From Underground Mining to Pixel-Perfect Chaos
Core Keeper came out of nowhere and quietly became one of the best co-op mining sandboxes on Steam. So when Pugstorm took the stage at The Game Awards 2024 to announce Kyora, people paid attention. This wasn't a sequel or an expansion. It was something wilder — a 2D side-scrolling sandbox where every single pixel can be mined, moved, built, or blown up, and where up to eight players can wreak havoc together.
Kyora doesn't have a release date yet. The Steam page still says "Coming soon." But Pugstorm and publisher Chucklefish have been dropping regular developer blogs, and the latest one just gave us our best look yet at how the game actually plays. If you've been craving something that blends Terraria's chaos with Core Keeper's polish and a dash of Noita's pixel physics, this one belongs on your radar.
What Kyora Actually Is
Kyora is a 2D sandbox adventure set in a procedurally generated open world where you can literally reshape every pixel of the environment. Not just breaking blocks like a traditional mining game — we're talking pixel-by-pixel terraforming. Dig into the earth. Sculpt platforms mid-battle. Build bridges across chasms. Blow holes in the landscape and watch the terrain deform in real time.
The world is divided into distinct biomes, each controlled by a powerful boss called a Herald. These aren't just end-of-level gatekeepers. They're integrated into the progression loop in a way that should feel familiar to Core Keeper fans. Your main goal is always the next Herald, but getting there requires gathering materials, crafting better gear, upgrading your base, cooking food for buffs, and exploring every corner of the current biome for secrets you might have missed.
The pixel art style is unmistakably Pugstorm — clean, colorful, and surprisingly expressive for a game built from tiny squares. Biomes range from forest-cloaked ruins to blistering desert sands, each with its own resources, enemies, and environmental hazards.
Wands That Change How the World Works
The crafting system is where Kyora separates itself from the pack. Sure, you'll make swords, armor, and tools — that's the baseline. But the real stars are the wands. These aren't just magic weapons. They're physics-altering tools that let you manipulate matter itself.
The developers have talked about wands that can reshape terrain in combat, create platforms under your feet, redirect enemy projectiles, and combine effects when multiple players use different wands together. The synergy system means an eight-player group isn't just eight people hitting the same boss — it's eight people layering wand effects to create combat scenarios the developers didn't explicitly design. That's the kind of emergent chaos that keeps sandbox games alive for years.
Pixels Are Resources — All of Them
The "terrapixel" system is Kyora's defining feature. Every pixel in the world is a physical object with material properties. Mine pixels from a forest biome and you get wood-like materials. Dig into desert terrain and the properties change. These aren't just different colored blocks — they have different structural integrity, different crafting applications, and different interactions with the physics system.
This means base building goes far beyond stacking boxes. You can sculpt your base pixel by pixel, creating organic shapes that would be impossible in a traditional grid-based building system. Want curved walls? Sculpt them. Want a base that looks like it grew out of the landscape rather than being placed on top of it? The tools are there.
The terraforming extends into combat too. Need cover? Pull up a wall of pixels from the ground. Enemy on a ledge? Delete the ledge. Boss charging an attack? Drop a platform under your feet and vault over it. The developers have emphasized that the line between "building" and "fighting" is deliberately blurred — you're supposed to use the environment as a weapon.
Up to Eight Players, Zero PvP
Kyora supports 1-8 players in online co-op, and Pugstorm has been explicit that there's no PvP. This is a cooperative experience through and through. The game is fully playable solo, with progression and pacing tuned for single players. But the co-op is where the wand synergy system really shines.
Eight players means eight different wand loadouts, eight different approaches to terraforming, and eight times the potential for ridiculous emergent moments. The developers have talked about wanting groups to develop their own strategies — specialized roles, coordinated wand combos, base-building teams working while combat teams hunt Heralds.
The multiplayer is drop-in, meaning friends can join and leave without disrupting progression. Resources are shared, and the base belongs to everyone. If you've played Core Keeper with friends, you know Pugstorm understands how to make co-op feel collaborative rather than competitive.
A Separate Team, A Separate Vision
One concern that surfaced after the announcement was whether Kyora would pull resources away from Core Keeper. Pugstorm addressed this directly: Kyora has its own dedicated development team. Core Keeper updates and timelines are unaffected. The two projects run in parallel.
This matters because Core Keeper is still actively supported and has a passionate player base that doesn't want to see it abandoned. Pugstorm's transparency on this point suggests they understand the importance of maintaining trust with their existing community while building something new.
The Heralds: Bosses That Define Progression
The developer blog's fifth entry dug into the game's progression philosophy, and it's smartly structured. Each biome is controlled by a Herald — a powerful boss that serves as the biome's primary challenge. Defeating the Herald is your main goal, but the game is built so that you're constantly juggling smaller objectives along the way.
Weapon upgrades, food preparation, material gathering, base construction — these aren't optional side activities. They're necessary preparation for the Herald fight. The developers want players to feel like they're always working toward something, even when they're not actively chasing the main objective.
Nighttime adds another layer of pressure. The developers are still tuning the nighttime balance, but the goal is to introduce risk without making darkness feel unfair. Expect stronger enemies, reduced visibility, and the kind of tension that makes you grateful you built those walls earlier.
Drop Items vs. Crafted Items: Both Matter
The developer blog also touched on a balance challenge that many sandbox games struggle with: how do you make both dropped loot and crafted gear feel valuable without one overshadowing the other?
Pugstorm's approach is to give both paths distinct appeal. Dropped items might have unique properties or random modifiers that crafted items can't replicate. Crafted items offer consistency and the ability to tailor gear to your specific build. The goal is that the best loadout comes from a mix of both — drops that surprise you and crafts that you've carefully planned.
It's a small design note, but it's the kind of thing that separates sandbox games with staying power from ones where the crafting system feels like a grind you tolerate rather than a system you engage with.
Steam Early Access, No Date Yet
Kyora is confirmed for Steam Early Access, published by Chucklefish. The release date is still TBD — the Steam page says "Coming soon" with no window specified. Some database entries list a placeholder 2027 date, but that's unconfirmed and likely speculative.
The game supports full controller input and is currently listed for PC and Linux. No console versions have been announced, though Chucklefish has a track record of bringing its titles to consoles post-launch. Cross-platform play is not supported at this stage.
The Steam page is live and wishlistable. Pugstorm and Chucklefish have been active on social media, and the official Discord is the best place to track development updates and potential beta or playtest announcements.
Why This One Deserves Your Wishlist
The sandbox genre is crowded, but Kyora is doing something genuinely different with its pixel-by-pixel terraforming. Most games in this space let you break and place blocks. Kyora lets you sculpt the world. That's a meaningful distinction, and the combat integration — building platforms mid-fight, deleting enemy cover, reshaping the arena on the fly — suggests the terraforming isn't just a gimmick.
Pugstorm earned a lot of goodwill with Core Keeper, a game that launched into early access in a polished state and only got better. Kyora has the same energy — a small team with a clear vision, a publisher that understands the sandbox space, and a commitment to community feedback that's been baked into the development process from the start.
No release date yet. But the Steam wishlist button is right there. And if you've got seven friends who enjoy pixelated chaos, you might want to start the group chat now.