The latest update (v0.60) for Keep Defending features the next level in the game's campaign which is called Sand Trap.
This is another Advance mode map/level (like Crystal Caves) that consists of four zones you must progress through before the timer runs down.
I've implemented many new enemies just for this level, as well as a new ally unit to help with your defenses: the Healing Druid. This unit replenishes the health of other allies which you can see in the short clip below:
Like Crystal Caves, the zones in Sand Trap feature more and more ally portals to manage as you progress until you're dealing with up to 24 portals in the final zone in preparation for the enemy onslaught!
The four zones total up to 20 minutes of gameplay so be sure you've got enough time to complete it before you start!
Here's another short clip from the third zone in Sand Trap:
The headline features in the v0.60 update are as follows:
- New Sand Trap (Advance mode) map.
- New Healing Druid ally unit.
- Many new enemy and boss units.
- Steam achievements and leaderboard setup for Sand Trap.
- Enemy AI is much more efficient.
- Fixed portal units being overwritten in Crystal Caves if the player teleports to a different portal position before progressing to the next zone.
- Added additional scoreboards to Crystal Caves (and repositioned existing ones) in case player teleports to a different portal.
- Reduced the possibility of ally units shooting into the air when spawned near other units (enemy or ally). Haven't removed this entirely though as it makes me chuckle! :)
- Implemented varied enemy magic colors and cycle them for certain enemies.
- Fixed the ally wizard firing without waiting for its reload cycle to complete.
- Fixed ally knights not properly engaging with enemies attacking gates.
- Fixed the ambient sound positioning of cannonballs in Salt Town Docks.
- Improved the cannonball hit explosion visual FX.
- Improved the wizard fireball hit explosion visual FX.
- New healing buff visual effect added (activated by the Druid or shooting a green soul orb).
- New healing buff audio FX implemented.
- New portal spawning audio FX implemented.
- New soul orb audio FX implemented.
- Implemented arm-swinging locomotion method for the main menu scene and a new hint message to notify players about it.
- Numerous other fixes and improvements.
Known Issues:
- Ally Knights sometimes get stuck circling around a point.
You can see a longer (and better quality) video showing Sand Trap footage here on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXED652zbVA
As a usual part of my testing, I've done a play-through of all the levels to ensure I haven't introduced any breaking changes with this latest update. However, if you spot something out of place then please leave feedback in the discussion groups or by replying to this post.
Apologies for this update taking so long. Sand Trap took an age to implement which is the nature of these Advance mode levels. With four zones, Sand Trap effectively took 4 times longer to create than a normal level in Keep Defending.
Levels 9 and 10 will both be gate defense levels (fortunately) and so I'm hoping to turn these around much quicker in order to complete the campaign and release the game out of Early Access! :)
Thanks for playing Keep Defending!