Good day, Keepers! Its been a week since Keep the Keep got released and so far we are pleasantly surprised at how much feedback weve 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:

• Its now possible to cancel the tower selection by pressing the Escape button
• Its 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 doesnt result in unwanted dialogue skips

Yet again, thanks a lot for your suggestions and reports, its 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

[ 2023-03-22 22:46:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

Whats 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? We'll be happy to hear your opinions, either on the Steam discussions page or our Discord server. Looking forward to your feedback! 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!

[ 2023-03-15 21:57:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

[ 2023-03-13 20:00:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

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. Lets get right into them. First of all, weve 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

[ 2023-03-11 00:36:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

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, weve 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, its 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, weve finally figured out the AI for all of the towers unsupported by AI before: namely, Golems and Barracks. While the current AI isnt the brightest yet at picking the places, its reasonably competent to pose a bit of a challenge for you now - and so were glad to enable all of the towers for its choice in the Quick Match and Local multiplayer. Check them out!
Third, weve got a piece of more appropriate battle music for the tutorial levels with our good old master Gugo: Forbearing. Its much better suited for the safety of those entry challenges, so check it out on our Soundcloud! Finally, weve made a lot of fixes on UI and game interactions, layouts in Editor and Multiplayer screens, etc. - and even more, are to come as were getting closer to the release!
Meanwhile, were eager to hear your feedback in the comments. Happy keeping!

[ 2023-02-18 00:22:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

[ 2023-02-04 00:17:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

[ 2023-01-25 22:22:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

[ 2022-05-27 22:40:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

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: [olist]

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. [/olist] 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

[ 2022-05-14 01:18:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

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! Sincerely yours, Nebulate.me team

[ 2022-04-29 22:48:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, fellow Keepers! 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

[ 2022-04-12 22:13:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

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: [olist]

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. [/olist] 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

[ 2022-03-26 23:47:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

[ 2022-03-19 00:18:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

[ 2022-03-06 22:02:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

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: Keep the Keep 2022 Trailer 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

[ 2022-02-11 23:30:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

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!

[ 2022-01-16 21:33:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

[ 2022-01-01 11:57:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

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. Meanwhile, stay tuned and keep the Keep! Cheers!

[ 2021-12-10 23:19:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Good day, fellow Keepers! Have you missed us for the last few weeks, perhaps? Well, today we have good news for you: it's about time to finally reveal our work and plans for the following weeks! As we have heard from our players, the graphical solution we have as well as the orthographical camera do not provide the best impression overall. Thus, we have taken the liberty to spend previous weeks learning Blender and working on the graphical improvements! While it takes a lot of time to develop, we wouldn't want to delay the updates any longer and the upcoming Autumn Sale is a perfect occasion to show you the new Combat Themes. Behold, the Summer!
We hope you find the new view perspective to be as attractive as we do, as well as the improved shading system, not to mention the whole tileset of new models that we have developed on our own, way more flexible and consistent way to present the game:
And there's more to come and discover for yourself! Now that we have the skill and have decided on the graphical style, the following weeks will be spent on a better Campaign map, as well as consistent Tower Graphics and perhaps, some background story, too! Stay tuned! Sincerely yours, Nebulate.me

[ 2021-11-26 23:46:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Good Friday, fellow Keepers! This week we keep our past promises: as you can remember from the last update, we planned to split important story-driving, learning levels from the ones that will simply propose an interesting challenge to solve for the people willing to try. Here's the new campaign map update:
As you can see, from now on the main campaign line will be reasonably straightforward and have a very reasonable difficulty (corresponding to received feedback from the players), while the optional campaign branches will sometimes be really, really challenging (just make sure to check out those towers and castles standing aside).
Besides 9 extra levels that we have developed for you to try, there were quite a few tutorial and AI bugfixes, related to the tower expansion, target AI prioritisation and Barracks usage. Yes, indeed, the humble Barracks became better in the hands of our still rather dumb AI, which might surprise you in the later levels ;) As the new AI levels introduced aren't yet covering the whole Campaign level range, you should surely expect more to come in the following weeks. Meanwhile, as we work on the new maps, we will also make sure the AI is able to properly handle the complex Tower types like Builder and Repair. So, till then, enjoy the weekend! (and hopefully, the new levels, we are quite sure you'll like them) Nebulate.me team

[ 2021-11-05 23:14:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, fellow Keepers! This weekend, we are extremely happy to announce the first release of the big global Campaign Map that is from now on replacing the ugly level list view that we used to have! Here, have a look yourself!
As you can see, there's a way nicer representation of your progress in the game, with both the levels being marked and also the different stages being differentiated from one another - but that is not the only reason we had the map view realised for you! In fact, the classic linear structure of Campaign levels will eventually be altered significantly by having branches and challenges put aside from the storyline - giving you the opportunity to try and pass them all while not being blocked from following the main events. Besides, we are going to add AI-driven levels to the Single-player campaign, which will both spice things up and allow you dear players to experience the proper multiplayer gameplay, as well as get prepared for it yourself.
In view of such major events, we shall still announce our first Level Theme update, introducing 4 new skins for the levels, one per season of the year. We are quite aware that the good old Chapel outlook might have gotten you bored by this point, so voila! Behold the majestic Autumn theme:
From now on, it's possible to set a preferred level theme in the Settings screen, so you will always have it displayed in your Editor and Multiplayer games. So please help yourself! Happy keeping! Nebulate.me team

[ 2021-10-29 23:02:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Good day, fellow Keepers! We hope you had an amazing time during the past silent weeks, and we are quite happy to present you with the first fruit of our dedicated work: the first fully autonomous and working artificial intelligence, capable of expanding its position, reacting to player's actions and eventually destroying your Keep, provided the opportunity :)
Today we enable a new AI option in the Local Multiplayer that you can use to practice against a computer opponent with the Towers of your choice. Right now there is only one level of automated adversary - Basic, which will later be expanded into multiple levels of difficulty allowing you to fine-tune your gameplay experience to your skill level.
Besides, all the new levels you design in the Editor are currently set up to use Basic AI as the second player with the Towers selected in the Editor mode, so you could also try the AI out in all kinds of situations. We are looking forward to it!
Now, the basic Computer we have for you in this update has a few flaws: - AI does not yet know how to properly use Repair, Builder and Barracks, due to the high intrinsic complexity of those towers - so they are blocked for selection for now. Will be provided in future updates! - AI might occasionally do something rather strange - for example, attack Neutral AI Towers instead of targeting the Player. This indeed is a priority issue and will be fixed in the upcoming patches as well. For now, we recommend sticking our new robotic friend to maps without a third player. The good news is that AI development really helped us understand our game better, by bringing a lot of unexpected, unseen counterplay to attack otherwise considered strong. As you can see on the screenshots above, where the AI is playing with the Black, our new Keep the Keep bot will find an interesting application to the Towers it possesses (especially all kinds of attacking Towers, the humble Bow in particular).
Finally, we have a small Quality of Life change for you: from now on, all the destroyed Towers are animated with an appropriate effect, highlighting their untimely demise with a shake and a smoke cloud. We hope it will help you get a bit more immersed in the world of Keep the Keep. That would be it for this time, folks! Happy keeping! Sincerely yours, Nebulate.me team

[ 2021-10-15 23:47:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, fellow Keepers! This week we have a couple of news for you: 1. We have finally made an official artwork for our game:
You can see the recently added Thunder Tower in action, fighting a Rocket Tower (which isn't implemented yet, but now you know what's coming up!). Besides, there's our new character, The Inventor: this humble engaged fellow starts the road to our game's lore. Sharp people like him are effectively the generals of this world, always able to come up with new ideas and quickly deploy their automated Towers into the battle. Later in the future, the whole story will develop around Inventor's struggle to free the world. More on that later, stay tuned! 2. Several important patches and improvements made:

• New Application Icon added, corresponding to the new Logo Artwork
• Added Tower removal sound
• Smaller graphical fixes for Tutorial tips
• Fixed existing Player naming/colouring issues in Local Multiplayer mode
• From now on the Tower Panel to the left will be hidden whenever the turn is being resolved in Local Multiplayer Mode
• Fixed start-up bugs related to switching between modes, as well as game restarting

While this may not seem like a lot, we are working vigorously, preparing for the board game Festival and polishing existing features to the state it'd be pleasant to play. If by any chance, you'd like to suggest some changes that you feel would benefit the game, you're always welcome to join our Discord server and post your wishes in the #suggestions channel. Besides, would you like to try out the Multiplayer mode with us the developers? Ping us there, we're always happy to play! Have a glorious weekend! Nebulate.me team.

[ 2021-09-24 21:34:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, fellow Keepers! This week we are presenting you an important interface boost and a new game mechanic implemented based on your wonderful feedback!

Building Spot Warnings

First of all, it's been a very common case among the players to plan a new Tower on a cell that would be shoot through by the opponent, which resulted in very frustrating wasted turns, with that aforementioned Tower being immediately destroyed before it could even be built. Indeed, this does not feel fair to make a mistake because of not seeing the threat rather than being unable to handle it. So we have added a UI warning for you whenever a potential building spot is unsafe:
In the picture above, one can see red cells, which are being under attack. Any Towers placed on those will be destroyed immediately. Besides, there are yellow cells, that are safe to build on - for the time being, at least. However, at some point in the future, those cells will become red as well, since the threat is there and will eventually reach them. In other words, proceed with caution!

Tower Removal Mode

Ultimately, it's no news for anyone that many matches eventually reach a point of one player being blocked in by the other player's Towers, completely unable to do anything useful due to all the available space being occupied by his very own Towers. As you can imagine, this is not exactly a fun situation to get into. Thus, we decided to provide a comeback mechanic: Whenever players can not place a new Tower without it immediately destroyed, they are allowed to remove one of their existing Towers to free up the building space.
While it might not sound like a lot, in a match that has been more or less equal for the opponents up until a certain miscalculation, it could become a huge turning point. Also, it's important to always allow for some kind of action, as long as the game feels like it still could be won. So, with these changes, we aspire to provide you with a pleasant Keep the Keep experience. If you'd like to test it out in multiplayer mode, welcome to our Discord Server! Stay tuned! Nebulate.me team

[ 2021-09-15 00:03:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings, fellow Keepers! Today we are proud to present you the big update we have mentioned last week. Let's check out the greater changes first:

Tower Initiative Queue

While all of the feedback we have received was quite positive, there has always been a lot of space for UI improvements. In particular, it is rather hard to remember, in which order Towers are supposed to act, and therefore hard to see the outcome of a given turn right away. In order to address this issue, we are introducing a queue that will display the activation order for all the towers present on the game field. This queue allows both to see which towers are going to act and when, but also highlights the towers whenever you hover the mouse over its elements.

Achievements

Another regular point of player feedback was "Hey, I've completed the main campaign but haven't received my well-deserved Achievement yet :(" Quite understandable. While achievements never have been a big priority for us, developers, being busy with all the new features and bug fixing, it is a very important player motivation tool. We would like to inspire you both to complete our handcrafted campaign missions and actively try out multiplayer battles with different sets of used towers. So, starting from update 1.4.0, we will have 10 new achievements, which we gladly challenge you to check out!

Bugfixes

Finally, we have a set of smaller improvements that will certainly patch well-known issues:

• balance: Soldiers are able to hit through Shields again, made this way to improve Barracks usability
• fix: Ghost Soldiers being left on the game field from time to time
• fix: Soldier instant activation after moving onto a destroyed allied tower
• fix: new Towers built before their de-facto activation, which resulted in a bit of confusing graphics
• patch: added sound for Building new towers
• fix: initial volume of the newly installed game was set to 1 / 100, now it's 100 / 100 instead
• fix: Thunder Tower button was not showing Energy icon even though Thunder tower does use energy to activate

We are sure the game will become significantly smoother and nicer for our players after this update and are looking forward to playing with all of you on our Discord Server! Have a great weekend! Sincerely yours, Nebulate.me team #KeepTheKeep

[ 2021-09-03 22:40:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings fellow Keepers, This week we have been busy improving our game's side overall presence, so we only have a list of small patch updates for you today. The Thunder Tower added last week was a bit buggy, as could be expected, so we have made several adjustments to it: - Thunder Tower Aim Color will match the Color of its owner, making it easier to distinguish between different players' targets - Thunder Tower direction when selecting a cell to place it into will correspond to the possible directions - The directed Towers will only allow directions that are inside of the field (so you won't accidentally place a Cannon looking outside) - Whenever placing a Thunder Tower in a cornered position, the only sensible direction will be automatically selected - Non-relevant Tower types removed from Editor
While this week has been quiet we recommend you to stay frosty, our friends - for the next week we have a good thing half-developed and likely to be released. Have a great weekend! Nebulate.me team

[ 2021-08-27 22:50:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings valourous folks, Time for yet another weekly update for Keep the Keep! This time, we are proud to present you with a new Tower Type: the mighty Thunder Tower!
This Tower has, by far, the longest shooting range in the game: it shoots diagonally up to 6 cells away, which encapsulates the whole game field. We have added Thunder Tower for several balance reasons (in the following order):

• Cannon and Catapult towers were deemed too strong by the players, allowing for a very effective opponent enclosing tactic - they needed a counter
• Shield and Repair towers were barely used in a regular play, due to their very circumstantial usefulness (Repair requires to pick Towers that have more than 1 Health, Shield requires energy to work and a Builder to be set in a way to overcome blocked lines)
• Every shooting tower in the game is oppressively blocking the cells it shoots upon, leaving very limited options for the player
• Diagonal area control can be very strong in Keep the Keep, as the infrastructure like Reactors and Repairs tend to be placed in diagonal patterns

Henceforth, we decided to create a Tower to attack the opponent in a very special way: Thunder tower has to aim at its target for one turn before actually starting to shoot it. One could say, that severely reduces its efficiency, and be quite correct about it - it's hard for the Thunder to single-handedly deal with the opponent's base. However, its everlasting presence can be extremely annoying and destructive, provided you support it well. As usual with incoming Towers, a new encyclopedia entry and a set of 4 extra campaign levels dedicated to the Thunder tower usage are included. Overall, we hope you'll have a lot of fun with the new mechanic and get to use it in multiplayer as well.
Besides this vital change, we have addressed several important bugs over the course of last week:

• Tower Health being updated to 0 before it's actually destroyed
• Multiplayer server colour changing issues
• Obscure multiplayer bug whenever surrendering with a new Tower being built resulted in a crash
• Weird tower connectivity issues after tower destruction

Also, balance patch: the Shield Tower will protect you from Sapper, provided it's supplied with energy and is facing the adversary. If you'd like to give us feedback and find yourself a worthy opponent, you're always welcome to join our Discord Server. Also, free key giveaways! Wishing you many great games, And see you next week, Nebulate.me

[ 2021-08-20 21:35:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Good time of the day, fellow Keepers! We hope you had a great past week, as we have just released a new version of Keep the Keep! In this update, we introduce a significant improvement to the game's understandability, via the in-game Encyclopedia of Towers:
From now on, every Tower has its own description and a bit of game lore related to its history, often subtly referencing real people and quotes. These little entries are accessible both on the main menu and within the combat screens, be it a single-player campaign or a heated online match.
We hope to bring a lot of clarity and make the setting of Keep the Keep more voluminous and detailed. The next important feature that we'd like to present to you is the UI enhancement showing Towers effective range whenever hovering over it:
As you can see, yellow bullseye designates potentially endangered cells while red bullseye points to the current target of a given tower, the one that will get attacked during the following turn.
Supportive towers also deserve a clear view of their capabilities, so we also highlight the cells those would potentially affect (as in, cells to be energised by Reactor, healed by Repair, etc. Those affected cells shall be highlighted with green colours, as you might expect:
Besides, we have received player feedback about too few multiplayer levels present for duel play. So we remedied the issue in this update with the new set of maps:

• Stand-Off in diagonal disposition
• Deadlock in 2 versions (horizontal and diagonal
• Village
• Fortress

The last two especially have quite a character and provide a different experience than usual. Check them out!
Last yet not least, there were several small adjustments made this week:

• buff: Shield Tower repels Soldier Tower now, so he now has to go around it instead of attacking
• buff: ShieldTower can now face in all 8 directions instead of the original 4
• Level Editor will show a warning message if you try to launch a level without Towers provided
• Quality Level can be set properly in Settings now
• Added 45s option to multiplayer time limit dropdown

Would you like to know more? To find and play other interested people? Share your custom-made maps, perhaps? Alright, then! Join our Discord Server! See you next week, Nebulate.me team

[ 2021-08-13 21:13:51 CET ] [ Original post ]