People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. No, they need more firepower than that. At least that's the case in Dome Keeper. Hordes of vengeful monsters attack the unbreakable, transparent sanctuary, and reinforcing laser defenses is the only way to stay unscathed. Fortunately, there is some unprocessed material lying in the dirt underfoot that can be used to strengthen the hardware. The Dome Keeper's roguelike routine is beautifully simple: take a minute or so of quiet time to cut out a clump of dirt, return home with what you find, and fight off the next raid. The reason for the predicament is equally simple, outlined in a very small intro, as a glass spaceship crashes into the alien landscape and turns one of the local residents into a squid. Its relatives are eager to shatter the snow globe and are caught in a suffocating loop.

It's suffocating because the Dome Keeper is so tight and unforgiving; it's like Terraria or Minecraft's day and night cycle vacuum-packed into one inescapable space. Your dome's inhabitants are like pixel-art oozes, jet-packing with the vigor of worker bees, repeatedly pounding away with tiny drills until the blocks crumble. Just keep the dome facing the block until the drill shatters it. Some soft rocks yield instantly, while others require several thrusts. If you are lucky, you will find a vein of iron ore in the tunnel you cut through, which you can attach to a wire with a tap of a button and drag back to base.

Inside the fragile shelter, machines can process the prey and turn it into something useful. A heavy laser cannon spinning around a dome can enhance speed and power. Or one might want to increase the strength, speed, and carrying capacity of a drill. Or a scanner that counts down to the next attack or a remote display that can monitor the integrity of the dome could be installed. On the other hand, if you want to strengthen or repair the shield, you must first find rare materials such as water or cobalt.

Whatever you decide, the monsters will come. Your dome is exposed in the lower middle of one screen as they tumble and cling to the ground on either side or spit projectiles out of the sky. At first they come alone, but after a few waves they begin to swarm. The lasers soon fall short, and the shadowy creatures hit the glass from all angles as they move slowly over the dome. It is impossible to keep them all out. It is time for more upgrades.

Domekeeper does not deviate from this cycle, but its modest format is not boring at all. At the resource management level, there is always a pressing reason to upgrade everything, and because the benefits of every enhancement are transparent, each cluster of ore secured becomes significant and works well because of what it helps accomplish. There is also a strong need for trade-offs and cost-benefit decisions when it comes to fighting and mining.

Defense is about prioritizing targets, a process that depends on the length of time it takes to sweep from one end of the screen to the other. The most pressing threat may be on the right side, but it may be expedient to ignore it until the left side is cleared first. In mining, one must continually consider how deep to dig or how much iron to carry in a single trip. Thankfully, if the load is too heavy, some of the load can be discarded.

Most calculations in Domekeeper thus train the time management section of your brain, the part that decides how late you can leave for an appointment or convinces you, against all logic, that you still have time to check your email. Like the idiot in the movie who runs into a burning building to hide his money. Every second of downtime is wasted productivity.

Mining patterns need to be considered. Digging downhill rather than sideways will find harder rock, but more ore veins. Also, if digging in a straight line tends to pass veins through the stone, it is a good idea to take a cycle of clearing out between them, creating larger roads for future trips. However, once a large area has been excavated, it may be troublesome to find a way back in a hurry, so it would be a good idea to leave a few landmark formations or relay points to place resources while digging further.

There are so many practical concerns here that you will forget the horror of your situation; Dome Keeper is not a scary game, despite the shadowy, unknowable monsters that constantly harass you, but that is because you are too busy thinking about the existential crisis But that's because you're too busy thinking about your existential crisis. Yet, once you think about it, it is daunting. The dome is the goldfish bowl of modern life, where there is no standing still, only expansion or failure. We work all day to survive the night, are always alone, and must scrounge up more tomorrow than we have today. Once you chip away at the rocks around this metaphor, it is hard to ignore, but it only adds poignancy to your efforts.

Fortunately, as any decent consumerist economy does, shiny new toys arrive from time to time to brighten the gloom. Mixed in with the raw materials, in the dirt, lies a mysterious technology. Pulling out such a coffin, you can play with two gadgets from a total of about eight, including an elevator that can transport materials, a probe that can explore nearby resources, and a machine that can distill water from the atmosphere.

You'll soon have a favorite. Everyone will go crazy for Drillbert, an encapsulated mini-dinosaur with a drill beak that digs tunnels for you. The teleporter, for example, is like the time travel device in "The Terminator" at first, transporting you but rejecting the cargo you're lugging around. But when you modify it to warp minerals and make it more efficient, it saves you the trouble of carrying things.

Still, even these labor-saving devices can be a burden of sorts. After all, the more equipment you have to run, the more resources are spread more thinly, and the less you can pour into upgrades. Having mod-cons like elevators is one thing, but do we really need a souped-up model that moves things faster and more frequently? Better to go back to mining

At least Dome Keeper has a way to escape this cycle. In the default mode, Relic Hunt, you must dig deep enough to find an ancient device, throw it into the dome, and wipe out your enemies. Playing on one of the smaller maps you select before the game begins, victory here tends to take 30-45 minutes, but on the larger maps you can dig for an hour or more. Each clear unlocks a new background, another loadout option, or a modifier that can be applied to future operations.

The biggest prize, however, is the Dome Keeper second weapon system, which swaps the laser for a sword and fires it like a harpoon across the dome. It takes a bit more skill to time the swipe and aim the shot, but when enhanced, it is devastatingly powerful. Another major addition is the Prestige mode, where players build up their scores by surviving waves of monsters and compete on online leaderboards. The clever twist here is that resources can be sent back home to increase the score multiplier, which of course is a trade-off for upgrades. This is, of course, a trade-off for upgrades. For this reason, "Dome Keeper" should be enjoyable long after you have explored every loadout and difficulty level in "Relic Hunt."

Still, Dome Keeper is such a focused experience that it may need more fleshing out to keep it fresh in the long run. While it is definitely an attention-grabber, after 10 hours, you don't see much that is genuinely new. This is especially true of the monsters, which become mere pests if they survive long enough. Developer Bippinbits has already promised that there will be at least a second character class, and we expect more to follow.

Until then, some minor fixes are needed. At one point I lost a play that was almost complete because it refused to reload the save, and at another time I couldn't find a water resource and play came to a halt. Nevertheless, these incidents do not spoil the overall experience, which is tremendously compelling, with many small but critical decisions packed into a small space. As a tightly crafted roguelike, there is no place like the Dome.