Keeper of the Seven Keys › The Chronicle › The game
Four races, one Keyring: choosing your Keeper
The Elven Keeper, the Delver, the Human Wayfarer and the Chainbound each fight with a weapon of their own and three specials no one else has. How each race plays, and who it suits.
The Keeper team · · 4 min read
Every Keeper carries the same Keyring. Every Keeper dashes with Passage and heals with Bloom. But the hand that holds the Keys changes everything else: the weapon, the Attack, the Heavy, and the three specials of Embers, Tides and Echoes are the race's own.
That was a deliberate choice. Instead of one hero with a rack of weapons, the demo gives you four peoples of the Sevenfold, each with one weapon it has mastered, and the moves to show it.
The Elven Keeper: staff, ranged and elemental
Tall, white-haired elves of the Archive's oldest line, who remember the first names and keep the Doors from falling open. The Elven Keeper fights from range and builds Focus quickly, which means its Keys come round sooner than anyone else's.
- Cinderbolt (Embers): a searing bolt that burns and passes through the first foe.
- Frozen Tide (Tides): a wave of frost along a line that freezes, staggers and pushes back.
- Requiem (Echoes): spend all your Resonance on a thunderclap of every echo you carry, shocking everything around you.
It suits you if you like to read a fight from a safe distance and answer it with the right element at the right moment.
The Delver: blade and shield, steadfast
Stocky mountain folk who cut the Hinge's stone and its key-light crystals in the Mines: broad as a door, slow to fall, slower to forget an oath. The Delver's combos are fast, and its Heavy braces behind the shield before it bashes. Block at the last moment and you Riposte.
- Forge Breath (Embers): the blade drawn through a cone of forge-fire. Everything before you burns.
- Rime Bulwark (Tides): the shield struck to the ground raises rime before you. Foes in front freeze, and the shield holds the line while the frost lasts.
- Oathbell (Echoes): the shield rung like a bell. The oath's toll throws back and staggers everything around you.
It suits you if you would rather stand your ground and turn a blow back than step out of its way.
The Human Wayfarer: bow, swift and far-reaching
The Hinge's road-wardens, who walk the borderlands and the thresholds of the Doors: lean, weathered, never where the danger expects them. The Wayfarer is ranged and mobile, and its charged shots pierce through a line of foes.
- Fire Volley (Embers): burning arrows loosed high come down on the ground ahead, and everything there burns.
- Frost Snare (Tides): an arrow of rime that freezes the first two foes it strikes, and stills the water it falls in.
- Rewind Shot (Echoes): a shaft of key-light pierces everything along a line, then flies back along it.
It suits you if you like to keep moving, keep your distance and line up the perfect shot.
The Chainbound: ashen chains, the crowd-breaker
Towering forge-born giants with chains wound up their forearms, who carry the embers of the forges they came from. The Chainbound fights with two hooked blades on chains: wide, long sweeps that hold a crowd at bay. Hold the Heavy and the chains whirl overhead before coming down in fire; out of a dash, a chain drags a foe to you.
- Burning Coil (Embers): the chains flung out in a wide coil of fire. What they catch beyond arm's reach burns and is dragged in.
- Rime Chain (Tides): a chain flung straight ahead with frost along its length. The foes it binds are frozen and hauled in.
- Chain of Ages (Echoes): chains of key-light lash every foe around you and snap back through time, dragging them to you.
It suits you if the more foes there are, the happier you feel.
See them fight
Watch the clip: The four races of the demo in battle
What every race shares
Whichever race you choose, the rest of the game is yours in full:
- The Keyring: Edge, Ruin, Passage, Bloom, Embers, Tides and Echoes, each a verb on the world as well as a move in a fight.
- The Hinge-forged weapons: what you forge at the Keysmith's anvil is always of your race's family, and it changes the weapon's look in your hands.
- Your worlds: any of your Keepers can play in any of your worlds, and what one of them learned there (patterns, glyphs, Names) every other one can use.
Each race is a detailed, painted model with its own moves, timed so the blow lands where the weapon is. They were the first characters to get that treatment, and they will not be the last.
Play the free demo in your browser: no download, no install.
New races, the Origins, are on the road ahead: peoples of the Folds who will offer you their trust, and their fighting style, once you have earned it.
Play the free demo in your browser: no download, no install.
Claim your Closed Alpha key: join the Keepers' list.