Dome Keeper: A Keeper’s Duty is coming and is shaping up very nicely. This is our most ambitious update by any measure you throw at it and we’re thrilled to bring Keepers of every ilk a much improved replayability through new gadgets with over 100 new upgrades, supplements for all gadgets and weapons, a new prestige variant, a bunch of new monsters with a new world, big balancing changes and improvements on existing content and the brand new Guild Assignment game mode.
Assignments are interesting challenges, feeling quite different from regular runs and often need a smart build.
Add to this an engine update from Godot 3 to Godot 4, a daunting task but one we’ve deemed necessary to ensure Dome Keeper is set for the future as this, among other things, enables us to add Multiplayer and you’ve got A Keeper’s Duty.
What is hopefully made clear by reading this is that we’re bringing a lot of (positive!) change to Dome Keeper all in one go and while that is incredibly exciting, it inadvertently WILL also bring problems big and small. With more than doubling your options in each run, game balance will be all over the place. The engine upgrade can also bring a lot of technical issues that only happen on specific hardware.
We have thus reached the conclusion to iron out the bulk of these issues together with you, our Keepers! Starting June 20th all players will be able to access the A Keeper’s Duty content through a Beta Branch on Steam. The main game app will remain as it is for some time but players who opt in to the Public Beta will have the full update available to them from that day. The update is content complete so all the things we’ve spoken of before are in place; what might not be is our usual level of balance and stability. We will add some smaller things in the next weeks too, like icons and new achievements.
Tired of carrying resources? The new primary gadget "droneyard" got you covered.
Let’s recap what is included in the update! This list is a little short now, but we’ll provide a full changelog when the update is fully released later this summer.
What’s new:
- Twice as many gadgets as before (from 11 to 22)
- Extremely strong supplement upgrades for all gadgets and weapons
- New game mode”Guild Assignments” with 16 different assignments
- New loadout menu (Multiplayer preparation!)
- Prestige overhaul with “Provocation” replacing “Fixed Cobalt”
- New world & monsters
- Balancing and improvements on existing content
- New and improved map generation
New monsters will pose new challenges to your defense.
What to expect from the Public Beta:
- Mods WILL break.
- Currently the very fundamentals of Godot 4 are incompatible with how mods have been made in the past. This means that currently there is no known process for how modders can bring over their mods to the latest version of the game. We are however working actively with our modders and contributors of the engine to figure out how we can make this work as we really love mods. At this very moment we don’t know for certain how this will develop even for the full release of the update.
- Updated language support
- The move to Godot 4, among other things, will enable us to implement localization from languages that in the past were not possible, for instance Arabic which has a 100% complete (fact check) translation ready and made by fans. Read more about the fan localization project here: [Link Coming Soon]
- Current run save games will not transfer between versions
- If you have a run going on you want to finish, best do so before switching to the beta branch, as run save games will not work. We disabled that intentionally, as we had some issues in the past with migrating ongoing runs (remember the unusable relic chambers with black rectangles around it?).All of your meta progression should be safe and your saves in each branch is retained in the files, in case you wish to hop between versions you CAN, all you have to do is rename your save file to be recognized by the game when you switch between versions. Click here for the FAQ.
- Mac Support
- We are on it, but right now we haven’t been able to export a running build for Dome after the Engine Port. It is supported in principle, so we are confident we’ll get it to work eventually, but we need a bit more time.
- General bugs, balance issues and instability
- We’re very proud of the new update but bringing it to public beta is not for naught. The game is entirely playable but we urge you to expect balancing to be a bit off, bugs to occur and the possibility of things not being entirely stable. Please help us by giving us feedback and reporting any bugs you encounter. We listen closely to your feedback and now is really the best time to advocate for changes.
- This also means that balance can change a lot during the beta. Because of this, prestige highscores might become unbeatable at some point, so we might have reset the prestige leaderboards after the public beta ends. Just as heads up :)
With Godot 4 we got some new options for map generation and made use of it for more interesting shapes. On the left is a maze map, on the right a large map for relic hunt.
You may notice that this announcement has a Start Time & Date and an End Time & Date. While we're planning on releasing the public beta sometime on the 20th the release timing is placeholder and the End Time & Date are also currently placeholder.
It will be entirely possible to jump between the main app and the Beta at your leisure. When you switch to the beta branch, your save files are backed up in the save folder like "savegame_full_backup_2024_6_18_12_53.json". If you remove the date part and switch back to the public branch, you can recover the old state.
We hope you’re as excited as we are to play with the new content as we are in this Public Beta.