The Core Game genre is an unpopular genre of games typically with a central reactor, otherwise known as the core, thus explaining its name. Core games rely on a team of personnel to maintain and repair systems throughout the facility. In The Reactor Game, a good example is the malfunctioning Coolants.
Most core games are located in a facility, where reactor operations personnel start up either a black hole (like in Black Hole Core), of another type of energy-producing reactor (like the Subspace Reactor in TRG, which performs combustion to produce energy).
Lots of core games have Lasers and coolant networks, to thermally optimize the reactor to prevent catastrophical events like a meltdown (in TRG, that being the CBLs, and the IS-E Coolant Network). Typically, core games have manual control, and thus a control room. That means the operators press buttons and pull switches to control the reactor, instead of a computer doing all of that work.
In short, core games are unpopular science-fiction games that resolve around maintaining systems and generating electricity.
TODO: - Summary of most popular core games