The goal with Warkeep is to allow someone who’s not a huge fan of any particular genre to enjoy this. In your case not being a huge fan of tower defense, ideally with the right combination of abilities (you would choose the abilities before starting a region from a large variety that are unlocked over time) coupled with the right choices on rooms and towers, you can easily have a hand’s off approach where you’re focusing on using the hero to hold back the waves while utilizing the Warkeep as cover for the hero. We’ve discussed potentially having much more control over the hero if that is the intent of the player (i.e. allowing you to use WASD and various skills for a more active experience).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFsKLSg--64
So this is a bit on the extremes, but this is a really poor tower coupled with a complete lack of upgrades (whether on the keep core which would reinforce the rooms, towers, and walls or the rooms/towers themselves which would keep the units effective against the stronger waves). It has holes everywhere which collapse when initial damage is applied to the base of the keep, and then rooms and towers are a bit easier to get to (as seen by most of the towers being destroyed). Now the rooms falling isn’t necessarily a bad thing (i.e. when we had the rooms in a column above the keep core in the first look video). Rooms collapsing on enemies function like a trap dealing heavy damage and pushing the enemies back. But you generally wouldn’t want your rooms being destroyed as the units are extremely valuable.
As for the other genres, the demo is focusing mainly on the Tetris-like tile matching to build the keep along with the tower defense. As mentioned above, the hero will be a major focus (either hand’s off where it functions more in-line with an RTS game where you simply send the hero out, or the concept mentioned at the start where you directly control the hero).
The battlefield map gives you more strategy based on whatever objective needs to be accomplished. For instance, if the goal is simply to kill the commander of the enemy army, you could try to beeline towards the location you expect them to, or you could explore each region thoroughly which opens up the possibility of unlocking new abilities, heroes, items, and more. There will be quite a few different objectives ranging from clearing a percentage of enemy troops, killing an enemy boss, finding an artifact, activating magical shrines, and various quest objectives provided by liberating towns and cities.
The world map functions like an RTS game (and the game itself is in real-time albeit you’re given ample time within each region to not have it majorly affect events outside). It will have two elements: the enemy keeps which each spawn an army that will generally react to your movements (and require you to destroy them to win the game), and your actions themselves. Each region has a certain bonus it can provide when held (such as more pieces, more troops, or more times you can rebuild your keep during a battle). Regions can also contain special bonuses such as an imprisoned hero, items that boost the abilities of your hero, new abilities you can use, and more. A general world map scouting mechanism allows you to identify where the best resources that fit your game style are at to plan out your expansion.
The initial region chosen determines the initial difficulty on multiple fronts. Starting far away from the enemy keeps means that its less likely they’ll even notice your efforts until you’ve expanded to many regions nearby. You’ll also be dealing with much easier troops. Once they notice, however, they’ll begin sending their armies to take back their outlying regions. When an army invades a region owned by the player, the Warkeep that was built at that location will be reloaded and assaulted by a strong force. If successfully defended, that enemy’s keep will eventually respawn a new army but they will be at a major disadvantage if you begin invading them.
If the enemy succeeds and taking back the region, you lose all benefits from that region, and they’ll continue invading nearby areas. This becomes even more problematic if the lost region disconnects your active location from the rest of your holdings. Like a supply line, you’d lose all benefits except from the connected regions. This becomes debilitating when you’re trying to attack the harder villains, and you need every benefit you can muster to defeat the waves they toss at you. You’re suddenly trying to attack this army with half the pieces and troops necessary to easily hold your own against them.
TL;DR Overall if I were to say what sort of Frankenstein’s monster Warkeep is, it is a mixture of Battle for Middle Earth (world map RTS elements), Stronghold (2D version for building, reinforcing, and systems like traps that we’ll have in the final game), Kingdom Rush (side view of their tower defense elements), Tetris (self explanatory) and Darkest Dungeon (battlefield map being procedurally generated and promoting exploration at a cost along with a smattering of RPG elements with the hero unit leveling up and having a very rudimentary equipment system (one slot for an armor set and one slot for a weapon, but no inventory system).
