Since I have plenty of friends of the family who adore board games and getting together to play for a few hours, it has been interesting to see games they’ve mentioned over time being adapted to a video game form in some way. Since I’ve gathered this information from afar, since our family really isn’t that into tabletop gaming, I lack direct experience, but I can appreciate that many of these titles are a lot of fun to play in their original form. Having sampled quite a number of them now after being converted to a digital form, in general I haven’t been convinced that it has been an improvement, and Keep The Heroes Out in my mind struggles with that as well.

In terms of its premise, I’m actually a fan since it reminds me of the glory days of playing Dungeon Keeper 2 way back when. Inverting the normal conceit of playing as heroes looking to dive into the depths to take on monsters and get at their loot, you’ll instead be looking to play defense, playing the role of a collection of different creatures looking to keep the pesky do-gooders from hauling away your riches. You’ll have the option of tackling this problem solo or with up to 3 other people either locally or online, needing to reach a certain degree of coordination in order to be successful. With its charming art style and colorful presentation, the stage is definitely set well, but the question is how it works in execution bringing a good tabletop time into the digital domain.

In general I’d say it’s a bit of a rocky conversion. While perhaps some of my issue has to do with unrealistic expectations, I’d think the goal here wouldn’t be just to help people who already love the game enjoy it in another form, but also to bring new players into the fold, perhaps even encouraging them to buy the tabletop version as well if they like it. If that’s the goal, the onboarding of new players is vital to success, and ideally the game would manage to make its rules and nuances as approachable as possible. Sadly, while it takes a decent stab at that, I wouldn’t say it was terribly successful. For a few rounds I was very much stumbling through the experience, trying to absorb everything I was seeing and looking for ways to get some momentum going. 

Unfortunately, as is usually the case with tabletop games, the cards, resources, and nuances of play tend to be quite dense, and while there’s reference material available that path to learning feels like something I’d just buy the tabletop game for, rather than trying to play it as a video game. The thing is, I have no doubt that this can be a good game, and that people who already understand it could probably enjoy having another option for playing with their friends or perhaps strangers online (if you could find them for more than a week or two). The presentation is good, the concepts feel appropriately deep, and as a novice you do get the idea there’s plenty going on here under the hood. That said, making it approachable and helping people to discover the fun in it anew feels like a bit of an undertaking, and one that’s more poorly suited to this format.