Volcanoids is an absolute blast for your friend group. Although the game isn’t too terribly hard to complete for the advanced survivalist, it is full of original ideas, hilarious moments, satisfying crafting, automation, and compelling chaotic situations.

Salvage for survival on an island that engulfs itself in lava over set intervals. If the ground isn’t covered with lava, it’s likely covered with roving bands of killbots who seek to destroy organic life. From giant drillship combat, to racing the clock to dig underground before the lava hits, this game is an absolute blast both solo and in groups.

Crafting is uniquely automated, in that scraps you no longer have use for can be set to automatically be crafted into raw material, which can also be automated into reserve ammunition or armor etc. It’s very exciting when your drillship is equipped to convert an “inventory dump” of scrap machinery into a nicely organized and prepared system of resources.

As for difficulty, when playing on normal, a player will still find a decent challenge as they enter each new level of the island. In the same sense that Valheim always made it difficult to jump into the next biome, Volcanoids does the same with making it much harder to adapt to the next tier of crafting, but when you reach balance, the game is oh so satisfying.