Cinemax recently announced that their upcoming old-school inspired first person dungeon crawler, The Keep, will be releasing next week on March 16, 2017. The developers wanted to bring the essence and dark atmosphere of RPGs from the past to newcomers and current fans of the genre. Alongside the announcement of the official release date, we also received a new launch trailer and some screenshots of The Keep, which can be seen below.

In The Keep you will quest and explore throughout many dangerous caves and mines filled with gruesome monsters and challenging puzzles. The developers are taking an interesting approach with releasing this title, but I admire them for introducing newcomers to a genre that doesn't see a lot of mainstream releases.

Here is a quick overview of the game's core features, courtesy of Cinemax:

  • An old-school first-person dungeon crawler with a modern twist.
  • Exploring and puzzle solving—the caves and dungeons are full of surprises. There will be deadly traps, elaborate mechanisms guarding secret passages, trapdoors and treasures with powerful weapons and supplies.
  • Real-time combat—a battle against enemies with a gesture based combat, but swiping horizontally or diagonally is not enough. Defeating enemies means that you have to break their defences hitting the upper or lower body or focusing on their head. Every enemy requires different strategy and every weapon class offers unique combos.
  • Rune magic—you can rearrange runes on a 5×4 board and then chain them together to cast powerful elemental magic (Fire, Ice or Lightning). Runes are scarce but there are a lot of spells, so be careful to pick the right combinations.
  • 3 difficulty. The Keep will offer something for newbies in the genre, seasoned adventurers and for those who like to tackle with proper challenge—every difficulty level will have a Permadeath option.
  • Every enemy requires different strategy and every weapon class offers unique combos.
  • Captivating soundtrack
  • English voiceovers with localized in-game text to seven languages - English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and Czech.

The Keep is scheduled to release on PC via Steam for $14.99 in the US and €14.99 in Europe on March 16, 2017.