The work on KeeperRL Alpha23 is slowly coming to an end. The only things left to do are bug fixes and final changes to the endless mode. I was aiming to release this update at the end of August, because I’m taking 3 weeks off in mid-September. Unfortunately this plan has failed, so I’m going to finish as much as possible before leaving, and release when I’m back, in early October.

Players who play KeeperRL on Steam have had the opportunity to test Alpha23 for a while already, and today I’ve uploaded another testing build with the newest changes. It’s the first build that has the endless mode enabled, even though some thing are not completely fleshed out yet. For now the attacking enemy waves are fixed, but the final implementation that I have in mind will have randomized villains with automatic difficulty scaling. My aim is to create a fair, but re-playable experience. It’s actually an interesting problem, and the solution that I came up with can be used to balance the game in all sorts of other scenarios. I’ll very likely write more about it in a future blog post.

I’m sorry that the testing builds are only available on Steam, but it’s the only platform that I publish on that lets me set up beta branches and upload new builds very quickly.

Here are the changes since the previous build released on August 16th:

• Endless mode is enabled, temporary fixed villains added by SoftMonster. (the final implementation will have randomized villains with automatic difficulty scaling, but I haven’t finished that yet).
• Artifact elven bow.
• Alchemical conversion (gold -> wood, iron, granite, and iron -> gold).
• Artifact potion of regrowing body parts.
• Fixed navigation glitch when clicking on an inaccessible tile in control mode.
• Potions of telepathy, regeneration (same effect as amulet of healing), and melee resistance.
• Rings of magic resistance.
• Amulets of night vision and elf vision.
• Mushrooms of regeneration.
• Werewolf has intrinsic regeneration.
• You can persistently name any item in the same manner as artifacts are named.
• Fixed some line of sight issues.
• Fixed many crashes.