Keep the Keep by firellon
by Nebulate.me
Genre: Strategic puzzle that looks just like tower defence, but really, really isn't.
...
Duh, okay. Maybe, a little bit.
Controls: Mouse and your Mind
The Plot
Your Keep is under attack, my Lord! The treacherous Red Keeper decided that there isn't enough land for us both, and brought over the cannons to prove his point. We need to be quick and retaliate, my lord! Build up your defences, destroy enemy's weak spots and above all else, keep your Keep alive!
Game Concepts
- This game is a turn-based strategy-puzzle-tower-defence
- Each turn you, the Blue Keeper, may build one tower from our limited supply
- You can only build the towers next to our keep or the towers connected to our Keep via a chain of other friendly towers since peasants are too cowardly to leave the comfy tenets of the towers and risk their life under enemy's fire
- Every tower besides House, Wall and Reactor needs the energy to operate - so make sure that your towers are built next to a friendly Reactor
- In order to complete the building process and see your towers activate, you need to finish the turn - everything takes time to happen, good sir!
The Towers
Mandatory mini-wiki that you don't have to *keep in your mind*
- Keep - this is your castle, Sir! We need to protect it at all costs! While it can withstand some damage, I bet you wouldn't like your wall paintings to fall, my lord!
- House - this is where the peasants live! We have a nigh limitless supply of those and can use Houses to connect more important Towers, as well as block our opponent's shooting, so feel free to use them loosely!
- Reactor - that technological wonder powers our towers up and allows them to function, vital for our defences. Take note: it will only power your towers up in cardinal directions!
- Cannon - the classical offensive tower, shoots in a straight line vertically or horizontally and damages the closest tower on the line. Our long-range artillery!
- Wall is our first and the last line of defence can withstand quite some damage until being destroyed.
- Bow is more flexible than the mighty Cannon as it can be placed facing in 8 different directions, but unfortunately, is quite limited in range.
- Shield - this ultra-technological protection device is impervious to any damage from its frontal directions when powered up, but vulnerable from flanks and rear. Very solid for prolonged battles!
- Barracks - recruits loyal soldiers that will march forward and eliminate the enemy. Won't create a new knight as long as the old one breathes!
Now, you are ready, my Lord! May your towers stay till the end of time!
Good luck!
Ratings
| Overall | 415th | 3.856⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 295th | 3.833⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 619th | 3.591⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1326th | 3.614⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1479th | 2.617⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1360th | 3.318⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 123🗳️ | 107🗨️ |
LD-Jam does not approve of leaving games for others to review, but you can find my game on my profile.
Fun strategy game.
Great work.
The sound is a bit lacking and maybe I would have loved to see more animations and maybe some fun and unexpected buildings.
The gameplay is a bit confuse, after the tutorial I could`t find out how to attack the enemy =/
but overall, good job!
Just press the "Finish Turn" button and your cannon will shoot!
Check it out, please, you'd be missing a lot on the game if you couldn't progress past the first level :)
This is my 20th review and my new favorite. Really nice job.
Few points I would like to list: The arrows, showing what a unit is doing is a great visual indicator, and the skip button is really nice for people like me who is not really doing well to solve the problems.
Congratulations!
Nice puzzle, kept me thinking a good time ^^
Hard game, but still fair. Could be a godd idea to add a new button "auto play" 'cause press end turn until the end is a little bit annying
It's cool how new the game elements were. Few of the puzzles were fairly challenging, I had to try for a good 5-10 minutes sometimes. Nicely done!
Great job!
I really enjoy it. Super nice puzzle :)
Thank you!
While we did assemble premade stuff together as you can see it, would be still unfair to take credit for someone else's work :)
One of the solutions for Level 9 would look like this:
Pro tip: as you're waiting for your tower to destroy the enemy, you can build houses in front of the enemy's cannons and protect your own stuff from being destroyed
We have gotten some bug reports about level 12, but we need some consistent way of reproducing those, otherwise it's like searching for the drop of water in the sea :)
Still, thanks a lot!
This game has a lot of potential to be made into a full game that you could sell.
You don't need to build the cannon on the line with enemy cannon, actually, since the cannons can be rotated
You can instead outflank it from the top or the bottom :slight_smile:
Would there be something that would give it away for you?
We'd rather get a lot of criticism than keep our eyes closed on our shortcomings, and people like you help a lot!
Hope you had fun with Keep the Keep!
Sometimes I could not predict the behaviour of the soldiers, whether they would rotate or keep attacking the target in the direction that they're facing, but other than that, it is a really nice mix of a tower defence game and a puzzler! I especially like how you set up a tutorial and that it feels just so polished with the soundFX and the UI.
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/615937007?t=8h29m36s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
This was an interesting puzzle game, thanks for sharing.
- It's super nice that the game explains itself both with the short tutorial and with good level progression.
- I think the bow range indicator looks more like an arrow than a stopped line. Took me a few tries to understand how that worked. It also should probably stop in the middle of the last tile it affects, not the end of it, to make crystal clear that it's not *hitting* the next tile before stopping.
- Level 10 and 11 were extremely easy. E.g. the latter, 1 reactor, 2 bows and 1 cannon next to my castle, done.
- I wish there was some kind of thing to tell me how well I did. Did I manage minimal turns? Minimal buildings? Maybe even minimal damage to my buildings?
- Adding undo and level skip buttons was \*chef kiss\*. Excellent decisions! The undo doesn't just allow you to correct mistakes, but also leaves room to experiment and experience the game through observation instead of reading.
- I think I should be able to cancel by right-clicking. And maybe I could select with shortcuts, e.g. the number keys?
- I think if you are in the process of positioning something, "undo" should cancel that, instead of actually undoing the last thing you built.
- In the web version, there is a bug that produces additional knights out of barracks when undoing. To reproduce: Build a barrack. Let it produce a knight. Continue until the space in front of the barrack is empty while the knight is still alive. Press Undo. Finish turn. Marvel at the second knight produced by the barrack.
That's it. That's all I have to complain about. The game is fun, looks amazing, is extremely polished and absolutely fantastic in general, and I really enjoyed puzzling my way through. Excellent work!
Here is my end state: https://static.jam.vg/raw/830/1/z/33ff2.png
Thanks a lot, this is a tremendous help for us to try and move it forward!
We will balance level 11 to be a bit more complicated, level 10 is considered to be more like a training level, since you're getting to learn a new mechanic there.
And the bug of undoing Barracks/Soldiers - good catch, though it will be a bit tricky to fix that :wink:
As of the Undo button - that's a feedback from our players :v:, thanks a lot to everyone who played Keep the Keep.
While we were a bit hesitant initially, since it's making game easier - but in the end it reduced the need for unnecessary repetition, and that's a good thing for the game not to be tedious. So, good change after all.
Cheers!