I recommend taking the "Miner" Background so you start with a Copper Pickaxe — you'll have to do a lot of digging at the beginning!

In the case of games that use cloud streaming technology, a free launcher application or demo can be downloaded.

There are definitely some nice bonuses — like the Explorer’s lantern or the Miner starting with an upgraded pickaxe — but no one class is going to give you a huge advantage over any of the others.

It’s also a good idea to take the time and fully clear out areas, so the light can actually reach all the dim corners and not get cut off by random chunks of wall.

The Basic Workbench gives you access to a bunch of important items for setting up your base. Here are the key items you'll need in your first couple of hours:

So I'm surprised how comfortable it is being perpetually underground in Core Keeper. Part of it is the charming art and animation, along with the dynamic lighting effects. The game begins in the gloom of the Core chamber, but place a few torches and clear out some dirt walls with a pickaxe, and soon the room is bathed in warm light.

You might also want to let the naturally occurring environment give you a little help along the way. Some resources — such as glow tulips or even little clouds of fireflies — can be just as useful when they’re left alone to help light your path.

The workbenches chain from one to the next, as players progress through biomes and their ores. There is no requirement to beat bosses, initially. The Core:

You’ll have goals in mind, sure — maybe you want to find a certain ore to craft a certain helmet with a certain perk before facing a boss — but it can be just as easy to pick a direction, any direction, and start tunneling.

Spirit Merchant (technically traded). Each of these marks the exact location of an outer biome boss spawn. Each scanner recipe uses a resource unique to the boss's biome. Either found on the ground or as a mob drop.

Overcoming the bosses requires a keen sense of strategy, so strengthen your character with purpose or suffer a swift end to your journey.

These three statues represent the first three bosses that you'll have to take on: Glurch, Ghorm, Core Keeper Gameplay and Malugaz. Before we worry about them, though, we'll want to start cleaning up the immediate area.

And there's nothing that makes me feel more at home in a game than fishing, farming, and cooking, and they're all great in Core Keeper. Fishing works almost like a rhythm game, with each fish struggling to its own "beat.

This is not an achievements guide, but working through all the sections below could bag about half of them.