It’s been a while! KeeperRL Alpha 32 is slowly reaching its final shape, so I want to update you on all the latest stuff that made it into the game.

News number 1: The Goblin Keeper.

Many of you probably remember the Goblins from the Bonus Mod. For those that don’t – it’s a super unique faction in one of the most popular mods. Go check it out!

With SoftMonster’s and RighteousSinner’s permission (the latter given before Righteous sadly passed away), the Goblins are making it into the vanilla game! I’ve made many adjustments and added quite a few ideas of my own into this hilarious faction, while trying to stick to the original spirit. I feel like this will be an amazing addition to the game.

Having added the Goblins, I decided to scrap Orcs and Ogres from the whole game, and copy some of the goblin specializations back to the Dark Mage and Dark Knight keepers, since they have much more character, and I never liked the Orcs’ and Ogres’ visuals.

On the topic of factions, another one coming up is the Necromancer, but it requires more work, so not wanting to postpone Alpha 32 for too long I’ll leave it for the next update. There are some nice ideas in there, including an Abomination minion that’s assembled from body parts of fallen enemies, and a phylactery mechanic that makes a creature semi-invincible. So I’m still very optimistic about what should come out of it once the Necromancer is fully fleshed-out.

Another new feature is a continuation of combat improvements described earlier, which allows giving go-to orders in the turn-based game mode. For now the order ends once the minion reaches the target, and in the future I want to add UI for more sophisticated orders, like ‘go-to and wait X turns’, ‘go-to and scout’, etc. But even in its basic form I find this feature very useful, especially when ‘stand ground’ is turned on, you can easily position your team for combat.

On the topic of combat, another important change is the speed system. From now on speed and slowness will only affect movement, and all other actions, like attacking or destroying stuff will always take one turn for all units. This levels the playing field a bit, since these effects used to give a massive (dis)advantage to the unit. I’ve also allowed creatures to be affected with both speed and slowness and the same time, causing them to cancel each other out, which lets you temporarily boost your slow minions with a speed potion or debuff fast enemies.

There have been improvements in the visuals as well. Sprites are now drawn in a way that gives a bit more realistic 3D effect, and creature sprites will change orientation horizontally based on movement (see the first gif).

At this point all that’s left is some testing, and helping out modders with updating their mods to Alpha 32. You can expect a testing build released to Steam very soon, and the official update not long after.