It's been 2.5 years since Keeper's Toll was conceptualized and we have now exited Early Access! We welcome you to experience what we envisioned all that time ago, and we hope you enjoy our final product. Keeper's Toll enters version 1.0 today on Steam and Nintendo Switch.
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The fun doesn't stop here! We are already working on new content, and although it will likely be a while before we release information on the new content we have in development, we can confidently say there will be several hours of new gameplay to come, along with some features never before seen in the game. The best part: all of this will be part of a big, free content update. We'll release more information about the upcoming content in the coming months, but for now we'll tease you with this silhouette and let you guess at what's to come :)
Version 1.0
What's New
- NEW World: End of Time - New bosses, NPCs and Events. End of Time is meant to provide a slightly more chaotic and fast-paced experience than the other levels. We wanted the climax of the game to feel similar, but different. Our goal with each world in KT was to offer variety and not have them feel like a copy/paste reskin.
- NEW Hard Mode: Once you've defeated the final boss in End of Time, the next time you enter a world you can speak with the NPC, Hitch, at the beginning of a run to "Kindle the Fire" and take on a new challenge.
The world will shift and the challenge will increase, but the rewards will also double. For spoiler details on what exactly happens in the new hard mode, please read below:
[spoiler]- Enemies move up to 75% faster
- Enemies have 2-4x more HP, depending on the enemy
- Enemies inflict 2x more Damage
- Projectiles move up to 50% faster and inflict 2x more damage
- Elite spawn rates have been increased and occur more often
- Elites are not world specific. They can spawn in different worlds.
- Bosses are more aggressive and some bosses have improved/enhanced attacks
- Some events are different and/or there are new events in Hard Mode
- Inner Fire Powerup will only spawn in Hard Mode
- Gold and XP gain is doubled [/spoiler]
- NEW 8 Achievements
- NEW 4 Tomes of Knowledge
- NEW Powerups: Inner Fire (Hard Mode Only), Arrow Barrage (Ranger Only)
- NEW Curses: Evasive Overload, Dissonant Melody
- NEW Localization: Added Japanese
Character Updates
- Pyromancer: Fixed some collision issues with Flame Toss fireballs. They will no longer deactivate because of invalid collision references from a previous state
- Ranger: Added a Kiting Mode Indicator to the top right of the HUD to indicate whether kiting mode is on/off and which direction the arrows will fire
- Ranger: Poisonbloom Sentry now has a ground check when spawning
- Bogatyr: War Cry Haste boosted by 15%
- Bogatyr: Tripled the damage output of Talent: Retaliation
- Necromancer: Boosted Powerup Flail Damage by 50%
- Necromancer: Effigy Explosion Damage increased by 100%
- Necromancer: if poisoned while dying and reviving, the poison damage will now immediately end instead of continuing to inflict damage over time
Gameplay
- When a blood sacrifice is complete, a button is now displayed allowing the player to manually continue gameplay when they want to
- Elites will no longer be able to perform special attacks if inflicting damage is flagged off (for example if caught in Shadow Monk's Vortex)
- Powerup: Haste boosted by 15%
- AI damage collision has been improved and performance boosted
- Ebon King: Updated movement to be smoother and transition better between movement states
- Velya: Updated movement to be more accurate with the physics time step
- Vampire: Updated movement to be more accurate with the physics time step
- Castle Usvit: When spawning an elite, if the elite is a Likhoradka (Sorcerer) then the spawn count will be limited to 1
- Enemies will no longer take damage when they are off screen/out of camera view
- Poison DOT against the player will no longer stack with additional poison. The player can now only have 1 poison DOT inflicted on them at any given time
- Merchant Item: Pumpking's Crown - added a failsafe to deactivate pumpking after a short while
- Warden Grainloch/Minions Curse: Updated the Tree Stump Turret into a normal elite enemy, and it will now be affected by status effects and display damage dealt above it's head
- Merchant: Pumpking Item will no longer spawn if Chancellor Autlaic fight is active
- Bombie Elites: When they explode they will now inflict friendly fire against other enemies within the explosion radius
- Invader Cerveris: Balanced HP and HP now scales with player talents level
- Balanced boss defense against necro summons damage
- Merchant Item: Nightmare Cloak > Curse will now be broken when a boss is defeated
- Velya: Blue Wisps are no longer disabled after the 30 second countdown phase ends
- Likhoradka (Castle Sorcerers): Guided Projectiles are now 15% slower
- Usvit Castle: Limited the Likhoradka (sorcerer) spawn total to 1 active at any time, to prevent projectile overload
User Interface
- UI: Indicator icons now display the distance from the indicator's reference object to the player
- UI: When hovering over an active ability on the Pause/Level Up menu, the ability now displays the ability type above the description
- UI: Updated text description for upgraded ranks of Ranger skill: Emberdust
- UI: Updated Credits Menu
- UI: Moved the ranger toggle kiting text to top right of the screen
- UI: Disabled the Indicator Icon for the Vampire when loading into the Ebon King's arena
- UI: Adjusted window size of key bindings panel
- UI: When reloading the game from End of Round, souls absorbed and app version text will now display on the main menu
- UI: app version and souls absorbed is now properly updated at game startup
- UI: Tutorial Close Button text is now localized
- UI: Added a yellow highlight to the ultimate attacks selection on Level Up Menu
- UI: World Select logic updated
- UI: Merchant restructured to use "Press Action" activation logic in sync with the rest of the game
Curses
- Curse: Sundance - ticks slightly faster and inflicts 50% more damage during hard mode
- Curse: Sundance - sprite edited to reduce line visibility along edges
- Curse: Dead Reckoning: Variable spawn chance based on altar curse or end-game curse
- Curse: Frostveil - Cooldown increased by 25%, reducing the time spent sliding in ice form
Bug Fixes
- Bug Fix: When reloading the character select panel, the pyromancer is now properly highlighted and selected
- Bug Fix: Fixed a null reference error for Ranger's Homing Shot
- Bug Fix: Added a check to level up only if player is alive to prevent rare instance of level up and death occuring in the same frame
- Bug Fix: All Ability names are now properly localized after Blood Sacrifice Altar is used
- Bug Fix: Cursed Souls Curse is now resetting collisions when changing soul type
- Bug Fix: Shadow Monk's 100 Fists Combo will now properly activate the effect when triggering the combo
Localization
- Localization: Updated German Localization for Hitch and Pyro - Cinderstrike passive
- Various localization updates
Miscellaneous
- When deleting Save Data, the game scene will now reload. You no longer have to quit and re-open the game.
- Tutorial sign restructured with "Press Action" to engage
- Refactored dozens of scripts to prevent rare memory leaks from occurring
- Removed lots of unnecessary collision checks and restructured enemy AI to boost performance
- Hit Detection: Removed controller vibration when player is poisoned or inflicted with a DOT
- Added Controller Key Bindings to the Options Menu
- Adjusted Keyboard Key Bindings to allow duplicate bindings for the "Back" and "Pause" keys
Trading Cards
Trading Cards are not yet available, but they will be coming soon.
Final Thoughts
We would like to extend a big special thanks to our Beta Testing Team. We couldn't have done this without you. All the tips, bug finds, balancing suggestions etc. And of course, to everyone who has been along this ride with us throughout Early Access, your feedback has been extremely valuable. We have done our best to listen and implement your suggestions as often as we can. Truly, thank you all.
We still have a long list of feedback that we may pull in new features/suggestions from in the future, but what we are releasing today is the complete game, and it includes everything we set out to accomplish. Yet this does not mean we are finished with KT. In fact, as mentioned above we are already working on new content for the game, but now is not the time to discuss that. For now, we hope you all enjoy all the work we've put into building KT, and we look forward to seeing you tackle the new content! If you enjoy Hard Mode, let us know if you would like a Brutal mode. It's definitely something we would consider :)
As always, if anyone has any feedback, bugs to report, suggestions, etc. please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We read everything and we will do our best to respond as soon as possible.
Thank you again. We hope you enjoy the finished game that is Keeper's Toll.
Stingbot Games
