Summary
- Xbox Wire got an exclusive hands-on with the opening hours of Double Fine’s Keeper.
- There seems to be more to this game than we’ve been shown so far – read on to find out more.
- Keeper arrives for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, Game Pass, and Steam on October 17.
Double Fine seems to have a surprise in store for us. Every time we’ve seen Keeper since its reveal earlier this year, this psychedelic adventure has shown off its hero – a walking lighthouse – exploring surreal landscapes and solving puzzles alongside Twig, its bird companion. But having now played its opening hours, I’m left with the distinct impression that this is far from all the game has in store – Keeper seems to be hiding something unexpected.
But let’s begin at the beginning, because this is new to us, too. Keeper is a narrative adventure told without a key component – no one speaks (at least, no one speaks in a human language), and the only legible text you’ll find comes in the form of rare onscreen control prompts. From the very beginning, it thrives on atmosphere and player intuition.
As the game opens, we see Twig and a flock of other birds being chased by what its developers call The Wither, a bee-like swarm of threatening, purple… matter. Twig is taken off course, and lands with a thump on the Lighthouse, which activates its beacon, warding the darkness away. Many games open with tutorials, but I’ve seen very few that literally see your character learning to walk.
In a lovely introduction to how the game teaches the player without simply telling them what to do, you realise that your left thumbstick causes the lighthouse to lean. Naturally, you’ll test this out a little – until it abruptly snaps off at the base and, through a process we’re left to guess at, grows four spindly legs. From here, you get up, and – like a nature documentary about a baby giraffe – send your lighthouse tottering downhill, working out how exactly to operate its new limbs.
It’s a tutorial pitched like a comedy – as you struggle to gain control, the lighthouse skitters into abandoned cars and rundown houses, smashing them to pieces in its efforts. Eventually, it learns to walk, then run, and we begin a journey with no objective other than the subtle implication to find out: “what’s up that mountain?”
And there is a lot to see – Keeper presents an incredible world, driven by startlingly unusual art design. Battered coastlines are littered with the skeletons of unidentifiable beasts; lush valleys are filled with chittering alien creatures; a nearby hill might turn out to be a gigantic beast made up of building-sized snail shells that uproots and moves alongside you.
Textures across all of this appear almost painterly in places – you can see brushstrokes making up their surface. And tying it all together is a gorgeous approach to light, sunlight streaming between hills to fill your screen with technicolor bloom effects, and cave systems lit by bioluminescent fungus that blooms as you pass, illuminating the way forward by way of shimmering reflections in rockpools.
Every new area feels like a discovery of something new – which carries over into the game design. In an interactive sense, Keeper is all about puzzles – without combat, or player death, it’s driven entirely by a loop of exploration-puzzle-exploration. The Lighthouse soon learns that it can use its beacon to shine across the world around it – plants grow, creatures react, and Twig can even be guided to specific objects to push or pull at puzzle elements. Later, it can effectively charge that beacon to create even larger effects, scaring away threats, or clearing obstacles.
It’s a simple palette of abilities that are repeatedly used to create wildly different puzzle solutions, with the game slowly teaching you through experience, not tutorial pop-ups.
Fairly soon, you’ll be layering these abilities together – reaching a mountain pass blocked by an enormous skull, you’ll see it ensnared by purple vines, connected to a flower. You use the beacon to cause the flower to bloom, then send Twig to perch on its stamen, and use the thumbstick to tug it out. That causes the vines to retreat, the skull’s jaw falls open and, hey presto, you have a bridge.
But those same interactions are used in an entirely different way a little later. At one point, you reach a village filled with scuttling clockwork robots and, at its centre, a broken machine that seems to be causing the entire area to fluctuate through time – waves of energy radiating out, causing buildings to collapse and reassemble.
As you poke around, you realise that certain statues can send you to the past, present, and future with a shine of your light – and, crucially, while the lighthouse is unaffected, Twig will transform into an egg while in the past, and… something else (no spoilers) in the future.
This lengthy puzzle forces you to use all three forms – regular Twig can push and pull at objects as usual, helping you use machinery to make your way around, but egg-Twig is a hefty weight (which can be used to press certain platforms). You’re left to work out how to manipulate time itself, to make your way through three different temples in order to fix the broken machine in the village.
Most impressively, so little of this is explicitly explained to you – there’s almost a dream logic to how puzzles are solved, which means entering every new area results in a period of pure discovery, as you find your way around, learn how things work, and experiment, before realizing the path you need to take. It’s a rolling series of “aha” moments.
Without spoiling too much of that journey, I battle terrible weather, get plunged into spooky depths not previously shown in the trailers, subvert gravity itself, and build my own, personal picture of what I think the story behind all this might be (it’s a wonderful balance of giving you clues, without ever truly confirming them). The Lighthouse and Twig have bonded along the way – and the personality Double Fine has managed to give both of them, without words or facial expressions, is astounding.
The message is clear – Keeper aims to change how its puzzles and set pieces work at every given opportunity. It’s not a game about mastering systems, it’s a game about discovering them – mechanics change, solutions shift. There’s a restlessness to the design, each section itching to show you something new.
While I’m not shown exactly what’s to come, the very end of my playthrough teases that Keeper plans to push that philosophy further than I’d ever expected. To preserve the surprise, let’s just say that, by the end of my demo, I was left wondering exactly what this game was about to become.
Which leaves me delightedly impatient for the full game to arrive. We’ll find out exactly what secrets Keeper has been, er, keeping when it arrives for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, and Steam on October 17. It will be an Xbox Play Anywhere title, and available day one with Game Pass.
Keeper
Xbox Game Studios
On an island in a long-lost sea, a forgotten lighthouse stands dormant in the shadow of a distant mountain peak. As withering tendrils spread and coalesce, it awakens. Taken with a mysterious sense of purpose and joined by a spirited seabird, it embarks upon a heartening tale of unlikely companionship, an odyssey of mystifying metamorphosis, and an unexpected journey towards the center of the island, into realms beyond understanding.
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