Keeper’s Toll (XSX) Review

Keeper’s Toll, published by EastAsiaSoft, is the latest Vampire Survivors clone but with one key difference from the dozen others released this week – this one is actually good.

The inspiration from Vampire Survivors is blatantly obvious. There are multiple heroes, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and attacks. Each stage is outfitted with its own theme. There are permanent upgrades that slowly unlock across all characters. The pixel art and animation are well done and the action is constant. Run time is also capped at the twenty or thirty minute mark.

One of the gimmicks that separates Keeper’s Toll are the optional objectives that appear during a run. Every few minutes, the player receives a warning that something has appeared in the distance. For example, the player can accept to receive a temporary curse which makes survival harder for the next few minutes. Survive, however, and be rewarded with a buff for the rest of the run. Shops can also appear, giving players a worthwhile reason to spend their collected gold. Sometimes secrets can be found and there are numerous destructible parts of the environment that also reward the player with added experience. Bosses, mini bosses, and growing enemies change every couple of minutes so the player needs to adjust tactics on the fly. In other words, the enemy variety is good, the action is solid, and the sense of satisfaction is constant. 

Any good Survivors game is going to have loads of upgrades and this is no exception. Each enhancement can make the player a little faster, stronger, or unlock new abilities, for example. It is the constant, quick upgrades that make this genre so fun. Building yourself to become a steamrolling powerhouse is always satisfying and something to target.

Unfortunately, my biggest complaint comes from the mid-game steep difficulty spike. Without spoiling too much, the player needs to revisit the first stage and collect an item. However, this item, of course, must be plucked from the corpse of a super boss. Surviving to even reach this boss fight is highly difficult, and I died more than my fair share of times, forcing me to grind for a bit to unlock some of those tiny permanent upgrades. Even then, completing this next step is brutally unfair. Everything was well balanced until this point so players beware. The soundtrack is also good, but starts to antagonize the player with the longer play times and required retries.

While it doesn’t have as much content as Vampire Survivors, Keeper’s Toll aligns with its quality and easily stands as the one of the best, if not the best, clone I’ve played. It costs a couple of bucks more, but this digital download is easily worth the price of admission especially if you exhausted all the content in the game that draws its inspiration. 

Also Play: Dagger Froggy

Better Than: most other Survivors clones released over the last couple years

Wait For It: a co-op Survivors game with online support

By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com

X/Twitter: @ZackGaz

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