I’ve always had a liking for games made by Double Fine. It’s true that not all their games are a hit, but that’s because they’re one of the few game makers who aren’t afraid to try new things. When they joined Xbox Game Studios, some people worried they’d have to make safer games. And indeed, their first game after that was Psychonauts 2, which was probably the safest choice they had.
Thankfully, many of those worries can be put aside now because Keeper shows that Double Fine can still come up with really unusual game ideas. In this game, you play as the Keeper, a living lighthouse whose light can push back a spreading darkness. A cute bird-like creature lands on your head, and your journey begins to reach a faraway mountain and get rid of this corruption for good.
Right from the start, you feel a strong connection to the character, even though it’s just a lighthouse. The game’s look is a nice mix of real-world beauty and cartoonish style. This lets you see all the little details on the lighthouse, like cracks and worn spots, while also adding things like metal eyebrows above its light so it can show feelings.
The story is told through actions, not words, and it’s done very well. There’s no talking at all, but you understand everything. The Keeper stumbles and falls a lot at first because it’s just learning to walk. This is sweet and makes you feel for it, but it’s also a bit strange since you’re doing this while walking through a place where other Keepers have died.
This mix of happy and sad feelings is Keeper’s best trick. The world is bright and colorful, full of fun, but it can also feel scary and dark very quickly. It’s not just the spreading corruption that causes this; sometimes the surroundings themselves are dangerous as you try to solve puzzles and climb the mountain.
The game does a great job of taking you through different parts of this world. It introduces a new puzzle idea, plays with it for a bit, and then moves on quickly once it’s used all it can from it. This keeps the three-hour game moving at a good speed, so you’re never stuck on one thing for too long, either in how it looks or how you play.
The puzzles aren’t super hard, but each one has clever ideas that make you enjoy them for more than just how they work. One of the best parts has you using special points to move forward and backward in time. This makes for fun puzzles where you change the world around you. But what makes it even better is how it shows this. The first time you go back in time, you’ll see your little bird friend turn back into an egg. Going forward might make them turn into bones and become a ghost until you return to the present.
The game doesn’t just stick to one style. I was quite surprised when halfway through, you change from a lighthouse into a boat and spend time solving puzzles on the sea. Then, the game ends with some fast-paced action that feels like Sonic the Hedgehog. I won’t explain that last part; you should play it to find out.
The game keeps giving you new ideas to think about, which really change how you play and how fast things happen. You go from slowly walking as a lighthouse, to smoothly sailing as a boat, to rolling around super fast. It uses its short playtime to let you try out many different ideas, and then it ends before it gets boring.
However, there are some parts that could be better, especially the camera. It usually does a good job of showing you where to go, but sometimes it annoyingly swings to look at something in the opposite direction. Even though Keeper is a straightforward game, there are a few hidden things that give you more story. Finding these is a bit tricky when the camera doesn’t seem to want you to find them. The same happens when you have to go back the way you came; the camera moves too slowly if you try to turn around, especially in later parts where you move much faster.
It’s also not always clear which things in the environment you can interact with. This didn’t happen often, but a few times, a symbol appeared telling me to focus my light on something, and I had no idea what part of the scene it was talking about. While the world looks beautiful and colorful, this means some important things don’t stand out when they need to.
Still, having strange and wonderful ideas with a few small problems in how they work is pretty much what Double Fine is known for. In Keeper’s case, it does such a great job of creating a world that pulls you in and looks beautiful, with a simple but sweet story about two unlikely friends saving the world. Because of this, the small annoyances fade away when you think about the whole experience. Keep being you, Double Fine.
