Keel

Keel

Command a fleet across the layers of the deep.

A free, hard science fiction fleet game. You command a small fleet on a shared hex star chart, fit every ship yourself, and win with timing, position and control rather than reflexes or a gear score.

Play in your browser Or download for Windows, Linux or Android

Free alpha, one shared server. Build 0.7.0.

The fleet

Twenty-four hulls, four factions by six classes from Patrol to Dreadnought, each a 3D model you turn in Fitting with every module on its own mount. These are the four faction Dreadnoughts.

The Raider Dreadnought: a cluster of dark domes around an orange core dome, ringed with spikes and trailing cables.

Raiders

Impact

Impact beats Phase, so Raider guns hit Sentry shields and armour 15 percent harder, and take 15 percent less back from them. Breaker Plasma does the same to Raiders. Their side of the Resonance Wheel is volley and grapple.

The Sentry Dreadnought: a long lattice of crossed struts around a dark core, with pale blue lights at the joints and a glass dome on top.

Sentries

Phase

Phase beats Plasma. Sentries win against Breakers and lose to Raiders, and their side of the Resonance Wheel is shield and mender repair.

The Breaker Dreadnought: a blocky slate hull stacked with armoured modules, a bank of lit vents at the stern and a plough-shaped prow.

Breakers

Plasma

Plasma beats Impact. Breakers win against Raiders and lose to Sentries, and their side of the Resonance Wheel is hull and Reinforce restore.

The Human Dreadnought: a long grey and pearl hull with a raised bridge, four turret wells along its deck and six engine bells at the stern.

Humans

Split damage, even resists

The faction every pilot starts in. A Human gun splits each shot into thirds of Impact, Phase and Plasma, and Human armour resists all three evenly: ready for anything, best at nothing.

Rendered from the hull models the client loads, in the colours it paints them. A Dreadnought belongs to a charter, not a pilot: it takes a Shard sum of 300, a Keel bought at a Raider, Sentry or Breaker Enclave, and a three-day build.

A session

Built for sessions of 25 to 50 minutes. Nothing important needs a four-hour lock.

Undock from a Haven

Every layer but the last has a Haven, a safe station at the centre of the map. Dock there to refill, fit, store and trade; undock to launch your fleet with hull and battery full.

You field one fleet within 24 command points: six ships through the first-week tasks, up to ten with Muster nodes on your Resonance Wheel. A Patrol and a Frigate cost 1, a Destroyer 2, a Cruiser 3 and a Carrier 4.

The Keel client docked at the Layer 1 Haven: six Carriers berthed in the fleet column, a Raider Carrier on the cradle, and the Fitting, Repair, Insurance, Market, Industry and Stash cards around it.
Docked at the Layer 1 Haven with six Carriers. Every service is a card around the ship on the cradle.

Fight on the timers

Press Attack on a contact to start a lock: 2 seconds for a Patrol, up to 4 for a Carrier. Then the guns cycle on their own until the target dies, leaves, or you stop. Shields refill on a clock and the battery pays for every shot.

The buttons that change a fight: Reinforce restores hull and raises every resist for 3 seconds, Grapple holds an NPC in its sector, and Jam silences a locked target's powers for about 3 seconds.

A fight on Layer 1: the fleet column shows six Carriers in contact, the threat list a Raider Patrol with Attack lit, and Reinforce, Grapple, Jam and Cut Free along the bottom.
Contact on Layer 1. The fleet cards turn to CONTACT, the threat list holds the target, and the powers wait on their keys.

Fit every ship

Drag modules from the stash onto weapon slots, hull fittings and the Defence, Offence and Utility wells. Every module spends power grid equal to its rank, and the grid is the limit: 8, 14, 22, 32 and 44 from Patrol to Carrier.

Quanta raise an equipped item one grade at a time, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary and Ultimate, for 5, 25, 125 and 625.

The Fitting screen for a Raider Carrier: the 3D hull on its pad, weapon, Defence, Offence, Utility and hull fitting wells, 585.8 DPS, 2,583 hull and 1,512 shield, and the module tray below.
Fitting a Raider Carrier: the 3D hull above its wells, 585.8 DPS, and 11 of 44 power grid spent.

Dock, or lose the hull

Docking refills everything. Layer 1 never destroys a hull. Past it, a hull at zero is gone for good, and its cargo drops as a wreck where it died, for anyone in the sector to take.

Layer 2 on the hex chart: the fleet at the Haven in the middle, an incursion outlined in a chain of hexes to the right, and ore belts and gas clouds across the sectors.
Layer 2, with an incursion outlined in the hexes to the right of the Haven.

The deep

Six layers stack up, each paying more and hitting harder. NPC strength doubles with every layer, and Layer 6 has no Haven.

Layer 1 in space with the warning capsule open: a dust surge is building on Layer 1 and it reshapes in 4:57, next storm Layer 1 at 2 PM.
The five-minute warning: a dust surge is building, and the layer reshapes in 4:57.

Storms

At the top of every hour a storm hits one layer, so each layer takes a new shape four times a day. A banner counts down the last five minutes. The Haven and the six sectors around it never move, nor do sectors holding a structure or an incursion.

Wormholes and Rifts

Wormholes open at random and last 30 to 90 minutes. Some lead into the six Rifts: maps of their own with about twice the NPCs and twice the loot of their layer, and no Haven.

Incursions

Invasions on Layer 2 and deeper. The sectors light up 60 seconds before the ships arrive, in three waves: a screen of Patrols and Frigates, a battle line, then a command group of Carriers.

Who you meet

Layer 1 has no player fire. Layer 2 allows a duel both pilots accept. From Layer 3 it is open fire, and every pilot you meet is a real person on one shared server.

Build and trade

Mine it, refine it, build it, sell it. Everything a pilot flies can come from another pilot's hands.

From ore to hull

14 ores, 14 refined elements, 5 gases and 6 alloys, from Steel to Tungsten Alloy, feed 10 components and every recipe for modules, hulls and Dreadnoughts. Wolframite and Cobaltite are found only in Rifts 1 to 3.

The Workbench adds lines to a module with kits that fill, reroll, rewire, clear or lock them. Nothing there can destroy a module.

The Industry screen on its Blueprints tab: 125 blueprints in a list, a manufacture preview for two Raider weapons with a 4 minute job, a 1,600 Scrip fee and its bill of Iron, Lithium and Copper, and the Workbench tab in the row above.
Industry: a Raider weapon job priced in Iron, Lithium and Copper. The Workbench is the fifth tab.

One market, from anywhere

Every item type has its own book of buy and sell orders with 30 days of price history. Scrip is the money, and a sale to another pilot pays 5 percent tax.

The Market on the Iron book: an average price of 1,009 Scrip with six days of history, sellers and buyers below, and the Buy and Create Orders buttons.
The Iron book: price history, sellers and buyers, and a Buy button for the lowest seller.

Charters, Dreadnoughts and Titans

A charter is your player group. It adds up its members' Resonance Shards, and the sum opens its yards, its Doctrine Board and its Dreadnoughts.

The Doctrine Board

Six tracks of ten ranks each, paid for by the charter's Shard sum: one point per 10 of sum up to 300, then one per 20. A charter of one counts, so a solo founder gets the board from their own Shard.

Dreadnoughts

The sixth hull class. It hits and tanks harder than any Carrier, is very slow, and shows on the map of everyone on its layer. Its 60 second Siege triples its damage while it is rooted.

Titans

A faction's war machine, met only inside its own pocket. A Dreadnought lights a Titan Beacon and the pocket opens for an hour, to anyone who follows it in, rivals too.

The Resonance Wheel

Your own passive tree. Each Shard level up to 50 earns a point to spend across three regions: volley and grapple, shield and mender repair, hull and Reinforce restore.

New in 0.6.0

Out 25 October 2026. Modules fitted at a Haven move to your stash once, so refit after your first login.

  • Every hull in 3DAll 24 hulls are detailed models in Fitting, with every fitted module on its own mount. Drag to turn and tilt the ship.
  • The Industry reworkA full material chain of ores, elements, gases and alloys, and the Workbench, a fifth Industry tab for adding and rerolling module lines.
  • Eight new module kindsFive bring new powers: Harden, Recharge, Burn, Mark and Spoof. The Lance and the Driver join the Gun as weapon families.
  • Twelve uniquesFixed modules with one strong rule and one cost, from Titan kills, Rift incursion clears and world bosses.
  • Typed wells and stash tabsDefence, Offence and Utility wells across the hulls, and a stash in tabs with their own grids, search and sort.
  • Clearer namesScrip, Quanta and Renown; Reinforce, Grapple and Sweep; Stand and Regroup. Your balances, keys and saved fittings carry over.

Download and play

Every build reaches the same server with the same account, so a desktop pilot and a phone pilot share one world.

In your browser

Nothing to install. A current Chrome, Edge or Firefox on a computer, or the browser on an Android phone or an iPhone, held sideways. The first visit loads the game behind a progress bar; later visits start faster.

Play in your browser

The size and SHA-256 of each file are listed in latest.json.

On Windows

  1. Unzip anywhere. Keep Keel.exe and Keel.pck in the same folder.
  2. Run Keel.exe. The alpha is not signed yet, so Windows may say “Windows protected your PC”: choose More info, then Run anyway.
  3. Your browser may say the zip is not commonly downloaded, because this site is new. Check its SHA-256, then keep it.

On Android

  1. Open this page on the phone and download the APK.
  2. When Android says the browser may not install apps, open Settings, turn on Allow from this source, then open the download again.
  3. Keel is not on Google Play, so Play Protect may not know it: choose More details, then Install anyway.
  4. To update, open the new APK to install it over the old one; your account and settings stay.

On Linux

Unzip anywhere and run ./Keel.x86_64 from its folder. If it will not start, mark it as a program first with chmod +x Keel.x86_64.

Check a download

Compare the SHA-256 above with the file you saved: Get-FileHash in PowerShell on Windows, sha256sum on Linux. A file that does not match is not ours.

Alpha

Plays on
A browser, Windows, Linux and Android
Controls
Mouse and keyboard; touch on a phone
Price
Free
Server
One shared server for every build

Lose a hull beyond Layer 1 and it is gone for good.

Keel is an alpha. Rules and numbers still move, and the big changes go to a community vote.

To report a bug or an idea, press Report at the top of the game and write up to 800 characters; your location, ships and recent log go with it. Reports are posted publicly in Keel's Discord with your pilot name, and the ones that lead to a fix put it on the Bug Hunters board.

When the login page says a new build is out, download it from this page. The browser build is the newest one every time you open it.

Dev log

All 15 posts