Keyper is Richard Breese’s Keyflower successor

Keyflower designer Richard Breese has detailed his next instalment in the ‘Key’ series, Keyper.

2012’s Keyflower was the seventh entry in the line that began with Keywood in 1995 and went onto include 1998’s Keydom (which Breese claims was the first-ever worker placement game) and 2002’s Keythedral.

Keyflower is arguably Breese’s best-known work, currently sitting comfortably inside BoardGameGeek’s all-time and strategy Top 30 rankings.

Keyper will be the first medieval Key game since Keyflower, which was expanded in 2013 and 2014 by add-ons The Farms and The Merchants, respectively. A London-themed spin-off, Key to the City, was launched earlier this year.

The game is said to share several of Keyflower’s mechanics, taking place over four seasons and involving worker placement.

Each player begins with eight differently-coloured ‘keyples’ – provided in both male and female variations – as well as a ‘keyper’, which is used to claim a country board at the end of each season.

Actions and resources are earned by placing keyples onto fields on the country boards or plots on each player’s village board. Country boards claimed at the end of each season will net those keyples for the controlling player.

Keyper is due out next autumn, with Breese announcing that there will be a Kickstarter campaign for the game in the future.