Dome Keeper divides me. There’s a part of me, each time I play, that’s really happy to return, to feel the ground give under my drill, to hoist my mined resources triumphantly to my command centre and turn them into upgrades to improve my base. This time, I tell myself, I will build better and survive longer and make my dome’s defences impenetrable. This run will be the one.
Then, inevitably, it isn’t. Just as I get some real momentum going, a particularly savage wave of shadowy monsters overwhelms me, from both the air and ground, and my precious dome cracks and breaks and I am done for. Game over, try again. And the other part of me is peeved it failed. But I know this is how it goes, that these games are about trial and error and experimentation, and feeling your way to winning combinations of upgrades, so I grit my teeth and excavate the ground beneath my dome again.
But each time I repeat the cycle, some of the sheen fades, because the core activity in the game, digging, doesn’t really change. Every time I face it anew, it feels more like the laborious work it is, and I know it will be a while before I unlock the upgrades that make light of it. And just as I do, just as I build up that sense of momentum again, the inevitable overwhelming wave of enemies comes and I am dead again, and my willingness to start over wanes.
