What’s a dungeon building game without dwarves? Of course the little neckbeards have always been present in KeeperRL as an enemy, but a playable dwarf faction has long been due. As a rule I try to add unique gameplay with each new faction so that it’s not a mere reskin of existing content. The dwarves are no different.

The main dwarf characteristic is that you start with exactly twelve of them, and it’s impossible to gain any new minions for the entire game. This is accompanied by a promotion system that lets you specialize your initially blank dwarves with various combinations of skills. The promotions are awarded together with new available technologies, as your faction gains levels.

Together, these two mechanics will force you to take long term strategic choices, as well as to choose your battles very wisely. This is unlike most other factions in KeeperRL, where minions are quite expendable. From initial playtesting it seems like this will be a very ‘roguelike’ experience, which I’m super happy about.

New content is always fun, but I also remember about adding important quality-of-life features to KeeperRL. One that has been requested for a long time is item smelting. It allows you to get rid of unneeded equipment, while recovering some resources. Another such feature is the ‘unclaim tile’ order, which lets you remove parts of territory that you aren’t interested in.

To add some variety in the landscape, I’ve added a fog effect which simply obscures vision. Since KeeperRL has already had a similar poison gas effect, I decided to merge these two into a general gas system. This is of interest mostly to modders, as it’s possible to add custom gases with various effects, and they can be placed on the map permanently during level generation or temporarily, for example as the result of a spell or crashed potion.

These are only some of the new features that I’ve been working on in the last weeks. If you’re interested in finding some fun surprises, you can try out the Alpha 33 testing build on Steam, which I’m going to release right after publishing this blog post. Stay tuned for another announcement with the instructions on how to opt into the new build.