Keep the Heroes Out

Keep the Heroes Out puts one to four players in charge of the dungeon for once, casting them as a coalition of monster clans defending a hard-won treasure hoard against waves of invading "heroes" trying to loot it. Developed by Brueh Games and YarnCat Games as a digital adaptation of an existing, Kickstarter-funded tabletop board game, it's a cooperative, asymmetric deckbuilder: each player picks a monster clan with its own unique starting deck and special abilities, plays cards to move, defend, and craft new loot across a turn, then watches heroes advance across the dungeon at the end of it. It released as a full, non-Early-Access title on 9 December 2025 for Windows, macOS, and Linux, priced at US$19.99, with local co-op, online co-op, and cross-platform Remote Play Together support for up to four players.

A love letter to the board game, rendered a little roughly

The review pool is dominated by people who already own and love the physical version, and their verdict is consistently warm on the fundamentals. One reviewer, who owns "all the expansions and promos for the physical game," writes that in their house Keep the Heroes Out is "one of our most played board games in the last two years." Another simply states, "I own the board game and all the expansions, this is it, just digital. Perfect!" A third, who backed the original Kickstarter, calls the digital version "a true gem" that combines "tower (dungeon) defense with push-your-luck, deck-building, and asymmetric monsters," pointing to its nine playable monster clans and twenty scenarios as proof of lasting variety.

The presentation earns its own specific praise. Reviewers repeatedly call the art "adorable," "cute," and "colorful," and one highlights the thematic character design directly, describing how "the slimes split when they defend attacks" and "the skeleton places another skeleton when they kill a hero" as details that make each monster feel distinct to actually play. Combined with the puzzle-like challenge of positioning different monster roles, crowd-control, defensive, and support, against each turn's incoming heroes, several reviewers describe the core loop as a satisfying, strategic translation of the tabletop original.

Connection troubles and a tutorial that leaves players guessing

The negative reviews cluster tightly around two specific problems rather than the underlying design. The first is multiplayer stability: one reviewer describes buying the game for their partner and a friend specifically to play together, only to find they "couldn't get into a lobby together and stay connected," and that even falling back to Remote Play Together left the session "bugging in the tutorial and not letting us play." Another reviewer reports a softlock on their very first scenario that stranded the whole group mid-session, noting that "not even the force end turn button could save us." A third flags that Remote Play Together specifically "does not register anything but Player 1's controller," forcing every other player to share a single keyboard, a limitation serious enough that they downgraded their review score over it and said it "discourages me from inviting friends to play."

The second recurring complaint is the tutorial itself. One reviewer calls it "not very helpful" and says it "left me feeling stuck in several situations," while another lists specific mechanics, an entire new hero being introduced mid-run, multiple wave types, a "beast master" room, and how to check how many heroes remain to spawn, that they say the tutorial never adequately explains. That gap matters more than it might in a simpler game: Keep the Heroes Out layers deck-crafting, resource management, and asymmetric monster roles on top of each other quickly, and reviewers who bounced off the tutorial describe genuine confusion about win and loss conditions rather than just an unpolished onboarding screen.

Steam's own achievement data gives a rough proxy for how that difficulty and confusion plays out in practice. Of 46 tracked achievements, the most commonly earned sits at just 42.8% of players, killing a wave without losing a monster, while achievements tied to completing runs with all nine individual monster clans each sit at 0.2% to 0.7%. That's a wide spread even by roguelike standards, and it's consistent with reviewer accounts of a game whose scenarios can run long and whose harder difficulty settings, one reviewer compares "Hardcore" mode to "flipping a coin and needing it to land heads 16,000,000 times in a row", ask a lot of a player base still working out its rules.

Camera, clarity, and other small frictions

Beyond the headline connection and tutorial complaints, several reviewers point to smaller interface issues that compound the learning curve. One reviewer specifically calls out "the camera movement being VERY bizarre because the tiles and the pieces are not tied to the same plane," a complaint echoed by another who says the digital version's camera and UI make it "unplayable" by comparison to the physical board, going as far as to argue that Tabletop Simulator would give a more authentic experience with less friction. A third reviewer, more sympathetic overall, still asks for basic visibility fixes: "at least make the heroes easier to see," since figures on the board can blend together, and requests a redo-turn button for solo play so a single misclick doesn't cost an entire session.

Not every technical complaint is severe. Several reviewers frame their bug encounters as launch-week teething problems rather than fundamental flaws, with one noting a reported issue "already fixed" within days after they contacted the developer directly, and another predicting the game "will be an absolutely phenomenal game after a few updates" even while declining to recommend it at launch. That pattern, real but seemingly fixable technical rough edges layered on top of a design most reviewers already like, is the throughline across almost the entire negative side of the review pool.

Final verdict

Keep the Heroes Out translates a well-loved cooperative board game to digital form with real care for its art, its asymmetric monster roles, and its underlying strategic puzzle, and reviewers who already know the tabletop original are largely won over. But a meaningful share of its launch reviews describe co-op connection failures, a session-ending softlock, and a tutorial that leaves newer players guessing at basic rules, problems serious enough that several reviewers who clearly wanted to love the game walked away recommending against it anyway. Worth a look for board game fans playing solo or with a reliable local group; worth waiting on patches for anyone planning to rely on online or remote-play co-op.