Keeper may not be for everyone, but the atmospheric, surrealist puzzler from Psychonauts and Brutal Legend studio Double Fine is a beautiful reminder of the senses of wonder and discovery that are unique to video games as an artistic medium.
A bird, fleeing a dark presence chasing it through a storm, crash-lands next to a long-dormant and rundown lighthouse, awakening it. The house turns its spotlight on and scares off the dark presence, and like a duckling laying eyes on the first thing it sees post-hatching, the bird bonds with this lighthouse. This would be the end of a Studio Ghibli-inspired animated short, except the lighthouse then falls over, grows legs, and begins stumbling like a toddler around this beautiful, bright, bizarre world.
Keeper’s vibes, I’m told at an Xbox behind-closed-doors presentation during Gamescom, is “weird but chill.” There’s no death and no failure, just a surreal world you can explore. The lighthouse can direct its beam of light at objects and strange creatures in the environment, causing cutesy interactions or crucial changes to the space. And the bird can temporarily leave its post at the top of the lighthouse tower to interact with objects, like turn cranks or fetch items.
These puzzles won’t stump you, but they will delight you, and that’s kind of the point. During the covid 19 pandemic, creative director Lee Petty did a lot of hiking and found himself meditating on isolation, and what it can do to the psyche. Drawing inspiration from Hayao Miyazaki, Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, and surrealist painters, he began crafting Keeper, which is the first game Double Fine developed entirely under the Xbox umbrella (the gaming monolith purchased the studio back in 2019).
And though many have spoken about the perils of Xbox Game Pass for the industry (not to mention Microsoft’s reported involvement in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the BDS movement’s ongoing boycott of the company), Tim Schafer, Studio Head at Double Fine, says folding into Xbox was a boon for creativity. No longer burdened by the notion that they must make an easily pitchable, easily sellable, commercially viable game, Keeper is the product of a new, more experimental approach. “It helps us,” he says. When asked if Keeper is a kind of platonic ideal when it comes to Game Pass games, Schafer agrees.
Schafer says the idea was to “make something really weird and different,” and Keeper is certainly that. The snippets of gameplay we see at the presentation highlight Keeper’s dedication to telling an entirely wordless story—the budding friendship between this semi-surreal bird and this crumbling lighthouse is apparent, so much so that a brief moment where the lighthouse almost falls off the edge of a cliff and the bird struggles valiantly to pull it up nearly made me cry.
Keeper is, according to Schafer, a “game that wants to be completed.” The puzzles aren’t “super fiendish,” and the gameplay isn’t even remotely punishing. At one point, the lighthouse stumbles into a trippy version of a southwestern mesa that is swirling with teals, purples, and blues. Barbie-pink tufts of a cotton-candy-like substance litter the ground and stick to the lighthouse it crashes through, quickly revealing that they’re making it more buoyant. A delightful platforming moment ensues where the lighthouse gets a chance to soar like its bird friend.
Keeper is a “short and sweet” experience that lasts around six to eight hours, a bite-sized game bursting with life, creativity, and empathy. It will be released on October 17 of this year, straight to Game Pass.
Alyssa Mercante is a freelance video game and internet culture journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Jezebel, Kotaku, and more, and she regularly streams on Twitch.
