Digital Extremes Announces Keystone

Digital Extremes, the weird people who made Warframe and filled it full of weird prepubescent space kids, are making a new game called Keystone. They announced the new game on their new Twitter account, @PlayKeystone. The announcement was on the 23rd of May, and there’s also a related website, PlayKeystone.com.

The game is said to be a first-person, team-based shooter. It’s set in some other timeline, not at all related to Warframe, with ‘every move’ transporting you into battle. Keystone will apparently blend first-person action with ‘deck-building strategies’, implying there’s some sort of collectible card element to the game, perhaps similar to Paladins. From the two pictures they’ve released, it looks like some sort of Overwatch/TF2/Paladins-esque class-based thing, but there’s a lack of information on whether Keystone will be a coop game like Warframe, or a PvP adventure.

My money is on a Paladins sort of game, but there’s basically no information right now so I’m just speculating. Still, that sort of game has proven pretty popular right now.

The art style in particular is pretty interesting and is what caught my eye the most. Looks rather 80’s Sci-Fi, more of a pop culture look rather than the more cartoony ‘Pixar’ look of Team Fortress 2. Digital Extremes have shown they can create pretty unique environments, so even if the game turns out to be mediocre, at the very least it will be nice to look at. And considering how efficient the engine used for Warframe is, Keystone will probably work well on even potato computers.

Keystone claims that it will be a free game, using the specific words “free game” rather than “free to play”, so it will most likely follow the same system that Warframe has. Whether Keystone will have the same amount of grind is yet to be seen.

According to Twitter posts, this is made by a separate team at Digital Extremes, so all the people worrying that Warframe is gonna die should probably stop worrying because Warframe probably isn’t going anywhere. After all, they’ve got a new Warframe, Harrow, coming out soon, alongside a ‘darker’ quest with the Red Veil, and the new Prime Access featuring Oberon Prime, Silvia and Aegis Prime and Sybaris Prime.

Keystone is currently planned to be for PC only, and people can sign up now to apply for the upcoming Closed Alpha and reserve their usernames. More information is coming soon, and I bet DE will probably announce more at Tennocon, their yearly convention.

If anyone’s interested, I have a referral link here. Anyone who registers is given a referral link to share with friends. Apparently if you refer enough people you get something special (early access, VIP stuff) but I don’t care about that. Although knowing my luck, I won’t get into the Alpha. The only closed beta thing I’ve ever gotten into was Battleborn and it never loaded.

Oh well.

Either way, Keystone looks pretty neat, so good luck to them, I guess. Can’t wait to find out more.