KeeperRL Reviews

Get it on discount, I can't seem to win it but I had some fun.

genuinely love this game cannot recommend it enough

A wonderful experience where you can create your ideal base I love skeletons, undead, and vampires, so I play as a necromancer I have skeleton guards stationed on the bridge leading to my castle. I also have guards stationed on the stairs and passageways inside the castle In my private room and treasure room, I have Royal Guard Skeletons armed with adamantite equipment Those weapons were crafted by zombie blacksmiths, and the completed weapons are stored on racks in the barracks. The vampires assist me in producing skeletons and also serve as generals In the dungeon, there are humans and elves. As a very humanitarian necromancer, I provide them with plush beds. Their meals are luxurious, consisting of turkey and fruits There is an execution platform in the dungeon for prisoners who voluntarily wish to join my ranks as undead This is the current state of my castle The previous castle had a bridge spanning lava, guarded by knights It was inspired by The Iron Keep from Dark Souls 2 However, it was destroyed It was destroyed by humans from the Holy Kingdom who deemed it evil They knew that undead and necromancers like myself die when exposed to sunlight, so they launched a surprise attack during the day Therefore, the undead guarding the current castle have a special buff applied during creation to make them resistant to sunlight By the way, this game uses an autosave permadeath system, so dying erases your data If you've read this far and are interested, I highly recommend it Of course, you can also play as other races like humans ------------------------------------ Finally, to the developers: I'm Japanese, so I'd be happy if you added Japanese language support in the future I can learn the basics by playing through the tutorial, but even after translating it, there are still some facilities whose uses I don't quite understand It takes me a long time to understand the explanations for buff potions and the pop-up messages that appear at the top of the screen, which slows down the game's pace and makes me miss important messages English speaking users, please try playing in Polish. You'll probably experience the same thing as me So I'd be happy if Japanese was available Plus, ISEKAI is popular in Japan right now because people say the real world is crap, so I think there's a demand for this kind of game I also want to go to an ISEKAI like Baldur's Gate 3 after I die So I'm practicing building my own base in this game HAHAHA ------------------------------------------- Addendum THIS GAME SUPER FUN My castle was destroyed again, so I started playing with new data. There was a human knight base nearby, so I attacked it before they could send a crusade against me for being evil or whatever After defeating them, I looked at the base and saw a bunch of coffins and graves, and I was like, “What's this?” It turned out to be my base that had been destroyed before! Those knights must have stayed there after destroying my base I was happy to get my revenge By the way, the unit I used was a skeleton archer unit that I had enhanced to flying buff It's my country's special forces, and I call it Hogwarts There are also many other detailed elements in this game To give a few examples: I haven't encountered it yet, but if you cut down too many trees in the forest, the forest spirits will get angry and come to kill those who cut them down Undead creatures can cross rivers because they don't breathe, but humans and goblins can't cross rivers without a bridge You can also make helmets using the testicles of a certain creature. There are lots of funny and detailed elements like that It's a lot of fun However, there are some parts that are a little confusing For example, in the tutorial, you're told that if you prepare beds and food, the goblins will want to come under your control But when you play as the undead, units are produced from corpses. How do you collect corpses? How do you use this facility for the undead? You either have to play and learn or check the wiki By the way, my recommended method for collecting corpses in the early game is to use the guard area function to place skeleton archers in several locations on the map This way, they'll defeat wild animals that pass by, and you can collect them at night with zombies Don't forget to build a tomb to store the bodies in, it's a real undead munitions depot By the way, if you want to collect them during the day, you need to apply a sunlight resistance buff to the zombies with potions I learned those things while playing, but it's probably better to play the tutorial first and then check the wiki for information on the faction you want to play As for the Holy Church, which I call “balls,” they apparently can summon angel units by building an altar and praying, but I haven't tried it, so I don't know the details By the way, these guys are barbaric forces who believe in nonsense like virgins getting pregnant, so they immediately attack us, calling us evil We, the noble, cultured, intelligent, and moral undead, must prepare for their barbarian attacks Well, since the various playstyles are completely different, new players should definitely play the tutorial and then check the wiki afterward As you get the hang of the controls and systems, the game becomes more and more very very very fun over time

One of the weakest retros I've played. If you can get it for $5 that's probably fair.

I'm very bad at this game, but it is fun. If you like micromanaging things and restarting if you mess up badly, this is for you.

Building myself up, I get to the point where I catch the eye of a band of demons. They invade my area constantly. And walk into my base, one shot my entire army effortlessly, and kill my leader. Alright, I suck. So I attempt to try a bit harder next time. Dig down, find the best armor ore, kit all my guys out in a full set of the stuff. Trouncing the entire world map, winning easily. Suddenly I get the aggro of a human. He attacks my base. He has a full cohort of 80 attack and defense units, and there's at least 15 guys in his squad. My guys, equipped with the best gear I can mine and make, are 50 attack and defense. He proceeds to one shot my entire army, walk up to my leader, and one shot him. I could have made the legendary infernite weapons...if any of the guys in my employ, who max out at 20 smithing, somehow magically got 80 smithing. The only way I made the gear I was on was by capturing some dwarves with 50 smithing. But there's no infernite armor, so I would have gotten one shot anyway, I suppose. What horrid balance and design. I don't feel like digging down 20 z levels again, painstakingly clicking one tile to dig, then placing a stairway every level, to try and figure out how in the world I was meant to match 80 attack and defense with the best gear I had available giving a pittance of that. Something's gone horrendously wrong with this game's balance, and it's insanely unintuitive to try and figure out what in god's name it was.

- Very interesting ideas or mechanics for already the 2 factions i explored (really great!) - cool universe and funny idea of being the evil - addicting music - The pixel art and designs are really good But also - very cluttered on the one side - at the same time not enough to do really. Kinda 3 tasks in a loop (the factions i played at least). - Bugs: In only 3-4 saves i ran into several, either really frustrating or even game breaking. Some seem to persist many years already. - also many many missing QOL mechanics are frustrating as well. Like grouping, tasks for minion(groups), armour for minion(groups), overview in fighting, ordering minion to behave a certain way while fighting and many more It's rather time consuming (could be something positive for some!) and either to tedious/slow to progress or not rewarding enough to really love it (no real "wow!" moments); or maybe both a little. For me the bugs and missing qol tools kept me from at least rating it as okay for now. But theres still so much potential

Too much micro management. good idea, but not a lot of automation/ai for your minions, Minions should be able to be sent out on missions ect. Scout/assault/Plunder,,,ect

I was hoping to give it a night and fresh experience before posting my review but the game is refusing to load from Steam so I guess I'm doing this now. I'm a fan of both Dungeon Keeper and Dwarf Fortress and this game isn't good. Part of that is that it seems to take from 'dungeon permeability' of Dungeon Keeper too much, but it's also combining with Roguelike single-character permadeath in a game where you're spending a ton of time on layout and waiting ages to mine resources between adventuring into the world (or sending minions to do it). I tried to approach making a defensible base and thought a lava pit might help but enemies placed bridges, and they all seem to cut thru the nearest reinforced walls like butter. There's very little sense of being under siege and these useless defenses all take from limited resources that take a lot of effort to mine out. I've yet to try the trap systems but hopefully those are at least a little more useful, even if I'm not sure how one will plan for the invasions that will immediately go to "destroy wall" without DK's preset hero gate points. Its system is also far less forgiving than Dwarf Fortress where losing your main character (who seems to be some hybrid dungeon heart and adventurer) just means you waste time. No reclaiming the fortress, no succession of the leadership position, the design wants you to start a fresh run. Apparently if you win the game you get to retire the dungeon but that doesn't really help make the losing interesting. It's got a fair variety of tiles for a simple game but more and more I was wishing I'd have actual stones and variety like in DF. Its user-interface also lacks a full range of keybindings and is more obnoxious than pre-Stream DF in a lot of ways. I did want to root for this game because it offers a far more seamless transition between 'adventure mode' and 'fortress mode', and has a variety of different dungeon identities to play with, but it has too many problems right now.

Looking at the screenshots advertising the game, there are these helpful green underlines that show you the hotkeys for all the different options. Those aren't in the game anymore. I hate clicking through menus, and I'm not going open up the settings or tab out to the wiki every time I want to learn a new hotkey. Might seem petty but this a deal-breaker for me