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The Keep, New Dungeon Crawler - out on 3DS and Steam

Magellan

Augur
Joined
Sep 3, 2013
Messages
415
Location
Michigan
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Do share your impressions. My 3ds is gathering dust since good few months now and I'm seriously contemplating getting rid of it.

Well, I only had a chance to mess with the game for an hour or so. My impressions so far are generally positive.

I would say that it's definitely somewhat of a Grimrock-clone. Of course, it doesn't graphically look as good as Grimrock, but it isn't a bad looking game (solid for a handheld title IMO). One nice thing is that in only an hour of playing, I have already seen three different dungeon tile sets, so that's encouraging (seeing the same repetitive dungeon walls for a whole game can be very annoying IMO). There are also some nice graphical elements, such as stained glass windows, which cast beams of colored light. By the way, movement is like Grimrock- 90 degree tile-based, but with smooth transitions, not hopping.

There are three different movement/control schemes. The default is that the analog circle "stick" moves/turns, and to step sideways you hold one of the shoulder buttons and then move the circle stick. You use the 4-way pad to select the four bottom screens (map, melee, magic, and inventory). One of the control schemes lets you use the face-buttons for movement. Overall the game controls well.

The combat is done with stylus swipes on the touchscreen, via horizontal or diagonal swipes. You can swing high or low depending on which part of the screen you swipe. For fighting something like a rat, you have to swing low to hit, of course. Also, armor protects distinct parts of your body (so leather boots actually only help against low attacks for example).

Spell casting is done by placing runes in a certain order, and then swiping across them, which is cool. My first impression is that magic does seem overpowered though. A fire spell does 2 to 3 times the damage of a dagger you have at the same point in the game, plus obviously it's ranged.

One gripe is that your health and mana seem to regenerate much too quickly, which is a bit popamole. It's tough to judge the difficulty since I've played so little, but so far it's a bit easy, but not ridiculously so (I'm playing on the middle of 3 difficulty settings).

Character creation is really nonexistent. You are a premade, nameless character (there is some occasional voice-acting, which is of pretty good quality). You have three stats which you can manually increase at level ups. Your two skills (melee combat and magic) increase automatically depending on which you use more.

Manipulating things in the environment is similar to Grimrock, with the obvious exception that you are moving the stylus instead of a mouse (which actually feels really cool in this game). I'm not a big fan of 3D in general, but in a first person dungeon crawler it's actually sorta cool.

Story wise it's pretty much a typical dungeon crawler. You're heading into a tower to defeat the evil wizard. You get captured and start off imprisoned.

So overall I'm enjoying the game so far. I think most dungeon crawl fans would as well. I would just have reasonable expectations though (this isn't going to be as pretty as Grimrock, or as deep as Wizardry, or as awesome as Might and Magic, etc.). At $13 US I think it's definitely worth a buy.
 
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Magellan

Augur
Joined
Sep 3, 2013
Messages
415
Location
Michigan
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Bros, I put another hour or two into this game last night, it's still definitely making a good impression - I'm having a lot of fun with it. Also, it seems to be getting a bit more challenging, so that's a good thing. :)
 

sbb

Learned
Joined
Jun 21, 2014
Messages
541
Bros, I put another hour or two into this game last night, it's still definitely making a good impression - I'm having a lot of fun with it. Also, it seems to be getting a bit more challenging, so that's a good thing. :)
"One gripe is that your health and mana seem to regenerate much too quickly, which is a bit popamole."

How's that feeling, now that you say it's getting a bit more challenging?
 
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Magellan

Augur
Joined
Sep 3, 2013
Messages
415
Location
Michigan
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
"One gripe is that your health and mana seem to regenerate much too quickly, which is a bit popamole."

How's that feeling?

Sbb, I still find the regeneration rates to be a bit lame. You don't have a lot of HP though (a few hits have your HP very low), so I guess it's not THAT bad. Also, even though the mana regenerates fast, some of your spells (or more accurately, certain runes) have different length cooldowns, so you can't constantly spam spells. Additionally, you have a stamina meter, which means sometimes you can't melee attack. So it's actually kinda tense (in a good way) when you're taking damage but are having to wait a few long seconds to melee or cast a spell.
 

Jack Dandy

Arcane
Joined
Feb 10, 2013
Messages
3,039
Location
Israel
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Hey neat, if the combat involves mouse gestures and the like it should actually be pretty fun.
Better then Grimrock-style mambo.
 

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,765
I did not know the Cinemax, who is responsible for Inquisitor action RPG, did that game.
Looks bland and have uninspiring name but will watch.
 
Joined
Jan 28, 2015
Messages
891
Location
Canuckistan
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
This feels like it would work well as an eshop 3DS game, but will probably be pretty lame on PC. Not that I've played it, but games on a handheld tend to not transfer very well.
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,523
I really wouldn't mind having more "lame handheld rpgs" on PC. Not saying that this particular one is very good, but there definitely are some that would be pretty huge incline compared to dross like most pc-exclusive rpgs.
 
Joined
Jan 28, 2015
Messages
891
Location
Canuckistan
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
I really wouldn't mind having more "lame handheld rpgs" on PC. Not saying that this particular one is very good, but there definitely are some that would be pretty huge incline compared to dross like most pc-exclusive rpgs.
I suppose that is true, I'd just rather see a blobber like this made for the PC exclusively.
 

Zarniwoop

TESTOSTERONIC As Fuck™
Patron
Joined
Nov 29, 2010
Messages
18,650
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Dungeon Keeper is a Real Time Strategy, this is a first person dungeon crawler. How are they even remotely similar?
 

Whisper

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Feb 29, 2012
Messages
4,357
Good game. Much more fun than previous similar releases of last year (heroes of monkey tavern, etc).
 

DemonKing

Arcane
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
5,958
There's a demo available for this now on Steam. It's single character only (and you can't change his portrait that looks awful, although the voice acting is only mildly annoying).

My impressions are that you'll probably enjoy it if you enjoy Dungeon Master style games. The combat/magic system is real time but not terrible. You can do the dodge and attack moves quite easily (so far). The demo is only 2 levels but should give you a decent idea as to the potential of the whole game. There are secrets too (not that I found any).
 
Self-Ejected

Thac0

Time Mage
Patron
Joined
Apr 30, 2020
Messages
3,292
Location
Arborea
I'm very into cock and ball torture
I bought this, given that it is less than 4 euros, I am not too hot on it.
Grimrock light fits in all descriptions, because it also carries over light versions of Grimrocks negative elements. As an example there are secret buttons hidden in the walls, which are sometimes required for progress. Also not hunting all secrets can leave you at a severe disadvantage, I failed to find a scroll for a light spell in the first level, now I need to manage my torches for the entire game or have an annoyingly dark screen. You can't go back to previous chapters to search for the secrets you missed either.
One can definitly have fun with this, the rune magic is a simplified, but way less janky version of Arx Fatalis magic, and the game has some decent map layouts and fun spells, although combat is pretty mediocre. Don't expect much rpg however, the character building is so mediocre the game would work completely fine without levelups by just having you find runes, spellscrolls and weapons/armor.
I get annoyed at running around a cleared level for half an hour, always nervously glancing at my torch, searching for a hidden button that is required to progress, so I won't be continuing this game further.
Still worth mentioning is that apart from the torches, which you can bypass by finding the early game light scroll, the game has no attrition elements. Health, stamina and mana regenrate fast outside of combat, and there is no hunger.
If you are really running dry on blobbers and care less about character building and combat then this can be a decent fix, it is not very long tho. Alternatively the runepad magic system is pretty clever and deserves to be in a more complex game.
Overall this one is not really made for me.
 

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