SyphonGames

Keepsies: a guide to mibs, marbles and the eight Rings

Updated 18 October 2026

Keepsies is a big, old-fashioned adventure: a region of eleven towns and cities, 126 kinds of mib to keep, eight Rings to beat and a gang taking mibs by the crateful. This guide covers what matters most early on, and the things that are easy to miss later.

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The seaside village of Marver, where the story starts: a house, a signpost and the path out of town.
Keepsies on SyphonGames.

Getting started

You arrive in Marver, on the far coast of the Ambrey region, with your gran's sprint boots, a pink swirled marble and her ledger of every creature she ever met, half finished. Professor Maud Pennick would like it finished. Your first mib is one of three:

  • Pipmoss, the Bloom mib: strong against Tide, Earth and Stone, which makes it the easiest start, since the first two Rings are Stone and Tide.
  • Tuskling, the Tide mib: strong against Flame, Earth and Stone, so the first Ring is easy and the second a fair fight.
  • Kindlet, the Flame mib: strong against Bloom, Frost, Swarm and Metal, but the first two Rings both resist it. The hard start.

Your rival, Jory, always takes the one that beats yours. Pennick gives you five Clearie marbles; shops sell more.

Types: what beats what

There are eighteen types. A move of the right type does double damage, the wrong one half, and a few do nothing at all. Most pairings follow nature (Tide puts out Flame, Flame burns Bloom, Bloom drinks up Tide), but these are worth learning by heart:

  • Immunities: Normal moves cannot touch a Specter, and Specter moves cannot touch a Normal mib. Earth cannot hit Gale, Spark cannot hit Earth, Venom cannot hit Metal, Brawl cannot hit Specter, and Mind cannot hit Shade.
  • Glass is a type of its own: it beats Specter, Wyrm and Shade, and is resisted by Stone, Metal, Flame and other Glass.
  • Wyrm is only weak to Wyrm, Frost and Glass, which matters at the very end.
  • Brawl breaks Normal, Frost, Stone, Shade, Metal and Glass.
  • Status: Flame mibs cannot be burned, Venom and Metal mibs cannot be poisoned, Spark mibs cannot be paralysed and Frost mibs cannot be frozen.

Catching mibs

Weaken a wild mib, then throw a marble from your pack. The lower its health, the better your chances: a mib on its last sliver is about three times as easy to keep as a healthy one. A sleeping or frozen mib is twice as easy again, and a poisoned, burned or paralysed one half as easy again. Each marble has a job:

  • Clearie ($200): the everyday marble.
  • Swirl ($600): one and a half times as good.
  • Cat's-Eye ($1,200): twice as good.
  • Moonie ($1,000): three and a half times as good in caves.
  • Aggie ($1,000): three times as good on a kind of mib you have already kept.
  • Steelie ($1,000): four times as good, but only on the first turn of a battle.
  • Sulphide: a legendary marble that never fails. Save it for something you cannot afford to lose.

Most mibs change as they level up, but some only change while holding a shard of glass, or when they are traded.

The eight Rings

Each Ring Warden hands over a Taw, a champion's marble, and a Technique Disc. Most Taws also let your mibs do something new outside battle. In order, with the level of each Warden's strongest mib:

  1. Slatebury, the Stone Ring (level 14): Ogden, the quarry foreman. The Slate Taw lets a mib use Glimmer to light dark caves.
  2. Rillmouth, the Tide Ring (level 21): Coralie, who dives the estuary every morning. The Rill Taw unlocks Hew, to cut down thin saplings.
  3. Brassport, the Spark Ring (level 24): Hettie, who keeps the cranes running. The Brass Taw unlocks Soar, to fly to any town you have visited.
  4. Verdigris, the Bloom Ring (level 30): Posy, whose mibs grow strong and slow. The Verdigris Taw unlocks Heave, to shove boulders out of the way.
  5. Mirefield, the Mire Ring (level 39): Sloane, behind a maze of walls, with poison to spare. The Mire Taw unlocks Waveride, to cross deep water.
  6. Ashlar, the Glass Ring (level 43): Pell, who blew every pane in the Ring by hand. With the Prism Taw, traded mibs obey you without question.
  7. Cinderholm, the Flame Ring (level 47): Brannoch, sixty years at the fire, who quizzes you on the way in. The Cinder Taw.
  8. Brindle, the Keystone Ring (level 50): the last Warden, and a face you will recognise. The Keystone Taw opens the Grand Ring at Highcairn.

The Cullet

The Cullet sweep up other people's mibs and sell them. Their goons turn up around Rillmouth and in a den under the Tin Parlour in Verdigris, and their Magnate has to be beaten more than once before the story is done.

The Grand Ring and after

With all eight Taws, the Grand Ring at Highcairn opens: the High Four one after another (Isolde with Frost mibs, Duncan with Brawl, Morwenna with Specters and Draxley with Wyrms), then the Champion. Their teams run from the mid-fifties into the sixties, so bring a balanced six and plenty of tonics. Frost and Glass moves are the answer to Draxley's Wyrms.

Four legendary mibs wait in the far corners of the map, and one mythic mib only turns up when everything else is done.

Shiny mibs and the Glint Charm

Any wild mib can turn up in rare colours, about one time in 4,096. Keep 124 kinds and Pennick will tell you the ledger is finished, and give you your gran's Glint Charm, which makes those colours about three times as common.

Places worth finding

  • The Nursery, on the road between Ashlar and Brassport: leave a mib and it gains levels as you walk. Collecting it costs $100, plus $100 for every level it gained.
  • The Revival Lab in Cinderholm brings fossils back to life.
  • The Sallow Reserve, through its gate in Mirefield, has its own rules: no battles, only Park Marbles, bait and mud. Bait keeps a mib eating and less likely to run, but harder to keep; mud makes it angry, twice as easy to keep and twice as likely to flee. Fast mibs run soonest.
  • The Knuckledown Dojo in Ashlar, where Master Gowan fights with no discs and no brews.
  • The Tin Parlour in Verdigris, the prize parlour.
  • Fishing: some mibs only bite on a line. There are three rods, Twig, Reed and Steel, and each better rod hooks more kinds of mib, at higher levels.
  • The Freewheel Causeway, a road for bicycles only.

Trading and battling friends

Every clinic has a link desk, and the Link Hall in Ashlar has one for each kind of link. One player picks MAKE A CODE and reads out the four characters; the other picks TYPE A CODE and types them in. You can trade a mib or battle with the teams you have raised. There is no chat of any kind. Link play needs the SyphonGames site: a copy played anywhere else says the link is quiet.

Controls

Arrow keys or WASD to walk. Z, J or Space is A (talk and choose); X, K or Backspace is B (cancel). Enter or Esc opens the menu, C, Tab or Q uses your registered item, and holding Shift runs once you have the Sprint Boots. On a phone, use the on-screen pad and hold B to run. Save from the menu: the game keeps one save, in your browser.

Ready to play?

Keepsies runs in your browser, free, with nothing to install. Play Keepsies now, or browse the categories for something else.

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