One thing I love is when a game can successfully blend two fairly different types of gameplay into one cohesive package. I’m thinking of games like the Blaster Master series with its vehicle-based side-scrolling platforming that’s coupled with cool top-down on-foot sequences. Or heck, a recent favorite like Dave the Diver with its roguelike diving portions blended with restaurant management. Well, Ocean Keeper from developer RetroStyle Games is another one of those games that successfully blends two sets of different mechanics together, and it does so with a gameplay loop and upgrade path that has you coming back over and over again.

The basic gist of Ocean Keeper is that you’ve crashed onto a strange underwater planet in your big cool mech. You’ll need to dive down into underwater caves to harvest resources, but you can’t spend too long down there because waves of enemies are approaching and you’ll need to man your mech to defend against them. The mining portions play out from a side-view and involve digging out rocks to unearth various types of resources or special artifacts. Mining also earns you coins, for some reason. As mentioned you only have a short window to mine before enemies show up. Once you’re back in your mech things turn into a top-down twin-stick shooter with light tower defense elements as you attempt to fend off multiple waves of all types of crazy underwater creatures.

All your resources go towards upgrading both your miner and your mech, and there is no shortage of branching skill trees to work your way through for both. This is a roguelike so if you die during the enemy encounter portion your game is over and you’ll lose any upgrades or abilities you unlocked during that particular run. However, there are also persistent upgrades and customizations you can unlock in between runs so this is the type of game you always feel like you’re making progress in even if you have a bad run or two. You can also expect the layouts of the overworld and the caves to be different each time you play.

This is probably a good time to mention that Ocean Keeper starts off kind of slow, and you definitely will have some real clunker runs in the beginning. Just power your way through and before you know it the upgrades start flowing, your skills begin to improve, you start to get a better grip on the flow of the game, and before long you’ll be a whirling underwater mech of destruction. The synergies between the weapons and upgrades are really the heart of the game and it’s endlessly fun to try different builds or different tactics as you progress. I wasn’t quite sure about Ocean Keeper when I first started since things do start out so slow, but man once things pick up it’s been hard to want to play anything else.