Keeps Weekly III: Purity of Heart

 This is an archive from the Keeps Weekly, a newsletter that ran from April 22 to June 3, 2026.

Hark!

One month now until the big launch and wheels are turning. Let's see what's in store this week.

PROGRESS UPDATES

I spent this past weekend in DC coaching for the National Science Bowl. Which seems unrelated, until you consider the confluence of teams from every state in a single conference center. Teams of people who are so into thinking that they do it for fun. So yeah, its like the perfect place for Keeps publicity.

We played each night at the common dinner, which attracted attention—I brought ten preview copies with me and left with one. It was nice seeing people excited and supportive of the game, and cool watching the web traffic for our site proliferate across the nation in one week:

As for the box art, the majority of you preferred box 3:

The design is not final, but it gives us direction. Thanks to everyone who gave their take. Next week, we will share more design details.

CARD SPOTLIGHT

Not all glitters that is gold. One's devotion may fetch a value beyond material devices...

Purity is a fickle card. Its value of ten coins is more than thrice that of any other coin card, yet that value is conditional on your lack of any other coins. Conditional, that is, on your purity.

With Purity in the deck, you will learn to be wary of any player who seems to have little care for money. A player with zero coins is potentially one action away from having ten: until Purity shows its face, never assume you have a safe lead.

Purity can take you from last to lead in an instant, but it is equally fragile. In a common twist of fate, you may find yourself playing coins into another player's keep, simply to render them impure. So one can't rely on Purity for a win without a sense of timing or deception. To check if this is true for you, visit the following three Purity-puzzles:

EASY         MEDIUM          HARD

BLOG HIGHLIGHT

Maybe you are the kind of person who likes the theme of a game more than the playing of it. To get a better sense of the "world" of Keeps, pore over On Theming, which tells you a bit about the actual meaning behind a round.

GIVEAWAY

We appreciate the feedback on the box art. The winner of last week's giveaway is Brayan, a long time supporter from New Jersey! Brayan was one of our first play-testers, back when we printed on card stock at Fed-Ex. Time for an upgrade, Brayan.

We also found it interesting that three separate people all somehow converged on the pun "It's TIME to play Keeps!" for box three. Great minds.

To win this week's giveaway, make a post somewhere to spread the good word of Keeps, and give the Keeps Courier a link to the post. Remember to use the subject "Giveaway 3". It can be a clever tweet, a Reddit post, or just a picture of you and some friends with the website showing. The most creative wins! (It will be helpful if you include a link to our site in your post :)

IN CLOSING

Thanks for coming back for week three. This mailing list is our ticket to Kickstarter success on June 10th. If you know someone who likes to enjoy life, please forward this email to them! It helps more than you know.

Until next week,

David & Elaina