Dome Keeper is a Motherload-like. You’re a little guy who crash lands on a hostile planet, but you’ve got a Dome and a Drill. Drill down to find resources, drag them back up to your Dome to process them, spend the processed minerals to upgrade your gear to get more resources. That’s basically Motherload right there. The big differentiator is that in Motherload the thing that sent you back to the surface was needing to refuel, but in Dome Keeper it’s that every couple minutes you’re going to have to defend your Dome from a wave of monsters that approach from the sides and the skies, so you’re constantly having to weigh your options for upgrades: Should you increase your drill speed to drill harder rocks faster? Should you upgrade your Dome’s weapons to survive waves better? Should you upgrade your jet-pack to navigate your mine faster? Your carry capacity so you can drag more stuff back to the Dome faster?

The goal of the core mode is to find and recover The Relic: somewhere deep down in the mine is a set of 2-4 little switches that lead to a big locked door. Find all the switches and the door opens, revealing a big shiny gem that you have to drag back to the dome. Doing that will immediately summon one final huge strong wave. Survive that and you win.

There’s all kinds of mysterious stuff to find down in the mine beyond just 3 types of minerals. Like you may occasionally find “event caverns” that might give you some kind of buff, like you might light some torches to give better visibility into walls, or you might find a trove of mushrooms that make you zip around faster for a bit. There’s also a variety of different gadgets to find, occasionally you’ll discover a 2x2 special block that works like a little version of The Relic. Drag it back to the Dome and you’ll unlock a special ability, which could range from a suit upgrade that lets you “pack” resources into little lighter bundles, or a one-way teleporter, or a giant explosive charge that you can use every couple minutes, or a scanning probe, or an alien friend who will autonomously drill left and right for you. His name is Drillbert. You can have one of these per “slot”, and each one comes with its own upgrade tree to further customize and expand its abilities.

Dome Keeper also offers an immense variety of customizability options and modes beyond just Relic Hunter. After getting a couple wins you’ll unlock different levels of monster intensity, different base modifiers like “faster but weaker enemies” or “way more minerals” or “slower cycles”, different dome weapons, different “primary gadgets”, and so on. There’s also a whole alternative character that plays completely differently to the Engineer, and a grid of challenge mode modifiers for the game. There’s also an “endless” mode where you collect and “send home” resources and see how long you can survive under the Dome.

It’s a really wonderful game. The core gameplay is incredibly satisfying, and the huge array of options you can fiddle with lets you dial in exactly what level of difficulty you’re up for, or how long of a game you want to play. It was a great chill end-of-year time waster. And it’s on Game Pass! And also on basically all platforms! Highly Recommended.