- 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - Hier 03:46

Drill Core – Review

Between Donkey Kong Bananza, Romancing SaGa, and Turbo Kid, we have to admit that most of our precious gaming time has been gobbled up by our Switch 2. That has the unfortunate side effect that some games on other platforms have fallen by the wayside over the past month or two. Longtime readers know that we may still look at titles we have missed in our unofficial and semi-regular “backlog reviews” segment, and today, that is the honor that befalls Drill Core. The game made its debut nearly two months ago, after having spent some time in Early Access, and we’re giving it a turn in the spotlight of our own today. Without further ado, let’s take a look at what Drill Core has to offer. Story Being a roguelite title, Drill Core isn’t poised to deliver a deep or engaging narrative. While there is a story in the game, things are kept deliberately simple, mostly serving as a backdrop for the gameplay. The few story elements that are present here come together to form a satirical corporate sci-fi premise, in the vein of The Outer Worlds. The general idea is that you’re just another cog in the titular Drill Core megacorporation machine. Your mission is to “fix” planets, by detonating a massive core deep inside their mantle in order to correct magnetic fields and deal with environmental issues. In practice, this means that you’re in charge of a mining crew on hostile alien planets, drilling downward from a mobile base while fighting off wildlife that wants you gone. Life is cheap, but profits could be high, so you wouldn’t let sacrificing workers stand in the way of the company’s goals, would you now? Graphics Aesthetically, Drill Core leans into 1950s retro-futurism. The game uses crisp pixel art that is both charming as well as readable. Workers, enemies, and resources are color-coded for your convenience. Given that things can get quite chaotic during gameplay, being able to tell everything apart quickly can be a lifesaver. Drill Core’s animations are simple but functional as well, keeping the focus on strategy rather than flashy visuals. The only downside that we found with the clean, simplistic art style was that the different biomes felt more like palette swaps instead of offering major visual differences. The game’s pixel art style keeps things lightweight and running very smoothly. Sound The soundtrack does most of the heavy lifting for Drill Core’s soundscape. Even then, it is fairly minimalist. Music sticks to the in-game day/night cycle. During the day, calm music fades into the background, with a shift to more intense tracks during nighttime alien attacks. Audio cues further heighten suspense, from the klaxon siren that signals nightfall to the sound effects that mark environmental hazards like geysers venting steam. The sounds of turret fire, explosions, and alien death sounds are satisfying and crunchy too. There is no voiced dialogue, but given the game’s overall minimalist presentation, that isn’t too surprising. Gameplay The core gameplay of Drill Core centers around a tight mix of base building, tower defense, and mining simulation, all wrapped up in a tight roguelite structure. The game sticks to a day/night gameplay loop. During the day, you direct miners, carriers, and guards to dig into planets, gather resources, and construct buildings and turrets. When night falls, workers are recalled, and you must use the defenses you’ve built to defend your base from waves of alien attackers. This cycle repeats until you either drill deep enough to detonate the planet’s core or until your base is destroyed. As resources are limited, there is a constant trade-off between pushing forward to the planet’s core and surviving the night. Do you invest in drilling faster, recruit more workers, and boost production, or do you save resources for stronger defenses? Each run of Drill Core is procedurally generated, with randomized techs, perks, and random hazards like cave-ins, worms, or eruptions, meaning no two runs will play out exactly the same. Between runs, you do carry over permanent resources, which can be spent on upgrades, buildings, and platforms, as well as unlocking new crews. This infuses the game with a constant sense of progression and something to work towards. Admittedly, over time, things do start to feel a bit grindy and repetitive as you try to make progress across the game’s multiple upgrade tracks. There are different biomes, with different effects as you unlock new planets, and the randomized nature of each run means you’re constantly micromanaging in the moment while thinking about your overall base build. Still, the core experience does not evolve enough to give Drill Core any meaningful longevity once you’ve seen most hazards and unlocked key upgrades. Given the roguelite nature of Drill Core, it’s hard to judge the game in terms of longevity and value. Depending on how much you enjoy repeating runs and trying out different builds, Drill Core can last anywhere from a handful of hours to several dozen. There isn’t a fixed campaign length, and an individual run might take multiple hours to complete, depending on how deep you manage to go into a planet’s core. However, once you master the gameplay loop, things do start to feel shallow. The main caveat here is how grind-heavy the progression of the upgrade track is, making the game feel like it’s artificially inflating its length in order to justify the price tag. At a RRP of €19.50, that price tag isn’t too high, and you do get a fair amount of content here, but we’d have preferred an experience that was either tighter and more evenly paced or one that had a bit more mechanical depth. Conclusion There is a lot to like about Drill Core, from its satirical premise, to its retro-futuristic pixel visuals and its tight core gameplay loop. We did feel like we had seen everything the game had to offer fairly quickly, after which things started to feel grindy and repetitive. Admittedly, there is a sense of progress to the grind, as you’re always working towards something, but the process of putting in the actual work could’ve benefited from some tightening up. It’s perhaps fitting for the game’s satirical megacorporation setting that playing Drill Core felt like doing a job, but we’d still want a game to feel like an actual game instead.