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- Our App Army readers put their underwater survival skills to the test this week in Ocean Keeper
- The blend of different genre elements impressed them
- Some mentioned the initial difficulty is a little tough but levels out once you’re used to the game
Ocean Keeper: Dome Survival is a game that looks to combine several elements into one package. It sees you searching the depths for resources, engaging in frantic combat and drilling into caves, all while doing your best to survive. While that all sounds fantastic, doing too much can sometimes be a detriment. So we handed the game over to our App Army to see what they made of it.
Here’s what they said:
Brian Wigington
I recently started playing Dome Keeper on Steam and was addicted for a couple of hours the first time I played it. Ocean Keeper is a neat spin on the combination of exploring, upgrading, and defence genres with a dose of action. You start the game in an underwater setting with neat music to set the tone. Your base is also your vehicle which is an aquatic, insect-like mech. Your mission is to explore the many underwater caves and extract deposits of ore and artefacts to upgrade your mech and your character itself.
Once you find one of the many cave entrances you are tasked with entering the cave which changes the view from an overhead perspective to a more 2D side view with your little aquatic friend. You must bump against the rock layers to chip your way through the watery environment until you stumble upon one of the various ores. Once you find some, you basically attach them to your character with a sort of grapple to tow them back up to the cave entrance. Once you approach the entrance, the loot is transported to your mech. You must then judge whether or not you have enough time to return to the depths for more ores or return to the surface.
There is a timer that counts down until the next inevitable attack by small and large sea creatures that want to destroy your mech. Once inside the mech, the game returns to the overhead view for a twin-stick style shoot ’em-up session. Once the enemies are defeated, you can return to the depths to mine for upgrades until the next tougher attack. In between attacks, it is vital to upgrade your mech’s health, repairs, weapons, and abilities.
You also need to balance that with upgrading your character to give him more speed, carrying capacity, and drill upgrades so that you can get more ores and loot more quickly. You will also come across artefacts that give upgrades to your mech which are very helpful. The combo of activities is very addictive with that “one more try” feeling. The controls are pretty solid but I do feel like some of the visuals are a bit small on a phone and would work better on an iPad. Overall this is a very solid effort and will not disappoint.
Robert Maines
Dome Survival is a combination of resource gathering and twin-stick shooter. Controlling a mech on the sea bed you must find caves and enter them, this switches to a side on view as your diver drills through rocks to get at resources. You only have a limited time to get the resources back to your mech before the enemies arrive. Switching back to the mech you must kill all the enemies in each wave.
Graphically and sonically the game is fine. The cave sections are a bit fiddly using touchscreen controls but they work fine for shooting enemies. What lets the game down is the initial difficulty, it’s very easy to get swamped by the enemies and killed. As you gather resources and improve the mech things get better but it’s a slog to get to that point. This is a shame because otherwise, this would be a fun game.
Jason Rosner
Ocean Keeper: Dome Survival comes to the App Store as a roguelike shooter survival game with tower defence elements, and while that’s a rather lengthy description, it really encompasses what it’s all about. From the very start, you are tasked with mining resources from mines deep below the ocean floor. The action gets tense rather quickly as almost nothing is ever as easy as it seems. You quickly realize you are not alone when you start being attacked by monsters that are lurking all around you.
Ocean Keeper does a really fantastic job of blending all these varied genres into a very fun and satisfying game, that’s ultimately one of the most uniquely creative games I’ve played in quite some time. My favorite part has to be exploring the countless procedurally generated cavernous areas which keep your experience fresh every time. Everything looks and sounds great, and the top-down style shooting action along with the numerous upgrades you can do to your mech gives you real reason to keep going. I had a blast with Ocean Keeper: Dome Survival and for under a dollar, it’s an easy recommendation from me!
This game was easy to play and had lots to offer, with a concise tutorial at the beginning to set you on the right path. There are mines to plunder, with the usual upgrade offerings for equipment, weapons, etc. to be had as you reap your rewards. On top of that, there are enemies who come in waves with time till the attack counted down on a bar at the top of the screen. Ignore these timers at your peril.
The graphics are easy on the eye, and the controls are easy to master, but the sound is underwhelming and I turned it off. All in all, there is nothing radically different in the format and execution of this game, but it has plenty for you to do in short bursts, which suited me fine.
Mark Abukoff
I’m a fan of Tower Defense games, so I went into this enthusiastically and really wasn’t disappointed. I like the concept of having to explore procedurally generated mines to gather resources, watching the countdown timer until the next wave. That adds a nice bit of a twist that keeps me interested. Plus the usual assortment of upgrades and weapons. The controls worked fine once I got settled in and made for nicely fluid gameplay. The visuals are nice though barren, but that suits the game. I’ll go back to this one and happily recommend it.
I played for a few hours and found the game super interesting and with a very good proposal. Basically, you control a robot and with it, you need to go out looking for caves and collect resources, with these resources you need to improve your robot, you can improve your weapon, its movement and rotation speed, among other things. On the screen there is a count that decreases and when it reaches zero a horde of enemies comes attacking you, so the improvements are important and you need to manage well what will improve first. The game has a cool look and has good sounds. I liked it and recommend it to those who like a strategic game
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