Codename: Ocean Keeper

Codename: Ocean Keeper is a roguelike, bullet hell, dungeon crawler-type game that comes to us from the Ukrainian studio RetroStyle Games. My initial impression of the game was great, as it took me back to my days on the school computers playing a game called Motherload circa Miniclip.com. Shoutout to all those Motherlovers out there. I loved that game, so I was excited to see what Codename: Ocean Keeper had in store. The trouble is, the more I played it, the more I found fault and lack of polish. It is worth noting however that this game has only just been released in early access, and the developers are so active that mid review they brought out multiple patches that continue to address issues I have. So time to suit up, and let’s dive in.

---

This is an abridged version of our Ocean Keeper video review, which can be seen here:

---

There isn’t much, if any, of a story to delve into here, at least for now. The premise is simple: Start each round in your mech on the ocean floor, dive into the nearest cave, break rocks and collect shiny gems, return them to you mech in time for the wave of baddies and blast them away before launching yourself into the depths of another cave. Between these waves, you upgrade yourself and your mech with said shineys to improve exploration and survivability. Rinse and repeat until inevitable demise. Along the way you collect meta coins to permanently upgrade or unlock weapons or gadgets for either your diver or your mech, improving your performance capabilities in each subsequent run.

As ever with any roguelike game, you start off with not much more than a hope and a dream, where you do your best to cling on to dear life until you can upgrade yourself bit by bit. I usually like this challenge; see how far you can get early on based on mechanical skill instead of relying on abilities and upgrades. But at the risk of simply being told to ‘git gud’, I found the beginning of Ocean Keeper very unbalanced in what your mech could physically do versus a rather overwhelming barrage of creatures early on. This, combined with the slow accumulation of meta coins, and the effectiveness of upgrades being seemingly negligible, made the overall experience feel very ‘grindy’, with not much progress each run. I felt that each run was back from square one, and that I would get to a similar wave or boss before dying again. Each run would take between 20 and 30 minutes, but instead of feeling the urge to tackle it again, I would either take a break or turn off.

As the waves go on, the difficulty naturally escalates with new types of enemies spawning. You start with your standard goons that meander toward you, to worms that shoot green spit, glow bugs that run at you kamikaze style, and a mystery slug surrounded by a deadly Full Metal Alchemist looking pentagram that looks like it would do some serious damage. The occasional boss turns up, which so far looks to be only a handful in number, as on one run I found that they cycled back through them. The gems we collect are split between blue, yellow and green, and are each used in varying amounts to upgrade either the digger, mech, or any of the weapons and relics we collect. These relics are randomly found in caves, and are automatically used during combat, such as napalm bombs, missiles, and electric guns.

---

Summary

---

The home interface comes across as pretty basic. There are sections for the mech and the digger, with each having subcategories to spend meta coins on new weapons, secondary abilities, additional slots for relics, and tools to explore the caves. Having unlocked all that is available so far, I found that some weapons and abilities are much more effective than others across the board, as opposed to being balanced to suit the individual’s playstyle. The starting machine gun for the mech for example, seemed to mow down the bugs much better than anything else, and the turrets you can place that both shoot and take aggro, along with being able to put up a defensive shield, were much more effective for survivability than any other option. As previously mentioned, each option can be improved using meta coins, however they all have arbitrary values that don’t seem to increase much with each investment. I’m hopeful that with more patches, each weapon and ability will be better balanced, and that the meta upgrades will feel more impactful overall.

When it comes to visuals, for me there is a big difference between the ocean crawling and cave diving. The ocean surface continues to improve with each patch, with more striking colour contrasts such as between lava pools and coral reefs, balanced with the smorgasbord of enemies that inevitably fill the screen. The cave sections remain bland, with each one almost being a carbon copy of the last. The only difference being where the gems are and if there is a relic or not. I’d find them more interesting if there was more time to explore, to then accommodate some variation in each cave such as traps, baddies, or different terrain to excavate.

When watching the trailer, the music that accompanied the action had me pumped. The trouble is the actual in-game music only kicks in during the enemy waves, and it’s different, not as kick ass, and is the exact same every wave. I’d like there to be some variation to the music, especially during the exploration phase instead of just hearing the dirt sound effect each time between the same 4 droning notes.

Performance wise, I frustratingly still find myself sometimes getting almost rhythmic frame drops during the mech fighting phase, even when putting everything to the lowest settings.I encountered a couple of crashes, the first was when opening the tab to repair health the exact moment I died. This looks to have been a recognised issue now and has been fixed. The second was a touch more infuriating, as it was during a marathon run of over an hour where I found myself racking in those meta coins with an almost fully upgraded killing machine.. RetroStyle Games do have something here; there is a foundation that is constantly being built on, tweaked and changed. You can even see some of the directions being taken by the locked or greyed out abilities, such as the digger’s punch or laser. This for me signifies there is more to come with more ideas yet to be rolled out.

At present, Codename: Ocean Keeper leaves a lot to be desired; it’s a game that is worth trying at least once in its early access, if anything to then appreciate the final product once it’s finished. As it stands, it’s a game that lacks variation, feels imbalanced, and generally doesn’t have much to get you back on the ocean floor. As for now though, it’s back to being a Motherlover for me.

In the interest of full disclosure, VGamingNews was provided with a copy of the game in order to conduct this review.

---

Thanks for taking the time to read our review. If you’d like to support us further, please consider buying us a coffee!