Developed by Goblinz Studio, Legend of Keepers is a brand-new dungeon defender title that mixes roguelite with castle defense to deliver a unique experience. In Legend of Keepers, you do not play as heroes in shiny armor rather you jump in the shoes (or hooves) of a massive dungeon master, which could be a boss in a normal game, and defend your dungeon from invading heroes because enough is enough and it is about time someone would actually stop these pesky heroes raiding all the dungeons. This is our review of Legend of Keepers in which we put down some traps and scare away the bravest of heroes from our dungeons.
In Legend of Keepers, you play as a Dungeon Master who just joins the Dungeon Company and is in charge of securing the dungeon treasures from heroes who are trying to loot them. As a Dungeon Master, you have tons of monsters, traps, and spells at your disposal for protecting your treasures. The levels in the game are pretty much like any other side-scrolling title and the visuals contain sprites. There are multiple rooms on every level including the combat room, spell room, spell room, and the last room where the treasures are present along with your chosen Dungeon Master. There are three Dungeon Masters in the game to choose from and each comes with its own unique skills and powers.
Each run in Legend of Keepers is unique making it a roguelite and in addition, if your Dungeon Master is killed, the game ends as well and you have to start over again. When you start the game, you only have one dungeon keeper unlocked but as you progress in the game, you unlock additional dungeon keepers in the game as well by story progression and leveling up your current dungeon masters. The main management screen in the game is called the Agenda and this is where you will spend most of your time while you are not defending your dungeons. It might not look like it, but it is an integral part of the gameplay and you perform tons of activities here without which you cannot really progress in the game as well.
Since you are the dungeon master, you have to plan your monsters’ activities for the whole week. The monsters in the game are not useless units that you keep buying in the game to replace the ones who get killed. If your monster dies during a mission, they are not permanently killed instead their stamina drains, and then you have to send them to the garrison to rest or they will get burn-out if their stamina runs out and you will not be able to use them for separate weeks. Apart from this, you also have to look after your monsters by training them and keeping them in shape. You have to spend gold to train them.
Each day of the week gives you multiple options to choose for the day however you can only perform one activity each day so it all depends on your personal choices whether you want to send out your monsters on different jobs such as Business Trips, Plunders, and more to get you more resources and gold or you want to spend some gold and train your monsters for making them powerful and more effective in combat. Apart from your monsters, you can also purchase various skills and talents for your Dungeon Master as well to make him/her more powerful and effective. These are purchased with skill points that are earned every time your monsters level up in the game.
During your week, there will be special days when your dungeon will attract some heroes from various parts of the world, and it will be your task for the day to defend those treasures. These days are called Dungeon Defense and you prepare for these days the entire week. As the Dungeon Master, you will have access to all of your monsters, spells, and traps. Depending on the run, you will have a pre-defined set of spell rooms, combat rooms, and trap rooms. Depending on what monsters and traps you set for each room, you can set them in any formation you like.
Since each monster in the game comes with its unique strengths and weaknesses, you have to look out for them while you are placing them on the field. Some are ranged while some are melee. Some monsters also deal special status effects like poison, nature damage, burn, and much more to the enemies with their attacks. In trap rooms, you can set down your desired traps that are triggered if the heroes reach them. You do not have to do anything for the Spells room because if the heroes reach this room, you will be automatically granted access to all your stored spells. Once you are satisfied with all of your placements, you can start the level and defend your dungeon.
Heroes come in the party of three and they are of three types. You either have normal adventurers or sometimes veterans. For harder levels, they will come with a champion as well who is a real test for your defense. For trap rooms, you just sit back and watch them annihilate the heroes as well as for the spells, you just use the spell on the enemies that you want to use on them. They could be damage dealing or lowering their morale and scaring them. The real fun lies in the combat rooms where your monsters and heroes will come face-to-face. In these rooms, you must control your monsters to defend your treasures.
Legend of Keepers features turn-based combat and the lightest units get to move first. This keeps a balance and gives everyone in the game a fair chance to fight because sometimes the heavier enemies kill the lighter ones in one hit and this particular mechanic grants them a chance to actually participate in the battle and I liked this mechanic quite a lot. For getting rid of the heroes, you can either kill them or you can scare them off. Each hero in the game comes with two bars, the red health bar, and the purple, their mental condition bar. Most of your monsters come with both scary moves and damage dealing moves however some specialize in either just scaring or just damage dealing with status effects.
My most used approach in the game was scaring the heroes off rather than killing them because I found it more fun. For this particular reason, I favored monsters who were excellent at lowering the heroes’ morality and inflicted various effects that would keep lowering their morality every turn. When it is the turn of any of your monsters, you can choose which skill you want to use and each skill will show you clearly which enemies it will affect and how much it will affect them. The heroes will most certainly burn through some of your heroes and defenses however if everything fails, they will arrive in the Dungeon Master’s room. The Dungeon Master is really strong and comes with plenty of abilities to either damage or scare the enemies. If your Dungeon Master dies here, it is game over for you.
After a successful defense, you are given a choice of cards which may include new monsters, new spells, and new traps. Depending on your preference, you can choose one from this list and use the new monster, trap, or spell in the next run. This keeps things interested and also makes your roster quite healthy because sometimes you will have to send some monsters to the garrison for resting. Resting restores their stamina and avoid them from getting burn out which renders them useless for some weeks. The learning curve or Legend of Keepers is not that hard and I personally found scaring the heroes away much more easier than killing them. You win by either case.
To further alter the gameplay, you can also unlock and equip different artifacts in the game that will affect your gameplay in different ways. These artifacts grant you different bonuses and advantages over the heroes in various ways. These range from granting you health, defense, attack, random status effect bonuses, and much more. All of this combines to give you the freedom of choosing your own approach for your runs. You can choose your own monsters, spells, traps, and artifacts to match your own gameplay style and annihilate the heroes however you see fit.
Overall, Legend of Keepers is a pretty decent game and I really liked the idea of being bad in the game. Unlike most titles, being bad actually feels good here and the fact that you can actually scare off heroes instead of killing them and still win the game is just too much fun. Legends of Keepers also supports mods and by having a quick glance, the game has a healthy community making different sorts of mods for the game which shows that players are actually having fun in the game. At this point, I will say however that the game needs more content down the road because the current content length might put off a lot of players. Still, for what its worth, it a great fun title with plenty of laughs and killing.
Final Verdict:
Legend of Keepers reverses the roles and it does in a pretty fun way. For a change, it is good to see life from the other side of the dungeons. We’ve played tons of dungeon crawlers and slain tons of monsters and dungeon masters however this time around, the heroes get to die, and the monsters get to live. It is surely a novel take on the whole roguelite tower-defense dungeon-protection thing. For what it offers, it is quite a fun game and it will keep you entertained for a decent amount of time however the concept remains pretty much the same throughout, and for some players, it might get a little repetitive after some time. However other than that, it is a great title with its wacky visuals and easy-to-learn mechanics and offers a great time for traditional roguelite and dungeon crawler lovers.
Final Score: 8.0/10
