Tower defence delight Dome Keeper is on sale with a big free update
Bubble trouble
Hello friend! Have you been suffering from a pronounced lack of domes in your life of late? Are your videogames dispiritingly dome-less? Well, good news - the "small, but perfectly formed tower defence game" Dome Keeper has just received a big free update, adding two new domes to its roster together with a dome supplements system, that you may dome like you've never domed before. Domes!
If you're new to Dome Keeper, it's another one of those fiendish games of "two halves", reassuringly kept apart by the sturdy but not imperishable membrane of your dome, which is also the only thing protecting you from the wildlife of the planet beyond, who attack in waves. To keep your dome intact and furnish it with defences, you must dig down and excavate gadgets and materials when you're not under assault. Katharine described it as surprisingly "chill", but with tension in the form of a countdown clock forever ushering you back to the surface.
This week's update introduces the Artillery Dome, which packs a high explosive mortar and rapid-fire AA gun (and has necessitated some changes to the game's control key bindings, to fit in the secondary fire ability), plus the Tesla Dome, which allows you to deploy electro orbs, and has some respectable Evangelion energy.
The dome supplements system, meanwhile, makes upgrading domes more flexible by replacing some bits of the tech tree with upgrades that can plug into already-existing upgrade tracks for your dome. To acquire these supplements, you'll need to discover a particular new chamber containing a power core.
There's a bunch of fixes in there too - find the full changelog on the Steam page. Dome Keeper is on Steam sale this weekend at 60% off, so it's a good time to take the plunge if this one passed you by in 2022. Or for a trip down memory lane, play the original browser-based Itch.io release and marvel at how far dome technology has advanced since Ludum Dare 48.