From putting stories together to being the reason they’re made. This is tower defence with a twist. Made by two people going by the studio name of Thunderrock Innovations, Keep Keepers brings in some co-op chaos with how the enemies are fended off. Thanks to Yogscast Games as part of the Tiny Teams Festival, I’ve been given a code to provide my thoughts on the game.

Though it might be a co-op game, it is perfectly playable solo. Things might be a bit more difficult to keep track of, especially when the days keep climbing. But that’s the core of the design. Rather than many levels with a consistent progression across them, Keep Keepers takes a more roguelike approach. All progression is tied to the run, with a small selection of items to pick from each day and an increasing number of enemies to face.

There’s no auto-defences here, with the cannons and other weapons the shop provides needing to be manually fired off. Cannons in particular need ammunition, which is where the base building elements enter the picture. Whatever team is defending the keep has to build the ammunition using the workstations provided. At first, those workstations are basic, providing less speed than the regular ones found in the shop.

Building ammunition is a multi-stage process. The furnace smelts iron into cannonballs, which need to be cooled in baths of water before being put into cannons to fully load them. Those cannons come in two forms. A single and a double. The single is quick to fire, with the double being slighter slower. But that double can fire off two consecutive cannonballs. The drawback to that is it holds only two loads rather than three.

The start of a Keep Keepers run sees the keep have the basics. Everything needed to build cannonballs and bombs, plus a single cannon. Outside the keep is the forest, which is used to get wood for the furnace and mine diamonds (what the bombs are for), the shop, and the two paths the enemies will walk. Split into three lanes, each path has barricades blocking the way to the keep. If any one barricade is destroyed, the run is done.

Each day has the preparation period, allowing the buying of things from the shop and moving workstations around the keep. Whenever ready, transition to night and let the enemies come. Sentient rocks and tree stumps are the enemies that I have faced, each having a certain amount of health depending on their size. They also have an aura around them, and sometimes even a shield. These relate to elements.

Water, fire, grass, and electric are the four elements of Keep Keepers, with only cannons able to take advantage of the upgrades. Each element provides a power boost and special effect to the cannonballs that cannon now uses, but extra steps need to be taken to craft them. As elements are further upgraded, those steps further increase. But so does the power. And the number of loads it holds. Use the right element against an enemy, and a massive amount of damage will be dealt in a critical hit.

The loop of facing enemies across many nights, adding new things to the keep per day from the coins collected from defeated enemies and selling diamonds, is a great one. Alone, this is perfectly fine. If the randomness of the roguelike elements align with the current strategy being employed, runs can go for many days. But all it takes is for one mistake, one slight lapse of awareness of the field of battle, for things to all go wrong.

With friends alongside, that co-op chaos fuels the fun to a greater degree. It’s how it always is with such games. And even though I’ve been playing solo, I can see that all the elements are here for those playing in co-op to have a whole lot of fun. Considering PlateUp! is an inspiration for Thunderrock, having recreated the core of that game before going all-out with the battle, that same DNA is very visible with Keep Keepers. But despite that core, this still has a different feel to it.

To ease players into this, Keep Keepers doesn’t throw them into the endless mode straight away. There’s a few runs with limitations on the days to learn everything. The enemies, the elements, workshopping, and the totems that appear every few days providing bonuses. With those complete, the first of two endless modes is available, which brings the challenge. Complete 16 days, and the second even harder endless challenge is ready to be tackled.

Keep Keepers mixing genres makes for a different approach to the typical strategies of tower defence games, and that’s what I love it for. There’s plenty of fun to be had here, with simple controls to aid in navigating the chaos. Solo, there’s lots of fun to be had, but with friends it is sure to be a delightful right. It is for that reason I can easily recommend Keep Keepers when it releases 28/October.

The Tiny Teams Festival is a celebration of games developed by small teams. This year running from 8-15/August, the festival once again is highlighting games both new and old, and even those yet to release. Check it out on Steam, and find yourself a great game from a tiny team.

Images Taken From:
Keep Keepers | Steam