This latest Early Access update (v0.89) for Keep Defending contains the final level in the game's campaign which is called: King's Ending.
King's Ending is a large gate defense level featuring 32 portals for you to buy allies and manage your defenses. Please note that this level is locked until you play all of the previous 9 levels and record a score (win or lose).
Like the previous level (Tower Of Stars), King's Ending will take a lengthy 25 minutes as it progresses through 3 stages to completion.
Fortunately there's a new ally unit to help in defense of the city. The Kingsguard is an elite knight unit and features a lightning shock attack alongside formidable melee fighting skills.
I hope you all find King's Ending a great (and challenging) finale to the Keep Defending campaign!
Alongside releasing the final level, I've begun polishing the other levels in the game including new mountain backdrops for Homestead, Eagle Heights, The (Small) Wall, and Highguard.
I've also quadrupled the number of lights supported in the game which really helps the darker levels (Crystal Caves, Tower Of Stars, and Highguard Stage 2) to stand out when multiple light sources are flying around!
Improving the performance of the game has also been a large part of this latest update and it can now handle many more enemies better than it could before - which sets the scene for what to expect in King's Ending! :)
The headline features in the v0.89 update are as follows:
- New King's Ending (Gate defense) map.
- King's Ending is locked until you've played (win or lose) all previous levels.
- New Kingsguard ally unit.
- Additional (boss) enemies.
- Implemented 2 new music tracks.
- Steam achievements and leaderboard setup for King's Ending.
- The level selection / main menu scene is now complete with the level orb for King's Ending, a new "Credits" orb, and the finalised Exit Game orb.
- I've included some subtle animations to some of the level orbs in the level selection scene.
- Huge improvements to the efficiency of Enemy and Ally AI.
- I've implemented the final version of the fog fx for the level selection scene.
- New mountain backdrops for Homestead, Eagle Heights, The (Small) Wall, and Highguard.
- Quadrupled the number of realtime light sources supported.
- Removed the Healing Druid and Soul Collector from Salt Town Docks as they shouldn't have been in there!
- Fixed an issue when using Walk-In-Place (Arm swinging) locomotion in the level selection scene where you could walk through the blocks holding the level orbs if you stopped walking too near to them.
- Numerous additional fixes and improvements.
The next update should hopefully be the final release v1.0 and feature missing sound fx (still some to add) as well as a detail pass on all of the levels plus any last minute additional optimizations and bug fixes.
Please report back any issues you find in this latest version as I'm hoping to sweep up any final bugs into the "we're leaving Early Access!" update planned for next week.
Thanks for playing Keep Defending!