Today is a very special day for Nebulate.me - it's been two years since we've made the very first prototype on Ludum Dare #46 and got quite a positive feedback from our audience. You could still play it for free on the Nebulate.me homepage, by the way.
As one could see, the core idea has been there even back then in 2020, but the game itself was rather unpolished and lacked a lot of the content you see as normal today: the single-player campaign, 15 different Tower types, the Editor, the Quick Match mode, and of course the Multiplayer mode.
Back then, we really believed that the Multiplayer IS the main reason to have Keep the Keep released, as it was incredibly engaging from our humble point of view - just getting to outsmart one another and get the other player cornered is really fun (well, at least for the winning side), and so we spent a lot of our development time creating a workable multiplayer system.
In retrospect, it does not look like such a hot idea now, since we simply didn't have the media and development resources that would allow getting enough players on the very first early access launch (which we also botched, coincidentally). Au contraire, it looks like a better idea for such a small studio as us to concentrate the efforts on single-player mode and make it as attractive and exciting as possible.
Nevertheless, 15 months after the prototype has been made, we finally launched our Early access! And even then, the game wasn't particularly cool to look at (you could check it out here)
Nowadays, it looks like we got some traction, after all, learning how to make our game attractive the hard way, which features to focus on and what are the things you pay the most attention to ;)
Thank you all for being with us all this time, the journey would be much, much harder without your support!
To celebrate the date, we are offering a unique deal today:
70% off the price of Keep the Keep just for this week till April the 20th!
If you'd ever felt like the price we offer is too steep, here's your chance! And, on an additional note, feel free to try out our recent LD#50 idle game Mech&Aliens - if we get enough positive feedback, we might consider making it a fully-featured game ;)
Have a wonderful day and... Keep the Keep! Sincerely yours, Nebulate.me team
Keep the Keep v1.15.0 is out: The Golem, AI and Balance improvements
Good time of the day, fellow Keepers!
This week, we proudly present you with a whole set of important updates!
New Tower Type: The Golem
First and foremost, we're going full speed ahead implementing new towers and increasing both your tactical flexibility and the overall game's replayability value alike!
Tower of the week today is the mighty Golem, a hulking brute towering over puny little soldiers and other insignificant towers with its sheer scale! While very similar to Soldier from the Barracks in function, the Golem flounders around with the massive 3 health points, allowing it to survive a couple of hits with relative ease.
Thus, when built up close and personal, the Golem will surely tear through the ranks of your opponent, sowing chaos and destruction as it goes and making them panic while trying to organise any semblance of effective defence. This, however, raises the importance of support towers such as the Builder (allowing your Golems to be put to use immediately when built nearby) and the Sapper (guaranteed one-hit destruction of a Golem, provided it won't be destroyed before its construction is done).
We are quite sure you will enjoy using this new tower and are eagerly looking for your feedback, either here in Steam or in our Discord.
AI Navigation improvements
We have received a fair bit of constructive reviews regarding the ways a humble Soldier tower is navigating around the map: - Soldier being unable to spot the enemy from afar and turn towards them - Soldier getting stuck in certain tower patterns - Soldier attacking useless walls instead of hitting the opponent's Keep - Soldier's behaviour generally being rather hard to predict
Well, we have finally spent a fair bit of time addressing those issues, seeing as the newly born Golem would be bearing all the same disadvantages as its little brother. From today onwards, neither of those guys shall behave like lunatic anymore! Let's see how the new navigation AI works:
Check whether the cell that Soldier (or Golem) is looking at is occupied by the enemy - attack if yes
Check whether any of the adjacent cells are occupied by the enemy - rotate towards them if yes
Check whether there is an enemy in any of the cardinal directions from the Soldier (or Golem), and then either go forward if it's straight ahead or turn towards it first
Go forward while possible, turn around whenever not possible to do so otherwise.
Besides, whenever having several potential targets at once, the AI will scroll through its priority list and try to attack the one with the highest priority (which would be the Keep, for example). This would hopefully help with potential disappointing situations of being distracted by the low-value towers.
While this kind of AI is far from being advanced, we are certain it will provide for a more pleasant experience using either Barracks or Golem and make them more attractive for you.
Balance fixes
Due to our recent assessment of which tower types are being used the least, it has become rather evident that quite a few of our towers require some improvements to see the sunshine:
Defender Health reduced from 2 to 1
Defender grows every 5 turns now instead of 4
Shield grows every 3 turns now instead of 4
Repair Health increased to 2
Repair grows every 4 turns now instead of 5
Builder grows every 4 turns now instead of 5
This was mostly due to the fact that Defender became significantly more useful than the humble Shield, while poor Repair was basically never used. With those changes, we are positive that you might consider using them a fair bit more often.
All in all, as you could see, it was a pretty eventful week, and we will be taking a few days off on the next one as we prepare for Ludum Dare #50. Meanwhile, stay calm and Keep the Keep! Cheers!
Nebulate.me
Keep the Keep v1.14.0: Defender tower and AI Improvements!
Good Day, fellow Keepers!
Today we are happy to introduce yet another new Tower Type: the mighty Defender!
This new Tower Type is, in fact, a very different version of the familiar and well-known Shield Tower: Defender has the same 2 health points, requires energy, can face both cardinal and diagonal directions... But here comes an important difference: while Shield tower protects itself from a given direction, Defender covers one nearby friendly tower instead, whatever it may be: a Keep, a Reactor, a Wall, a Soldier, etc.
This allows for flexibility level unbeknownst beforehand since this new tower can be used both to quickly shield important nearby ally that's being pressed and to expand into the territory attacked by the opponent just as well. Indeed, the only thing important to keep in mind is that the Defender tower simply requires the allied tower to exist and have substance to it (so, it won't protect the Domain tower at all) and the energy to be provided.
While we might feel like the new tower is a bit too powerful, the future balance changes shall happen as a result of your feedback rather than our own shenanigans - so we're really looking forward to your opinion on the matter. Please try it out and comment here, under this post, or send us the feedback on our Discord Server.
AI Enhancements
It's so relieving to finally announce a pack of major upgrades to the existing AI after a fair bit of development time! First of all, several tower types that were not available for the AI before are now enabled and you'll hopefully have a great time playing against them! So, the following tower types are now enabled:
1. Repair 2. Builder 3. Domain 4. Sapper
All of those are automatically available in the Quick Match mode as well as for selection during local multiplayer AI battles. We are especially proud to implement a rather complex and elaborate system supporting the Builder usage, as that tower is immensely powerful in the right hands.
Likewise, quite a few smaller AI bugs have been addressed too, hopefully making the whole experience more smooth and human-like - which will help you get around if not finding a worthy multiplayer opponent for yourself.
Meanwhile, stay cool... and Keep the Keep! Talk to you in a couple of weeks!
Always yours, Nebulate.me team
Keep the Keep v1.13.0: Domain Tower and Campaign level overhaul
Good day, fellow Keepers! Well... probably, not as good as we'd like it to be, but still... we hope your dear ones are safe and you get to enjoy some playtime even during those days.
1. Today we are releasing to announce a new type of Tower - the Domain Tower.
This tower is very different from all the other tower types you have seen (thus, we are being true to ourselves, keeping the towers actually separate from one another rather than replicating the same type over and over again with minor variations):
Domain Tower expands your building area just like any other tower would
Domain Tower is built immediately, thus showing the opponent your building plan for the turn
Domain Tower can not be attacked by long-range towers such as Bow, Cannon, Catapult and Thunder, they simply ignore it instead; the same is true for the Sapper tower
Domain Tower blocks Barracks and Soldiers; enemy Soldiers will destroy it
Domain Tower allows any player, including its owner, to build another tower over it, thus both creating a way for better flexibility and also being vulnerable
As a result, it's advised to use the humble Domain to circumvent the areas that are shot through by the opponent, thus disallowing them from blocking you in a given area of the game field. Also, it is a good Tower to build whenever there is no particular Tower you feel like spending, as it's fairly invulnerable to hostile shooting and can improve the efficiency of your next turn.
This is, however, fairly new and not battle-tested enough; so we are looking forward to your feedback regarding the balance of this new Tower in the current meta ;)
2. Campaign levels overhaul
As we have realised, the Campaign levels might be a bit too long and tedious, especially the early ones. Thus, we have made sure puzzle levels mostly won't require you to hit the enemy Keep for 3 turns in a row, as it's usually rather obvious the puzzle is already solved by that point.
Also, there were a bunch of "easy" introductory levels in the middle of the campaign that were too much of a difficulty drop, after all the complexity passed by the player by then. We have corrected their complexity to provide a better challenge for you.
3. Graphical fixes
Soldier death animation
Repair tower crystal transparency changes
Encyclopedia minor improvements
This would be it, for now, stay cool and keep the Keep! At your service, Nebulate.me
Keep the Keep v1.12.1: Trailer, Demo and Quick Match!
Good day, dear Keepers! We hope you had a splendid week!
Have you been wondering why did we go into silence for almost a month? Well, here's the answer: there was a lot of meta improvements we just had to release in one batch :) Here we go...
1. New Trailer
As the new graphics actually changed the outlook of Keep the Keep quite a bit, it only made sense for us to also update our trailer, especially considering that the old one did not seem to be very engaging and not nearly as quick and furious as it should be!
Thus, we have spent a couple of weeks refining our new game footage into something properly showing it off:
Now, after this part was quite over, we finally could be sure that the game would draw some attention whenever looked upon ;)
And for the beautiful music, we are happy to thank Alexander Nakarada, check his art out here.
2. Demo Version
We have received plenty of feedback about our game lacking an easy way to test it out and see for yourself, whether you'd like this style of gameplay or not. Well, fair enough: while our old Ludum Dare Entry is still up and running, it's very outdated both in terms of graphics and gameplay alike. So, we took some time to develop a new shiny Demo Version, that would allow you to try out some Campaign levels as well as play some local Multiplayer vs your friends or AI.
This Demo is now available on our public page, and we say so especially for our dear subscribers and wishlisters - now you don't have to hesitate on whether or not to buy it since you can simply check it out!
3. Quick Match
Since it took a bit of time to set up an AI match and every player would probably get stuck with a particular set of Towers they'd like to use the most, we decided to introduce a new exciting way to try something new: the Quick Match button!
Whenever you push it in the Main Menu, the game will start immediately on a random 2-player map with an AI - and both you and him having a rather random set of towers to boot! Have you ever wondered what happens whenever you use Thunder, Sapper, Repair and Builder at once? Well, now you have a way to find out ;)
So, if you ever feel a need for something exciting and don't have anyone to play with - just go for the Quick match and you won't be disappointed.
4. Smaller Fixes
And meanwhile, we have also integrated a bunch of quality of life improvements and bugfixes: - Levels on the Campaign map will now show their names whenever hovered upon, making the process of navigation much easier - Solders will behave more consistently, especially when having synchronous animation - Certain tips and buttons will also show up only whenever there is a need for them, as advice for the tower deletion in case of being besieged - The encyclopedia is now prettier, with towers being properly updated to the modern graphical standard! - Winter Level Scenery will show actual appropriate snow
Stay chill, more cool stuff is coming in a couple of weeks! Nebulate.me
Keep the Keep v1.11.0 released: Game Speed Improvements!
Good day, fellow Keepers!
As usual, we have good news for you today - a new update has arrived after the last two weeks of development!
So, what have we done?
1.A couple of new options for the Settings screen - "Animation speed" and "Fast Tower Animation"
- Animation Speed is pretty straightforward - ranging from "Very Slow" to "Very Fast", it allows you to speed up or slow down the game, which will be quite useful if you would prefer to enjoy the animations a bit more or a bit less.
- Fast Tower Activation, on the other hand, is a trickier and efficient way to streamline the game process. Essentially, instead of waiting for every tower to be activated in turn, we activate groups of towers of the same kind and the same player simultaneously instead, both shortening the turn animations and making them more spectacular, as you could imagine, towers shooting barrages of cannonballs instead of doing this one by one. We like it so much, in fact, that we enabled it for you by default!
2. More graphical fixes for the singleplayer mode
- Improved scrolling for the Campaign Map - from now on, you can navigate the map by pressing the arrow keys / WASD, besides the usual mouse controls. - World Map View is better balanced now, adjusting the viewing distance depending on the zoom scale - Uncompleted missions aka "Question flags" have a more easily identifiable colour - Paths between missions/flags are more clearly visible now
3. General Improvements
- Better, more detailed Tower Explosion effect, dust and rocks to fall out whenever a Tower falls - Fixed the ever-annoying bug of erasing campaign completed missions save on new version installed - won't be an issue anymore
So, we hope you'll like this update just as much as we do, there is more exciting new stuff upcoming meanwhile ;)
Stay cool!
New Year, New Graphics: Keep the Keep v1.10.0 is out!
Happy New Year, fellow Keepers!
We hope you had a blast celebrating the end of 2021, and are so glad to present you with a rather big update we have been working on for the last month or so!
Finally, we have fully revamped the World Campaign graphics - and this is now ready for you to enjoy!
As we've learned to model things on our own, so a more consistent style for Keep the Keep has grown - this shiny, naive and cartoony low-poly landscape is what we are aiming for and will be drawing like in the future. Some extra shaders, perhaps, some life for the countryside, wavering flags and rotating windmills... more is there to come, but rest to be assured, we're heading for a fairly convincing look!
While it might have taken a while to accomplish, we are quite sure it's been worth it. Now, the next thing on our roadmap is to upgrade the trailer and make sure the game does not look unattractive for our players. This, in turn, will enable us to work on the proper campaign story as well as the long-awaited new tower types.
We are very hopeful for the upcoming year to bring us all joy! Meanwhile, stay chill, keep the keep and don't mind joining our Discord group.
All the best, Nebulate.me team
Keep the Keep v1.9.0: Graphical Updates
Happy Friday, fellow Keepers!
Have you missed Keep the Keep? This week we have some good news and a nice graphical update for you!
- Better model for the CannonTower as we generally move in a more cartoony graphical style - New firing / explosion animations for the Towers so it would look more convincing and impactful for the viewer - Fluttering flags all around, making the whole landscape more alive
Imagine how much better would the view be with the wind moving trees and crops around, water flowing through, mills rotating, etc. With your help, we're sure to eventually reach that day.
What do you think, how would you prefer to see the game graphics evolve? All suggestions and ideas are welcome, both in our Discord group and directly in the comments here.
And while the update is rather small this time, we are preparing something big to come in the following weeks: a totally new and graphically fitting Campaign Map!
No big reveals are to be made just yet, but we are really looking forward to getting this out, as the overall effect will be quite massive, we believe.
