A taste of things to come, Keepers.
Arkane Keeper: Exile will become a fully-fledged campaign designed and programmed for KeeperFX featuring:
- Up to 30 unique and exciting levels. Some featuring never-before-seen concepts
- A rich blend of challenge, strategy, exploration, expansion and conquering
- Incorporation of community & bespoke custom creature/hero units, scripting & more
- A deep-overarching in-game story with full voice narration bookends
- A custom landview that decays and festers as you progress the campaign
For now please enjoy this early taster featuring Level 2 of the Campaign: Angk Chasm.
Exiled after the events that culminated in Skybird Trill, untold time has passed and you've been mysteriously awoken from an unwanted temporal slumber. Awakened as what all denizens of the subterranean realms now call you - The Arkane Keeper.
Due to catastrophic events at the beginning of the story masterminded by even more egregious and sickly-sweet do-gooders, you are thrust into the unchartered terrain of Angk Chasm. Tensions will build and heads will roll, but can you conquer this forgotten domain and rescue the stronghold of Sarakia before it swiftly drowns in a tidal wave of its own blood?
Map Overview Image: SPOILER
*Map and script updated 25/11/2023 to fix some exploits and narrative.
Special Thanks to the KeeperKlan Discord community for playtesting, feedback and advisement
This map started nicely with an interesting plot from which I haven't understood a single word to be honest xD. But it shows you definitely put a lot of effort into the story. I liked that. The lack of space and resources as well as the limited creature pool made this map very interesting to me early on. I also liked that some of that lower tier creatures got their place in the spotlight too.
However, I found that the excitement didn't last after having reached the first hero's fortress. From this point on, it is basically just digging through endless tunnels, breaking doors, fighting a group of heros and continue like this for another 90 minutes. At some point, I just kept watching my imps claiming tiles of a sheer endless maze, hoping that there won't be another lightning or boulder trap (little side note: at least you played fair in this regard - thanks mate).
I was rather relived when I found the reveal map box, saving me quite a lot of time digging into nowhere. Regarding the difficulty I found the map to be challenging but managable, so even players who are fairly new to DK and have just played the original campaign should be able to enjoy your map.
For players having difficulties with the fights, please mind the following spoiler: When finding the "steal hero" magic box, I saved before activating it, claiming a lvl 7 Samurai who basically carried me through the map alone.
As you intend to publish an entire campaign, I would suggest shortening the maze-part a bit as I had the feeling that it just unnecessarily prolonged the play time for the map. It was almost like some of the older custom made maps from the beginning of the year 2000 - just without the overwhelming amount of traps they used back then. So I didn't find it to be representative for the nerver-seen-before way of playing and the excitement you stated in your campaign description.
All in all I prefer a shorter and very engaging map that leaves me wanting to play your other maps in contrast to a lenghty one making me want to get over it as quick as I can. Nevertheless, I am curious for your other maps and for the campaign.
Great map! A fun start that really rewards exploration. A nice page, pretty chill while also giving fewer creatures which made a nice introduction level. I really enjoyed the information text, it was really funny, which is quite rare to see! Highly recommended!
Detailed thoughts:
It was really good 🙂 you make really good use of the space, i found pretty much every secret because the map design kind of just makes you want to search everywhere anyway. The humour was great, genuinely that's a huge plus. I found the Reveal Map special near the end which was good because I was getting close to figuring out where the final base was. I found the bit with the Samurai at a similar time and that had some good specials and spells which would have been more helpful if I found them earlier but yeah, it was all great
It was nice to have a "low-scale" map like that, especially as a first level. I liked having skeletons among the basic creatures as they felt like a good fit for that sort of power level, and because demonspawn and skeletons are kind of frail, it made me feel much more tactical in terms of chipping away at heroes with one group, then scooping them up and dropping the other before they get killed. And the other insects were useful to pick off weaker heroes or just to stall them for a while while my better ones rested.
I also really like the map design too in that sense - with few rooms and cramped starting space, it makes you build differently but also tells you subconsciously to keep exploring. The gold was well-balanced too - I only started running out right at the end, and again, gold felt like it was used to push the player to keep moving forward so they don't run out. Hero levels were good, never super overwhelming or like I screwed up and had to restart - thanks to them being weaker heroes it meant at worst I could throw insects at them while my stronger ones recovered, and by the time I got nearer the end my skeletons were pretty powerful. I never felt like I needed to stop and train my creatures before progressing, just letting them train was enough. I also really appreciate your use of doors to signify the challenge of what's behind them - something I wish more people did. Mostly wooden and braced, but when I got to iron, I had creatures that could take them down easily enough, and magic doors near the end were dealt with by the spiders I had trained, so really great!
The traps were well-balanced and not infuriating. I liked the boulder you had, the shape of the rooms telegraphed it nicely, and the funny message afterward made me feel better after losing a unit! The only other ones I remember were boulders in the samurai area, which is totally sensible as a heavily fortified secret treasure bit. Really good honestly 🙂