KeeperRL is a surprisingly engrossing mix of dungeon building, exploration and roguelike with a recent update

I've recently taken quite a liking to KeeperRL [Official Site], a surprisingly good mix pulling in features from dungeon building, exploration and roguelikes to make quite an engrossing game. The developer also recently put out Alpha 24.

There's two modes of play: the first is the traditional keeper mode where you build your dungeon, manage resources and send teams off to fight. The other is the adventure mode, where you have a single character to explore with and it plays more like a roguelike. You can also download "retired" dungeons from other players for your playthrough.

It's not a new game, sure, something we've actually covered here way back since 2014. However, it arrived on Steam back in 2015 and since then it's been constantly updated and polished. I was always keen to try it, but never found the time. Thankfully, with the new Steam Curator system the developer actually sent us a key to our Steam Curator for me to try out.

Most recently, as of April 2nd, the developer has put out a fresh update (changelog can be found here.) which overhauls the prisoner system. You're now required to specifically tag a creature for capture, so they will be knocked out instead of killed. Once knocked out, they're given a timer until they die but they will appear in your immigrant list given you the option to enslave them (providing you've built a prison).

They've also improved the full control mode, which is when you take direct control of a team. Since you control each of them individually in this control method, the game has switched to a proper turn-based mode where they each get one action per turn so it works more like you would expect.

Mining has also been changed, to be more like earlier builds of KeeperRL, so you can now see all ore locations but it's not without a challenge. New enemies will spawn near ore, so if you want it you better be prepared for a fight. Additionally, further into mountains you will find hard rock which will take longer to dig through.

All of these updates have made the game gradually more interesting. While some depth has been lost in places like the full control mode, since creatures no longer have a speed attribute, everything has started to make more sense overall and it results in a game that's really quite fun to play.

I've been quite amused by the action text during battles, as it's pretty brutal—"You swing your club at the dog. The dog's skull is shattered! The dog is blind! The Dog is killed!" and so on. Quite grim, but you're an evil dungeon lord what do you expect?

The full source code for the game is open source under the GPL [GitHub], however that does not include graphics and audio so you would be playing it in ASCII mode. You can grab the full version from Humble Store (affiliate link), Steam and Itch.io.