Keep the Keep v1.23.2: post-release upgrades and bugfixes!
Good day, Keepers!
It’s been a week since Keep the Keep got released and so far we are pleasantly surprised at how much feedback we’ve gotten from you so far! (a special shout-out here to our Discord followers). With your help, quite a few small issues have been found and fixed during the past few days:
It’s now possible to cancel the tower selection by pressing the Escape button
It’s no longer possible to encounter a grey AI opponent in the Quick Match
The campaign map will now focus on the last level you have played and not finished, the “Continue” button in the main menu will launch it
The towers panel mysterious barracks appearance fixed
Builder tower animation corrected
Level names being replaced by their codes (like Level7b, for example) fixed
Balance issues with Level11b and Level7b fixed, now those should be more interesting to play
Wacky AI behaviour when triggering them to attack a Domain tower fixed
Skipping a level by holding a mouse button now behaves more smoothly and doesn’t result in unwanted dialogue skips
Yet again, thanks a lot for your suggestions and reports, it’s been a blast to both help you get through particularly tricky levels and also to make Keep the Keep better. Please don't hesitate to text us if a given level is too difficult, some game interaction isn't obvious, or there's a bug - it will be a pleasure for us to address.
Stay tuned and keep the Keep! Nebulate.me
Keep the Keep fully released!
Keepers, rejoice!
Today is the day we finally release Keep the Keep out of Early Access!
After almost three years of development and 1.5 years in the EA, it is time to release the game and let it be for a while. And, despite being our first product of that scale, Keep the Keep has attained plenty of features over that time:
50+ main Campaign levels, puzzles and AI battles alike to challenge your mind;
Quick AI Match - Getting a randomly balanced set of towers and fighting an AI opponent on a random map;
Local (hot-seat) and Online Multiplayer will allow you to enjoy battling up to 4 friends on various battlefields;
The Map Editor, to get all kinds of puzzles (or AI battles) designed in the game and share them with friends as .ktk files;
Full English and Russian localisation for 1000+ campaign story dialogue replicas, for a pretty typical-looking story that might be deeper than it seems!
So, you see, for a strategy games fan, for a tactician, for a puzzle lover there are a lot of activities to indulge in for hours and hours to come. We sincerely hope you'll get to see it for yourself!
Changes
In patch 1.23.1, we have made quite a few fixes:
Clearer player colours (especially green)
The tower removal button will appear more appropriately
UI/UX adjustments for the Multiplayer Lobby to properly appear on various resolutions
Multiplayer Lobby player colouring issues addressed
Automatic Quality detection should work robustly now
Optimised build size, got rid of some unnecessary pictures
Game credits got updated too, for we've gotten help with UI
What’s next?
Up to you, our dear friends! We will, of course, see to address issues and provide speedy bug fixes in the future, but who knows? Perhaps, you'll get really interested in the game and would like to know what happens to Keylin after the end of campaign? Perhaps, you'd have some great suggestions for us?
As for us, the Nebulate.me studio, we'll seek project ideas for a bit and try to realize the best one to nebulate you ;)
Stay tuned!
Keep the Keep is finally coming to release on March 15, 2023!
Greetings, you all, good sirs and ladies, Keepers and spectators alike!
Today we are excited to tell you: the time has come for us to finally release Keep the Keep out of the Early Access!
On March 15th, there will be the final version release - 1.23.1!
It's been a long and rather bumpy road with all sorts of adventures, upgrades, trials and errors on the way - and we are so, so glad that you've taken it with us!
After almost 3 years of development, 1.5 of which have been spent in early access, it's finally time to say: we are ready to release our Keep the Keep (feels almost like a child at this point).
It's actually crazy how much has this journey taken us, but thanks to you, our players, our friends and our supporters, it's been a pleasure and a lot of valuable experience.
You see, Keep the Keep, while being our first game of that release calibre, is a game like no other - which is both a blessing and a curse. Is it a turn-based strategy? Is it a puzzle? Is it a tower defense? Auto chess? Wacky streamlined Netstorm-like tactics?
It's just too hard to precisely describe what it is in straight terms - you'll have to see it for yourself.
And we'll always be glad to hear your feedback, be it positive, negative or constructive.
What can you expect from this release?
We're preparing the last fixes and adjustments, making sure that everything runs smoothly, but generally, the game will stay like it is right now since its plot campaign is finished, its towers are balanced, and features - defined.
What shall happen afterwards?
We are yet to see ;) Suffice it to say, it depends on the interest of our players, whether we will release free DLCs in the future or will limit ourselves to bug fixes. It's largely up to you, our dear Keepers.
So, get ready for the 15th of March, for Keep the Keep is coming!
Nebulate.me team
Keep the Keep v1.23.0: Massive UI Overhaul and Multiplayer Bugfixes!
Greetings, our valiant Keepers!
Have you thought, that we, perhaps, were gone missing yet? No worries, this rather long pause was due to us working hard on the latest update, to bring out a lot of important changes. Let’s get right into them.
First of all, we’ve seen that you liked the Encyclopedia changes and have gotten out an absolutely massive UI redesign for a few more screens:
1. Multiplayer Lobby got completely redone thanks to a friendly helpful designer hand. The original version was rather clumped up and confusing in terms of what the player was supposed to do there, so we've made a more concise flow for you to use:
As you could no doubt see, the current player shall now always be displayed in the top left part of the screen, above all the other players on the server; there is a logical grouping of server options (top right part of the Lobby) and player options (bottom right part), so you won't get lost in those anymore. We hope you'll like it!
2. The Battle screen now allows you to access both Settings and Encyclopedia by pushing the top-right Pause button or Escape. Also, the Tower initiative Queue has been relocated to a more prominent and visible position in the top centre of the screen, so you will have an easier time monitoring the tower activation order; additionally, we've got player turns recorded there as well, thus, making it obvious which player shall build their tower after which.
3. Settings Screen is now in a matching wiki-style, with a more concise outlook and a familiar closing button in the top left corner of the screen. Buttons are now consistent with the overall menu style, and hopefully, the screen itself is easier to read now as well.
Secondly, a bunch of important multiplayer issues have been addressed, such as the infamous game soft-locking bug whenever the server quit the lobby before his clients got the chance to leave. Likewise, it has become easier to click the right spot whenever placing a tower with subtle changes of the clicking area.
Thirdly, minor quality-of-life improvements have been introduced - for example, the winning player will enjoy a small firework show shooting out of their Keep; tutorial advice should not vanish immediately, making first levels much more straightforward to complete at your own pace, finally, the recommended graphical settings will be calculated on the first game launch for a properly comfortable experience, addressing a known issue of launching the game at maximum settings - at the cost of one's performance.
As you can see, a lot of things have been moved around and improved, and thus we finally enter the thin finish line before the actual long-awaited release of Keep the Keep as the game manages the level of polish we are rather content with.
As for now, stay tuned for the incoming week and keep it cool!
Always at your service, Nebulate.me team
Keep the Keep v.1.22.0: Encyclopedia & complete AI Support!
Greetings, dear Keepers!
Today we are happy to announce a multitude of awesome updates that will make your keeping much more enjoyable.
First of all, we’ve completely overhauled the Encyclopedia screen: from now on, you shall see all of the relevant stats of any given tower next to its narrative description. This is very important for you, good folks, to understand how every tower operates and what are its strengths and downsides, it’s the number of health points and shooting range.
Furthermore, we have added 2 more tabs to the Encyclopedia - Characters and Rules: the former will tell you some lore about the characters of Keep the Keep while the latter will finally shed some light on all the battle mechanics present in the game. Did you know that every Tower has its own initiative that it activates upon? Do you know why and how Soldiers and Golems move around and choose their targets? Well, now there is a detailed explanation of that!
Secondly, we’ve finally figured out the AI for all of the towers unsupported by AI before: namely, Golems and Barracks. While the current AI isn’t the brightest yet at picking the places, it’s reasonably competent to pose a bit of a challenge for you now - and so we’re glad to enable all of the towers for its choice in the Quick Match and Local multiplayer. Check them out!
Third, we’ve got a piece of more appropriate battle music for the tutorial levels with our good old master Gugo: Forbearing. It’s much better suited for the safety of those entry challenges, so check it out on our Soundcloud!
Finally, we’ve made a lot of fixes on UI and game interactions, layouts in Editor and Multiplayer screens, etc. - and even more, are to come as we’re getting closer to the release!
Meanwhile, we’re eager to hear your feedback in the comments. Happy keeping!
Keep the Keep v1.21.2 is out: small upgrades and bugfixes!
Greetings, fellow Keepers!
A good day for an update, wouldn't you agree? Today we're releasing a bunch of small but noticeable changes that will make your Keeping better:
1. We've added a Privacy Policy to analyse your actions in the game and improve our levels' quality, both their balance and engagement. All of the data we collect is anonymous, as we're only interested in the stats here, not in your private affairs. Not to worry!
2. The infamous Mac exit crash was finally dealt with. In the future, we will make sure there are no such game-breaking issues anymore.
3. AI upgrades - the AI will be smarter about the tower placement related to Barracks, not to block their exits and also won't be careless enough to build towers under their own Sappers. More fun to play with, and in the next update, we shall be expecting Barracks tower support.
4. UI Quality - better Character dialogue skip interaction, improved tower destruction animation (have a look at the GIF above) and more concise tower status icons.
With all those enhancements, we sincerely hope your experience within Keep the Keep will be smoother and more enjoyable.
Stay tuned for the following weeks! Nebulate.me
Keep the Keep v1.21.0: Back in Action!
Greetings, fellow Keepers! We hope this update finds you in good health and mood.
It's been a long while since the last change to Keep the Keep was officially announced, and there are a lot of tales to tell of what happened since then.
1. Welcome, Meridian4!
First of all, we have successfully found ourselves a publisher, Meridian4! That might be a small step in terms of game design or gameplay, but it's a rather big vote of confidence for us. On that notion, we're quickly moving towards the game release!
2. The Story is finally there!
The single-player Campaign is now complete, with all of its 48 Levels and whopping 16 381 words of dialogue! There are all kinds of different conversations exploring personal and diplomatic topics, as well as some dry humour and even short poems. Yes, indeed, at least one of the characters involved is a big fan of rhymed verses.
Besides, we're introducing yet another antagonist character: say hi to Lutecia, the quiet, peaceful librarian that nonetheless got in your way. Somehow.
Would you like to find out how, exactly? No better moment to wishlist the game, then!
3. New Year, New Languages!
On top of that, we've localised the whole game to the Russian language, to bring some support towards our friends from the post-soviet bloc of countries! As expected the language options are available in the Settings section of the main game menu.
We'd love for all of us people on this planet to live in peace and hope that Keep the Keep will bring some unity to all of us, and perhaps, open a different view of the world's conflicts as well.
And of course, we're looking forward to localising the game further if possible. We would need your support in order to make it happen, so feel free to email us at support@nebulate.me
4. Multiplayer Quality of Life Enhancements!
While we focused primarily on the single-player content, we didn't forget that Keep the Keep is, and always was, at its core, a multiplayer tactical game. And, of course, as we have gained the support of our publisher, we have realized there is a need to support other prominent platforms, such as Epic Games Store and GOG. Thus, we have realised an entirely new server system with the capability of finding new friends even if they are playing Keep the Keep in a completely different setting.
Besides, it's now possible to search for a server on a dedicated screen:
So, playing with your friends should become significantly more pleasant. And, while we're speaking of making things nicer...
5. Audio effects
As you might know, for a long time we had but a single background music in our game that was there since the very first Ludum Dare where Keep the Keep was born. It's not particularly bad, but it can quickly get boring, so by this point, we'd fully expect you to turn the Music off in the settings and listen to something else instead. Well... that was until now.
We are happy to announce that we've put some work into Keep the Keep's soundtrack and recorded a couple of different medieval-style tracks for it, with a full intention to compose more in the following weeks.
Hopefully, the new tracks will bring you joy, and mayhaps, the nostalgia of good old games.
6. Performance Upgrades and bugfixes
We've all known for a fair bit of time that the new campaign world map was not very kind to your CPU. Rejoice, good people: we have found a way to optimise the game's performance and make it significantly less greedy without any visual issues introduced. This would be especially important for laptop users.
And of course, there were also countless bugs that got fixed meanwhile, and quite some more to go through yet, but we are positive the release will happen rather soon.
Stay tuned! Nebulate.me team
Keep the Keep v1.18.0 is out: All-Around Improvements and Linux Support
Good day, fellow Keepers!
Today we are introducing quite a bunch of new features and fixes for Keep the Keep. Took us a while, perhaps, but we are keen to address every issue that you might find out (please, report either here on Steam or join our Discord to do so) and also pump some good things as well. Let's get into it.
1. The story advances
We are covering the next block of levels related to the usage of Barracks with this new update, further expanding on Key's story and introducing a new character into it (which you may see above). As Key and Isaac finally find some common grounds and come to terms, a new threat is looming on the horizon. Will they be able to handle it?
Up to you to decide!
2. Editor Improvements
From now on, you will finally be able to select whether you would like to fight a Static AI (basically skipping turns, good for making puzzles) or an actual AI opponent whenever designing a new level in the Editor.
Besides, you can immediately test your new changes by clicking the Play Level button in the Editor right away rather than have to go up a screen and press the button there. A small QoL enhancement here.
And of course, several bug fixes have happened as well, so you might be pleased by some past issues evaporating in a puff of smoke.
3. AI Progress
Defender Tower is now supported by our AI, so you will be able to select it. While it does not seem to be a huge step for the game, believe us, making the Defender logic work was a pretty big step in the right direction and took a while to make happen in the right way.
There are more Towers to cover (like the Barracks and the Golem), and we will definitely get to it in the following weeks. Those are rather complicated to make a convincing AI for, but we shall do our best.
Besides, a few improvements happened to the overall AI behaviour, so hopefully, he'll do less senseless actions from now onwards.
4. Level Map previews
And we know how hard it was to decide upon which level should one play in Multiplayer without a proper outlook of the level itself, so we made minimaps for those for your convenience as you could see in the screenshot above. No more hard time guessing which map is following which pattern, indeed!
5. Full Linux Support
As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, thanks to our Linux followers from Brazil, we've finally managed to build and test a Linux version of Keep the Keep and this week we are quite proud to present you with the proper working game version (both full and demo). We certainly make one particular penguin happy :D
With all that said, we sincerely hope you're enjoying the game progress as we steadily move towards our actual release!
Stay tuned! Nebulate.me team
Keep the Keep v1.17.0 is out: Story Advances, QoL Improvements!
Greetings, fellow Keepers!
This Friday we bring you a multitude of goodies:
1. Story Progress!
Keylin's story, which started last time, advances forward to explore the new lands, overcome various challenges and meet some new people as well. While we have made a little bit of a retcon on mission "Cannonfrontation" to make the plot fit better, generally the character relations get more deep and complex, different political opinions are being spoken out, parleys and battles are happening and we are sure you're gonna like it a lot!
2. Campaign Fog of War
While it was cool to see the whole map, it's about time to spice things up a fair bit. From now on, only the unlocked area of the campaign shall be shown while the rest will linger somewhere in uncharted territories, hidden behind the famous fog of war. A bit cliched, perhaps, but also more authentic. We gotta keep some secrets from our dear players till the time is ripe, after all.
3. Quality of Life enhancements
There is a bunch of cool little things we introduced to make your life easier:
It's now possible to skip Dialogue branches if you have seen them before (there is a button for that now)
There is a new graphical option "Depth of Field" that is enabled by default - however, disabling it might help with performance issues we've be hearing out
Campaign Players will have static colours from now on, but this colour-coding is also very convenient. Now you'd know that Red is the colour of our brave protagonist, Brown is the colour of his teacher, etc.
Also, let's slip out a little secret: we are about to release Keep the Keep for Linux! While it's not the easiest of tasks, our fans have enabled us to deliver our game to that platform as well. Three cheers for them!
And, of course, if you personally would like to change the game, provide feedback, or generally find nice people to play with in multiplayer - please join our Discord Server! We have free cookies (game key giveaways).
Stay tuned and... Keep the Keep!
Nebulate.me
Keep the Keep v.1.16.0: Story and Characters!
Good day, fellow Keepers!
Today we have wonderful news for you: finally, our long 40-level Campaign is getting a proper plot story!
Having a story in a game like this one might seem like a no-brainer, really, but there has always been a lot of work to be done yet since its initial release back in July 2021. Different priorities we had back then: implementing new towers, multiplayer features, AI and other useful things.
But now, for the first time in all these months, we shall start taking care of the narrative. And here I humbly shut up and give the word to...
Greetings! I am Keylin, an inventor apprentice from the free city of Evyreed.
Dreaming of a better future for my people, I came from my village to the revered battle veteran, Master Gugo Borhond - to study both military strategy and tinkering. While he didn't really treat me any different than any of the other street boys initially, a certain amount of persistence on my side eventually changed his mind ;)
Today we are testing my newest invention - the Cannon Tower, capable of hitting targets hard and very far away. This should revolutionise warfare, and make all the regular means of fighting obsolete! So excited about this, hard to think about anything else! By the way, do you wanna see take part in the presentation? Really? Yaay! See ya there!
Additional Improvements and bugfixes
Besides completely overhauling the tutorials and providing for the first 7 levels of the Campaign (which coincidentally covers the entire duration of the Demo campaign), we have also fixed several bugs: - Undoing the AI turn will properly revert both AI and Human turns once - Skip Level button has been removed - Redesign the level buttons - collected them at the right side of the screen rather than have them scattered across the map
We sincerely hope you like this update and the new plot story - and please, let us learn about your opinion on our Discord Server - we're always happy to see you there!
