The Badlands Return for Endless Replayability Fest (0.69.5)
The Badlands finally arrive in Keepsake County as part of a new heist, rife with hazards! Modeled after South Dakota's famous national park, with a sprinkling of West Kansas' Castle Rock, West Nebraska, a bit of Utah, and a bit of Texas' Palo Duro Canyon, we think we've made a very unique new biome for players to experience.
This latest heist tasks you with burglaring two houses at once, much like The Architect. You'll have to drive past one house along the mesa's edge to get to the other!
Keen-eyed players with a long memory may recall The Badlands being teased in old loading screens, and we're glad to finally bring them to life for this latest update. With that come unique gameplay mechanics and geography for you to sneak through!
Sand: Large piles of sand will slow you and your car down as you move through it - so be careful if you need to get away in a hurry.
Barbed Wire and Cacti: Barbed wire fences now cause damage when walked into, while much of the Badlands is covered in painful large Prickly Pear that can't be walked inside of like normal foliage.
Cliffs: Much like the Ozarks, the Badlands takes place at high elevation, and falling off the side will result in an easy arrest for the Police.
Crawlspaces: Unlike other maps, the Basement of The Badlands has a crawlspace that players can use as easy access to the surface from the Basement - but only when the basement spawns.
Spires and Rocks: Large spires and rocks dot the top of the mesa, and make great visual obstructions to sneak through and beneath. They can also be climbed for a vertical advantage.
Lack of Foliage: Dead Trees and Cacti are plenty here, while most other foliage will only appear near houses, so be careful not to spend too much time lingering.
Additionally, this update adds:
45 new lootable items have been added! This includes 5+ new food items for healing yourself with.
A new loading screen has been added
Attics should now spawn more frequently
Being kicked back to the splash screen from the main menu now takes 2 minutes instead of 30 seconds, to accommodate long loading times when opening a level for the first time.
Ladders can now be used inside
The Big Ladder has been shrunk a little bit to accommodate this use
Additionally, the full beta is temporarily available to play on Steam for free as part of the Endless Replayability Fest! After the fest it'll revert back to the older Architect Demo, so play it now and let us know what you think!
Welcome to The Ozarks, a Keepsake County Beta update
Welcome to The Ozarks, one of three remaining Biomes that we're adding to Keepsake County. The other two are coming soon :)
Romp through this mountainous new terrain and wade through streams, under waterfalls, inside caves, and along treacherous cliffs. Watch your step! This is a fall you won't survive without a trip to the hospital, in handcuffs.
Added Ozarks biome
Added The Ozarks map to level select, random map pool
Changed fences to reflect that they don't hurt players to touch
Added ability to fall to your death from the edges of Ozarks map, as well as appropriate signage
Added signage for Frikota
Updated lighting of distant objects to use better atmospheric diffusion
Added unique Ozarks skybox
To play this new update, head over to the Announcements section of the Forward Instinct discord.
Demo Update to Beta 0.69.3
We've released a minor update to Keepsake County, with the following changes:
Idling for 30 seconds in the main menu will now boot you back to the Splash screen
Fixed bots getting fascinated by unreachable waypoints and not changing directions
Fixed an unneeded audio listener in scenes
Partial fix to bag UI appearing while still picking up an object - not perfect, but somewhat fixed. Animator bugs abound.
Fixed wall having extra geometry, loot behind player in Tutorial first room
Fixed breaker, wire, phone spawning in other rooms of the Tutorial and breaking sequence.
Fixed bug where assigning no rooms to have wiring would create memory leak and crash
Allow preplacement of Wire, Breaker, and Phone in advance to curb randomly spawning additional ones. The Architect currently uses this for the Wire and Breaker attached to power poles outdoors.
Fixed incorrectly placed geometry of Carport in Tutorial
Slightly adjusted placement of AI spawn zones on Tutorial - the tutorial uses active/inactive zones for AI to make the game easier for new players who are frightened and chased by AI. This does not occur anywhere else in the game.
Slightly adjusted phrasing, placement of a few text Tutorial nodes to change new player flow and behaviour.
Placed blockers to prevent players exiting the map by climbing out the rooftop dormers on House 1 and 2 of Tutorial
Adjusted position of Bloodhound on Tutorial to reduce instances of dog being fully alerted before player exits porch.
Changed phrasing of Mouse1 to "Left Mouse Click". It was too often confused for the word "mousel" by new players, and they didn't understand what it meant.
Moved table and chairs in kitchen of Tutorial to lessen bumping into geometry.
Updated versioning text to 0.69.3 in splash
Updated main menu to highlight blue when moused over - players often were confused and thought the main menu was static.
Adjusted placement of lock icon on Chest Freezer, Small Safe to be accurate to where the lockpick hitboxes are.
15 judges from the Georgia Game Developer's Association (including Warren Spector, who was a huge surprise to meet and wonderful to talk to at the booth) voted on the games this year, and we were incredibly fortunate to walk away with wins in two different categories, as well as coming up close in two more!
Thank you, everyone who's offered feedback, played the demo, or said hello to us and tried the game at a con! Looking forward to much more public appearances with Keepsake County. It was a delight to chat with all the other devs, the players, and all the lovely curious folks at DreamHack this year. We're incredibly honored.
Keepsake County is headed to SXSW Sydney Games Showcase! (Oct. 18 - 22)
What's that? Oh yeah, Keepsake County will be making the trip down to Oz for the first Sydney SXSW (Oct. 18 - 22)! Specifically as part of the showcase!
As a little update for it, we've made some quality of life fixes to the demo here on Steam:
Added a new Guard Dog. It's slightly more alert than the Bloodhound, and has a different, scarier growl.
Fixed the bag not reappearing after climbing, fixed some instances of the bag flickering heavily while climbing
Added a Crouching HUD indicator, so you can now tell if you are crouching.
Added more obvious Beta signage to the splash screen and main menu
Fixed the tires screeching after extracting
Added some voiceline fixes to lines that were clipping
Fixed the arrest report saying you were arrested in Beale County
Hotfix: Controller Sensitivity fixed
A small hotfix has been released for Keepsake County:
Added controller sensitivity to control configuration menu
Increased lowest sensitivity level for controllers
Thanks for your feedback!
Added Partial Controller Support - fully remappable
A small patch has been released adding basic, remappable controller (partial) support for:
Generic Profile
Xbox 360
Xbox One
Dualshock 4
Players are able to remap controls as needed, so feel free to change from the defaults.
This controller set will work during missions for controlling the Burglar and the Car, though not in menus. Full control (menus + UI) will come later down the line.
Major Demo Update! New Level, Enemies!
For those already playing the new demo, a hotfix addresses the following issues;
Fixed foliage height on The Architect being a bit too tall
Fixed some clipping Architect voicelines
Fixed not being able to pick up delivered pizzas
Fixed tooltips disappearing in the Tutorial
We’ve added a huge update to Keepsake County’s free demo on Steam for Steam Stealth Fest 2023, showcasing a brand new, never-before-seen heist, as well as 3 new enemies! Play it here on Steam and throw us a wishlist.
Burgle the Architect, the man responsible for Keepsake County’s strange, maze-like homes who lives on the edge of a muddy, swampy lake across from a guest house. Why’s he so paranoid? And why does he keep looking up at the sky?
Dodge the Pizza Guy, whose delicious pizza brings everyone out for a slice, and bumbles back to his truck.
Hounds attract everyone to burglars that spend too much time outside.
Evade the Detective, who’ll capitalize on any and all mistakes you make.
This update packs in some awesome new features for everyone to enjoy:
A shiny new guided Tutorial will ease even the most clumsy thieves into Keepsake County and get them burgling houses immediately.
Mantling means you’re more acrobatic than ever, allowing you to clamber up pipes and vents with ease.
Twitch Integration, where viewers can prank the streamer by calling the Cops, Pizza Guy, or Detective - or warp them across the map. But they can also reward them with secret safes, and tools like keys and ties!
Loaded with more story than ever, we’ve added newspapers and a whole refreshing (and gutbusting) set of voices for our characters, with midwestern goodness.
Improvements across the board include:
Far tighter controls for both the player and their car, and smarter AI to match.
Polish to menus, sound, and animations, plus tooltips that guide burglars how to best use their tools.
Loads of bug fixes!
New Level, Enemies in Exclusive Demo!
We’ve added a huge update to Keepsake County’s free demo on Steam for Steam Stealth Fest 2023, showcasing a brand new, never-before-seen heist, as well as 3 new enemies! Play it here on Steam and throw us a wishlist.
Burgle the Architect, the man responsible for Keepsake County’s strange, maze-like homes who lives on the edge of a muddy, swampy lake across from a guest house. Why’s he so paranoid? And why does he keep looking up at the sky?
Dodge the Pizza Guy, whose delicious pizza brings everyone out for a slice, and bumbles back to his truck.
Hounds attract everyone to burglars that spend too much time outside.
Evade the Detective, who’ll capitalize on any and all mistakes you make.
This update packs in some awesome new features for everyone to enjoy:
A shiny new guided Tutorial will ease even the most clumsy thieves into Keepsake County and get them burgling houses immediately.
Mantling means you’re more acrobatic than ever, allowing you to clamber up pipes and vents with ease.
Twitch Integration, where viewers can prank the streamer by calling the Cops, Pizza Guy, or Detective - or warp them across the map. But they can also reward them with secret safes, and tools like keys and ties!
Loaded with more story than ever, we’ve added newspapers and a whole refreshing (and gutbusting) set of voices for our characters, with midwestern goodness.
Improvements across the board include:
Far tighter controls for both the player and their car, and smarter AI to match.
Polish to menus, sound, and animations, plus tooltips that guide burglars how to best use their tools.
Loads of bug fixes!
Keepsake County Demo: On Steam for One More Week!
Yep, you read that right. Keepsake County's Next Fest demo is going to be on Steam for one more week before it vanishes!
We love that everyone got a chance to play the latest. If you'd like to get regular updates on development and continue playing demos before it arrives on Steam, you can grab the early, discounted version on Itch.io. (we will try to be dutiful in posting patch notes here too).
