Legend of Keepers puts players in charge of the dungeon, turning every run into a brutal defense against adventurers.
Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Master is now available for free until players pick it up before April 23 at 10:00 a.m. on Steam. Initially launched on April 29, 2021, by Goblinz Studio and Goblinz Publishing, Legend of Keepers falls into that area of design where games use elements from both Strategy and RPG, along with Roguelites.
You play for the Dungeons Company. There’s nothing overly complicated here, but there’s enough of an interesting twist.
Instead of leading a party of heroes through a dungeon, players become the one running the dungeon instead. Players can build a team of monsters, buy traps, manage stockpiles of traps, handle issues such as employee strikes and other things, and they’re climbing the corporate ladder as part of the process. The ability to create teams and make purchases adds an element of Management to gameplay before you get to battle.
The loop for combat in Legend of Keepers involves planning ahead. Before every battle, players go through a series of steps checking the incoming adventurers’ stats and resistance, after that they set up traps and place monster units in rooms to slowly whittle down the incoming heroes.
Once the heroes reach the final group of monsters (the “monster squad”), the entire experience switches to turn-based battles and becomes a reverse dungeon crawler essentially. In many ways, that is how Legend of Keepers defines itself. The focus isn’t on finding danger and overcoming challenges. Instead, it’s building a kill box that will allow you to win a round.
Steam points out that the difficulty level will always be changing, although some bonus rewards earned during previous rounds will continue to accumulate, creating additional layers of replayability through roguelite type progression.
In addition to the core product, there seems to be an adequate amount of added value for those who end up enjoying the core game.
The base title has four downloadable content add-ons: Return of the Goddess, Feed the Troll, Soul Smugglers, and the Supporter Pack. Additionally, the Collection Bundle combines the base game with these five items.
Overall, Legend of Keepers is relatively easy to recommend as a free download option for anyone who enjoys turn-based combat but wants something a little different than the typical hero-driven crawl format.
