Keep the Heroes Out

I'm genuinely very sad to give this a negative review. In my house Keep the Heroes Out is one of our most played board games in the last two years - I have all the expansions and promos for the physical game. This is nothing against Luis or the team - I have genuine love for this game and will buy into any future physical products. [h3]Summary[/h3] Keep the Heroes Out is a co-operative deckbuilding dungeon defence game. I originally bought the physical game due to my love of Dungeon Keeper. Players pick 1-4 monster clans (each with asymmetric abilities and starting cards) work together to repel invading heroes who will attempt to loot your treasure and fight their way to the treasure vault. There are 9 (+ 3 promo) monster clans & 20 scenarios in the base game, each with twists on the standard rules, adding scenario specific conditions and effects. Unfortunately this is not a good adaptation. [h3]Key Issues[/h3] [list] [*] [b]Cluttered and unclear interface[/b]. There are buttons for overlays to give you clearer information, but its a pain switching between these. There's just too many 3D assets on the board - your monsters, the enemy heroes and the various resources and traps get lost in all the visual clutter of the terrain. There's even some 3D clutter that looks almost identical to something useful - I've thought I had a trap protecting a room, only to realise its just a part of the terrain. Similarly, I thought I had a portal (used for quick movement between rooms), only to realise it was a glowing piece of terrain. The physical board game looks great, so this is a real shame - I'd love a "2D mode" - essentially the 2D board tiles from the physical game, with 3D meeples (or character models) for the monsters, heroes, resources and traps. I know its a bit harsh to say "I wish it just looked like the tabletop game", but I genuinely just want to look at the board and instantly be able to assess the situation. That's not possible with this version of the game. It really impacts your ability to strategize and play the game well and in harder scenarios it can be the difference between winning and losing, because you missed a piece of information. Clarity of information is so, so important in board games like this. [*] [b]Slow, clunky controls[/b] - especially with keyboard/mouse. Everything just takes a long time, lots of little popups for choices, they often stack on top of each other, so its very easy to mis-click. It needs re-bindable shortcuts and a cleaner UI. Every action icon on a card is at least two clicks. I wish the game was a bit smarter - for example, if I have two move icons, and I select a monster, let me spend them both at once to move two spaces. Instead its Select Move Icon, Select Monster, Select Room, Select Move Icon, Select Monster, Select Room. 6 clicks is a lot for such a simple outcome. [*] [b]Choices taken away from the player[/b] - in the physical game things like which monster takes the hit, or which hero dies on a trap are a choice (and a very important one at that!). This is a lot of the strategy - who can survive the hit, who has a way to spawn more monsters next turn if they do get wiped off the board, who has defence cards that can block the hits, what heroes are we about to run out of (which causes them all to re-activate, so you want to strategize to avoid it if possible) etc. The game just auto-picks for you, and its yet to make the choice I wanted. This is a real shame, and diminishes the experience vs the physical game. [/list] [h3]Conclusion[/h3] Right now, I'm sorry to say I'd rather play the TTS mod than this official adaptation. I hope a lot of these things can be fixed - clarity of information, a better UI and game flow etc. are all the sorts of things I've seen other games fix in post-launch patches, depending on how the game has been put together. I hope to be able to flip this to a positive review in the future, as I really do love the physical Keep the Heroes Out and Luis is so dedicated with his support for the game and its community.

This game is cute, but it just is not fun. I'm writing this at launch, so future updates may greatly improve the experience but at the moment the tutorial is not very helpful and left me feeling stuck in several situations. The tutorial also does not set realistic expectations for how long a round or level is actually going to take, and the win/lose objectives are not clearly defined. There is alot of space for improvement and I am not trying to just sit here and bash on the game - I think it will be an absolutely phenomenal game after a few updates, but right now it is not worth your time or money.

As an adaptation of the board game it seems so-so The price seems a little bit much for what you get. it honestly doesn't bring much to the table that you can't get out of playing the game on tabletop simulator, there you'd get an authentic, less buggy experience with an actually good camera, at least.

Nice game, but far too expensive for such a buggy implementation. My main reason for not recommending this game is the combination of difficulty levels and RNG. Family — you basically can’t lose Challenging — extremely hard, but at least somewhat playable Hardcore — imagine flipping a coin and needing it to land heads 16,000,000 times in a row. That’s the same experience If you want a comfortable, visually pleasant game, play on Family difficulty and enjoy it If you want to git gud and actually test your skills, you’ll just waste your time for nothing

The board game is fun, but the digital version has such poor UI design and visual clarity that it becomes unplayable.

It's not a terrible game, overall it's actually really fun. The main problems come from the lack of explanation, even with an updated tutorial there are still mechanics that are never brought up, including an entire new hero being introduced, multiple waves of heroes, the beast master room, and how to check how many heroes are left to spawn.

Gameplay mechanics and level instructions are not clear at all. I beat my head against the wall through 7 game levels and got stopped dead on the 8th level on the easiest difficulty setting. There are no strategy guides on steam, or anywhere else for that matter, on how to beat the levels or what each levels special rules actually mean. If you're a masochist and the game is 90% off go for it, otherwise save yourself the frustration and buy another game.

非常喜欢实体桌游，但这个电子版玩起来实在是不方便，UI界面混乱，资源、英雄和怪物没有突出显示，完全找不到谁在哪。技能选择的方式也非常奇葩，目前不是很推荐。但这个桌游本身是非常有趣的，想玩目前建议实体版。

I'd recommend watching a how to play video for the board game prior to playing. The tutorial wasn't great.

Love the art style of the game and it stays true to the og board game! There were a few bugs I ran into, but the dev has already fixed them after I let them know about it.