Earlier this year we brought you news of The Keep, a title coming to the 3DS eShop from the prolific download developer Cinemax; it certainly seems to be one of the studio's most ambitious projects to date. The company promised more details would come ahead of its summer release window, and has now delivered with a host of screenshots and a trailer.
Your quest is to explore dungeons and caves to unravel the mystery "surrounding the tower of evil sorcerer Watrys", which seems like reasonable fantasy fare so far. Adopting a first-person perspective, you're tasked with exploring, solving puzzles and engaging in real-time combat. The stylus and touch screen will be integral to controlling attack direction and height, while combining runes in a mini-game of sorts will unlock special elemental attacks. Cinemax is also promising multiple difficulty settings to accommodate all players.
The Keep will offer something for newbies in the genre, seasoned adventures and for those who like to tackle with proper challenge - every difficulty level will have a Permadeath option.
You can check out a trailer of Alpha build footage and screenshots below. Is this on your radar ahead of its summer release?
Comments 27
Hm. Looks rather promising.
Played Etrian Oddyssey Untold over 40 hours now, still going. After that, I'll get the fourth one, then finally replay -and finish- Dark Spire, and if dungeon crawling is still my thing after that, and the price is right, I may very well get this. Sure took a while to get into the genre (again), but EOU is simply amazing, and got me hooked again, past the point where I need a story to advance (even though I really love the story so far!).
Yes, it's a king of game I miss !
Holy Moly, thats exactly my kind of game! Day one!
Looks very interesting...... I wonder if this game is exclusively on Eshop though.....
This looks pretty interesting, although I wouldn't exactly call it "ambitious." Grid-based dungeon crawlers aren't exactly umcommon or hard to make. Although Etrian Odyssey and Soul Hackers have shown that they can be pretty awesome.
oh yes real-time combat. i don't like turnbased rpgs. especially not the ones where you manage a team.
this one looks promising
I could use a game like this on the ol' 3DS. Interest peaked.
Reminds me of one those fantasy rpgs In the Snes days. Looks great but the protagonist looks like a caveman. Will keep an eye on this definitely.
Reminds me of one those fantasy rpgs In the Snes days. Looks great but the protagonist looks like a caveman. Will keep an eye on this definitely.
Looks amazing fun . like eye of the beholder.
'nother one of these? Don't mind if I do
Remember some DS games like this? Deep Labyrinth and Orcs and Elves were two such titles I can remember of the top of my head; the former was fun and I enjoyed playing, the latter was a little bit of a disappointment I felt... I think? It's been awhile since I touch those tittles you gotta remember
Anyways, back to the subject. Bring this the 'ell on and I'll rip it off the (virtual) shelves and play it till it's done. Wondering if there is a character customisation available (didn't watch trailer, if it was shown there)...
Looks good to me
The 3DS is really rocking it with the eShop, I seriously need to get one soon!
Is this exactly the same game theyh had for wiiware awhile back?
Reminds me of Towers 2 on the Atari Jaguar.
Looks like it could be good or bad (for me at least) I'll keep an eye out for it.
Looks interesting for me to know more.
I keep my eyes peeled for more info. It looks amazing.
@onery I'm also wondering if there will be some character creation and customization cause I hate fixed characters in games like this.
@ReaperX30 Me too. One of the best things about dungeon crawlers is creating your party from scratch. If it's a premade character, then my interest in the game dwindles.
I played a similar old game, and this kind of game are interesting.
With the painful shortage of old-skool CRPG-style games on the 3DS that aren't Etrian Odyssey or variations thereof, this will be bought by me regardless of quality.
However, I'm still hoping game devs will recognize that everyone's bored to tears of fantasy RPGs and needs dem sci-fi ones. I'll take one 3DS port of Hired Guns, please. Captive I too.
It looks like somebody said "Hey, you know what would be great? If we pute Legend of Grimrock on 3DS." And then they made that exact game.
Which is great. Because Legend of Grimrock is great.
Keep in mind, if this is what it looks like it is, the combat is realtime (on cooldowns), and not turn based (like EO). But it looks like its got's Grimrock's heavy emphasis on Puzzles. Which is great. The one thing games like EO and SMT lack, are environmental puzzles to make the navigating more interesting.
Now if someone could make a Might and Magic X clone for 3DS (or... just port Might and Magic X to 3DS) I'd be one happy dungeon crawler.
Could be fun but the graphics need more polish and I think it needs to show the weapon you are holding because just hearing its impact is lame.
GFX look too good for 3DS game, you sure this isn't a PS4 game?
@Deadstanley I even went through the trouble of importing Dark Spire, since it never came out where I live, but I have a massive backlog of games of all kinds and the others then were more... accessible, I guess. Now that the genre got me hooked again (guess I needed the story of Untold to motivate me) I'll tackle them all! Looking forward to create my own 'story' and characters again, only to have them beaten by trial and error, unforgiving difficulty, and easy looking enemies of different colours that suddenly seem overpowered. I really do!
I want this! reminds me of that game for the DS.. the Fantasy Book one, that i wished had been made into more games.
Tap here to load 27 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...