Galactic Keep by Gilded Skull Games

Four Syllable News

We've decided to officially remove the tagline from the name of the game so that, from here on in, we will be referring to it as:

​

The short version of the story behind this decision is that many moons ago, in the concepting stage of Galactic Keep, there were to be two games: 'Galactic Keep: Dice Battles', a dungeon crawler, and 'Galactic Keep: Brawlers', a battle chess game. Both games were to work together, characters and weapons (etc.) unlocked or traded for in one would populate back into the other (if you owned both games). As we began development, we realized that we only had the bandwidth for one Galactic Keep game so we focused on 'Dice Battles'.

The complete title with the tagline stuck for a lot of reasons but after thinking about it a lot over the past few months we have decided to drop it and simplify. Honestly, I can't believe we kept the tagline for as long as we did

 

Us too. That was the biggest reason. Another big reason was that in the original design everything required a dice roll and, for example, if there was a weapon that required 5d10, the player would roll 5 dice (on-screen). This was tested very early on and we instantly found that it slowed the gameplay too much. We tried having just the player rolling on their turn and that was confusing (if the player rolls, you need to see the enemy roll or the rhythm of playing becomes unbalanced). We thought about adding a die into the players battle turn (every turn) but that would protract the length of a battle immensely...so we dropped that idea. In essence, GK has become a lot less about the act of 'rolling dice' than we originally imagined.

Also, Galactic Keep has evolved. It's certainly about the dice, they are integral, but other elements of the game have taken the forefront, I think. While building it we didn't consider it a 'survival' game, but there are many pieces of that genre in Galactic Keep. I, personally, wouldn't consider it a roguelike but there are elements of that classic gameplay style in GK. Anyway, my point is that having 'dice battles' as part of the game name slims down the perception of what it is. It became completely unnecessary...so we're dropping it!

 

Hello and thanks for your interest! Happy holidays...Easter, Passover, blood moon, etc. !

So, here's where we are. Some who have tested know this already, but this is where we're at.

Galactic Keep has undergone an extensive re-build since December of last year. In order for the game to save at any point (and to prepare for cloud saving) we had to take the code back to prehistoric times. Everything broke: movement, rolls, inventory, battles, items, weapons, scripted events...pretty much every component of the game was altered and needed to be fixed and rigorously tested.

Also, there are still quite a few things that we're still tuning: enemy turn length, enemy strengths and weaknesses, secret characters, visual and technical bugs...there are things that still need fixing before we release. We're cranking!

 

New Testing Build Soon (like, real soon!)

We're prepping a new build to be released for testing via TestFlight. A lot of new stuff in this build including an option to make battles faster, move distance mods based on a characters endurance stat and the ability to drop unneeded stuff anywhere you want. Yay!

Please PM me with your email today if you'd like to be included in testing, we're open to getting a few more people involved.

Many, many, MANY thanks to our existing testers for all their help, hardcore playing and most of all...patience

 

The Long and the Short of It

Thanks

Short answer: There's quite a bit of strategy, some overt some more subtle. The key, at least in battle, is using your tools (weapon/special/items) together in a strategic way. For example, a simple strategy could be to use a special that makes an enemy miss their turn, then block to heal or use a grenade during their missed turn.

Long Answer: Firstly, your core attributes are important to how the game is played in several ways. You can read more about it in the ‘help’ section (the ? in the options menu).

LUCK modifies/fudges the 'behind the scenes' numbers slightly (and only sometimes, based on a hidden roll) and creates a modifier for initiative rolls at the beginning of every battle. It also mods critical hit and failure chance...very slightly. A very low luck and you will find yourself 'critically unlucky'.

STRENGTH is obvious, it modifies the weapon hit.

An ENDURANCE over 20 will give you another move every move roll on the map so when you’re creating your character you’ll have to decide between moving further on the map and hitting harder in battle (STR and END are also used together to create a modifier for the block in battle). If you have very high STR and END you will block more effectively...but a lot of times your block will barely be higher than your enemies attacks...so you have to be strategic about when you block (while an enemy is blocking; when you make them skip a turn).

INTELLEGENCE modifies your special attack (if it causes damage, which most do). Later in the game there are also INT rolls where it's very helpful to have a high INT.

In a lot of cases, the characters special is very important to the game strategy. The specials are unique with each character and usually have some sort of lasting battle effect. Some heal for multiple turns, some have a % chance of causing the enemy to miss a turn or add to a characters attributes for a set amount of time (etc.). As you find more specials, your strategic options open up.

The early enemies, where you start the game and in the tutorial, are tame. Their specials aren't going to give you much trouble (except maybe the War Shadow that uses Extreme Speed to make you skip a turn). Later there are sentient enemies that use some of the same specials that you have available.

Strategically, there are a lot of options and many, at least towards the beginning of the game, involve special attacks. Thom Ashton has a roundhouse kick so you can beat on an enemy and finish them off with the kick (if his INT is good and high); Bal'Kyn has a healing special, Medic, that heals him for several turns allowing you to focus on attacking; Mharnos the robot has a special that augments his attack for several turns and then makes it less for a couple. He can use his special then charge in and attack while he is strong, heal while he's weak.

Enemies utilize similar strategies and have a variety of specials at their disposal, especially sentient enemies. Some sentients steal, use items (all use items) and will sometimes leave a battle to heal. If you want to see what it's like to fight a sentient as opposed to a creature, stock up on Flash Bang grenades (to escape from battle) and go west on the first map (far west). You’ll find a campfire...