pointing your pixelated engineer in a direction and letting them bounce their drill off of the surface until it breaks. The various densities of the blocks determine how long it takes for you to make it through, similar to Minecraft, so it’s advantageous to try and pick a route that affords you the most progress before the next wave approaches.
The goal of all of this digging is to find veins of resources, crack them out of the rocks, and haul them back up to the processor in your dome. You can attach as much iron, water, and cobalt to your character as you can find, but you’ll limit your movement speed until you can’t move at all, so there’s plenty of discretion in this process. Part of the strategy is balancing your load with the time remaining before the next wave – as those aliens will attack regardless of your presence. The resources you obtain can be used for several types of upgrades including those that make it possible to drill faster, move faster, and carry loads more efficiently. However, it is equally important that you upgrade your dome and its defenses to survive each wave.
During your mining expeditions, you’ll also come across special glowing blocks that, once returned to your base, will reveal a selection of special abilities or tools to aid you in your adventure. These can be as simple as a bomb you can place on a surface to carve out a huge area instantaneously or the incredibly useful cargo elevator that slowly hauls resources back to the surface for you. They also join the upgrade page with separate trees used to make them more effective and efficient. This cycle of digging, defending, and upgrading goes on for as long as it takes to find the main alien relic buried deep underground.
Uncovering the Victory
The initial (and primary) game mode is all about you finding that relic and dragging it back up to the surface like all the rest of the goodies you’ve obtained. Once you do that, it’s essentially the end of the run after a scary final assault. However, that’s not the only game mode. As you complete these relic runs, you’ll unlock numerous additional gameplay features and functions. Things like a crazy harpoon sword and deflecting shield replacement for your laser and a “repellent” alternative to the secondary energy shield for your dome are interesting ways to add variety to the experience. You’ll also unlock bigger maps with much more digging and resource gathering and variations on the existing gadgets you have obtained.
The biggest divergence from the initial gameplay you’ll unlock is that “Prestige” mode, which is basically a high-score game mode. Here, instead of looking for a relic, your goal is to get as many resources as possible and send them back to space on a rocket for ‘prestige’ point bonuses. Then it’s all about surviving waves and ultimately putting yourself on a rocket and getting the hell out of there. Whether you succeed there or die horribly before ever getting close, whatever points you obtain will put you on the leaderboard to be judged along with the rest. It’s a stand-in for an “end game” experience since there’s not necessarily a way to “win” the game. It’s quite easy to find the relic on the normal difficulty and the small map, but you can very easily ramp that up with bigger maps and two more notches of difficulty.
Mining for Gold
I was a little concerned with the lack of a campaign when I first started the game. Usually, when left to my own devices, I don’t feel like I’m good at crafting my own best experience. I’ll either make it too easy or too difficult and then it’s my fault for not making the game fun for me. Dome Keeper made the lowest difficulty “normal,” which of course is just a clever way of disguising “easy”, but it felt pretty satisfying to play from the start. The map sizes can change the difficulty slightly but are more about letting you better explore the upgrade tree and determining how long you want to play a round. I’m not sure if the difficulties have any bearing on what is unlocked each time, but every completed Relic mode has resulted in an unlocked item each time – which is rewarding.
Dome Keeper is much closer to the classic roguelike design than modern roguelites. Progression is entirely in the form of modifiers to a fresh run rather than slowly buffing yourself up to beat the game. You’ll always start falling from the sky and face the same basic challenges you had in your first attempt – similar to games like Spelunky. Yet, the variety provided by the different starting options and modifiers can make each run feel distinct and the Prestige mode is always there to tempt you with leaderboard legacy. While I do think it would have been nice to have some kind of initial campaign or some narrative to tie all of this together, what is available is fun and approachable for almost anyone – and it leaves plenty of room for additional content in the future.
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