Delving into Ocean Keeper: Dome Survivor

Repeatedly, waves of enraged creatures assault your spider-like, subaquatic vehicle in Ocean Keeper: Dome Survivor. From furious fish to venom-spitting sea snakes, their strength is rooted in their abundant numbers. Fortunately, your ship is armed with a machine gun that automatically tracks and guns down the aggressors. Alternatively, you can freely aim and narrow your firing direction, prioritizing any fast-moving targets or evasive moray eels that emerge from the ocean bed.

Replicating Vampire Survivor’s famous formula, you’ll periodically get to select an auxiliary weapon from a trio of choices. When coupled with offensive devices earned through meta-game progress, you craft packs a mecha-sized punch. These range from tools like mines to sentry guns, which are advantageous but restrained by sluggish slow cool-down timers.

Diving Deeper

Although Ocean Keeper’s combat isn’t bad, it isn’t distinctive either. Save for the first few waves of a new game, the feeling of being a formidable attack vehicle is short-lived against larger schools of resilient foes. Certainly, the tendency for adjacent enemies to launch themselves at you is a bit irritating. The lack of any assistive items in the environment is another aspect that makes showdowns a bit bland.

After an onslaught is defeated, Ocean Keeper gives you about a minute to explore the numerous craters that dot the ocean floor. Following a short loading delay, you’ll be tasked with diving and drilling into a procedurally-generated cavity. The goal here is to bring back as many excavated materials as possible to augment your diver, vehicle, as well as your main and secondary armaments.

Enemy Difficulty “Scales” Abruptly

Like most survival themed games, upgrades are immediately satisfying. By spending a few blue orbs, your languid diver can move, drill, and carry resources faster. Similarly, increasing the firing rate and power of your gun can help you thin out schools of furious fish before they can damage your vessel.

But it soon becomes an annoyance to earn these upgrades across every playthrough. Sure, every bit of seabed drilling rewards players with resources that can be spent on other kinds of meta-progression. But having to repeatedly grind to ensure your diver isn’t inept, and your weaponry is serviceable grows tedious. And while it could be argued that permadeath forces you to forfeit progress, most respectable roguelikes extend much more build options.  Likely, you will be applying the same upgrades every run, rather than experimenting with different loadouts and playstyles.

Not as Good as Dome Keeper

Currently, Ocean Keeper is still in early access, with a full release due in the first half of 2025. As it stands, there’s an odd visual divergence between the game’s adequate-looking subaquatic combat and the rather rudimentary appearance of 2D mining. Sonically, the game’s also uneven. Although a powerful thud at the start of the game occurs when your vehicle touches down, no other audio effect is as impressive. Certainly, the gentle wails that accompany drilling or the repetitive techno track played while fighting won’t impress. But perhaps the game has some changes anticipated. After all, it’s odd, that there’s little permanence and no dome in Ocean Keeper: Dome Survivor. Undoubtedly, you’ll want to find out what improvements are made in the months ahead before diving in.