How Deep Keep works
Deep Keep is a deterministic, full-information tactical roguelite. Combat is a puzzle, not a gamble: every number — your damage, the foe's wind-up, what each tool does this turn — is visible before you act. Lose, and it was a puzzle you misread, not a roll that betrayed you.
A run is a descent through a branching keep. You bring a fixed build; the keep's difficulty escalates floor by floor until it outpaces your power. The skill is in the build you choose and the tool you pick each turn to answer the foe in front of you.
The core loop
- Allocate a scarce build across the four approaches — or pick a preset.
- Route each fork. Every foe telegraphs its archetype and its weakness; choose the path you can answer.
- Read the room. Menace, the foe's intent, and every tool's effect are shown — then commit your move.
- Descend deeper. Survive a run to unlock new options — never raw power — and dive again, harder.
The four approaches
You spend a small, fixed build budget across four stats. Each stat is a key, not just a bonus: a high stat opens a solution closed to other builds. You cannot be good at everything — specialising is the point.
| Approach | What it does | Foe it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Force | Raw damage. Steady throughput, no trick — the honest answer to a wall. | Wall |
| Finesse | Disarm. Negates a telegraphed maul outright — but only once trained (level 2+). | Spiker |
| Wits | Exploit. Hits hardest into a maul's wind-up — punishes a telegrapher. | Telegrapher |
| Charm | Cow. Blunts the incoming blow, more the deeper you invest — tames a grinder. | Grinder |
Some effects are riders that only land reliably once the stat is trained: Charm's blunt and Finesse's disarm gamble below mastery, and the game shows you the exact odds before you commit. Damage is never gated — only the rider's coin-flip.
The enemies
Every foe belongs to an archetype that tells you how to beat it. The keep telegraphs the archetype and the weakness in full before you engage — there are no surprises, only reads.
| Archetype | How it fights — and how you win |
|---|---|
| Wall | High menace, barely hits. A pure throughput race — bring Force and out-damage it. |
| Grinder | Hits every single turn. Blunt each blow with Charm or be ground down in an endurance fight. |
| Spiker | One devastating maul; shrugs off Force. Disarm it with Finesse before the blow lands. |
| Telegrapher | Mauls on a clock; shrugs off Force & Charm. Read the wind-up and punish it with Wits. |
| Boss | Two faces — a Charm-soft grinder, then a Wits-soft telegrapher. Wants a rounded hand, not a one-note specialist. |
Champion affixes (deep runs)
Past the early tiers, foes can carry one extra tooth — an affix that demands a different answer than the plain shape. They are telegraphed in full in combat.
| Affix | The twist — and the counter |
|---|---|
| Armoured | Flat damage off every blow. Chip does little — land one big weakness hit, or pierce it. |
| Staggering | Its weakness is locked until you expose it with another stat. Set up, then exploit. |
| Festering | An undefendable clock bleeds you every turn (blunt and ward can't touch it). Out-race it, or purge it with an antidote. |
| Ravening | Works into a frenzy — its blow grows every turn it lives. End it fast, or sear the rage with a brand. |
| Sundering | Its blow cuts through all blunt (plate, a Charm cow). Cancel it, out-race, or out-last — never soften. |
Run systems
What you build with — and what carries between runs.
Menace & energy
Menace is the foe's threat; it only ever decreases as you wear the foe down, which is what lets the game prove every fight is winnable. Energy is your per-turn budget — two pips, with tools costing one or two — so each turn is a real allocation, not a free double-press.
Boons
Clearing a fork can offer a choice of run-scoped boons — horizontal rule-bends that accumulate over a descent (a foe starts exposed, a clock ticks slower, the first maul is blunted). They are conditional and matchup-gated, never flat power, so they sharpen your build without flattening the difficulty curve.
Items & gear
You can carry consumable items (bombs, wards, antidotes, a brand) into a run to answer specific threats, and equip persistent gear that's kept between runs in a few bounded slots. Gear is always conditional — every piece has a fight it loses — and its defence folds into the game's solvability guarantee, so it never trivialises a run.
Dives, the daily run & leaderboards
Optional dives let you push your luck for extra loot at the cost of turns and health. A daily seeded run gives everyone the same puzzle to race on its own board, and a global, server-verified leaderboard ranks honest runs (every submitted score is re-played server-side, so no impossible score is ever stored).
Meta-progression: options, never raw power
What persists across death is new options — tools, builds, items, gear — never a flat damage bonus. This is the game's central rule: power creep would let escalation be out-run and erase the puzzle. Progression widens what you can attempt, while every run still has to be solved on its own terms.
The world remembers
The keep is one place, not a fresh maze each run. It is bottomless and unbuilt — nobody remembers raising it — and every hero is dealt a reason to descend before the first step down. Each descent wears a different face: a biome (the drowned deep, the ashen halls, the knife-cold dark, the iron vaults) that leans which foes you meet and the places you pass, and sometimes an omen — a portent stated up front that bends the run's economy. Both are texture, never power: every room is still certified solvable, so a biome or omen only changes how a run feels.
What the keep remembers, it remembers in code. Every run leaves a small, true mark — a typed fact the keep didn't have yesterday — kept in the Codex and read back to you on a later descent. A narrator dresses those facts into prose, and can speak them aloud, but the telling is always flavour laid over facts that stand on their own: the game plays exactly the same with the narration off. The world is one; the story is yours; nothing in the fiction is ever load-bearing.
▶ Play Deep Keep or read the FAQ.