Keeper Review

Keeper is an essential Double Fine adventure with its weird, unique, and wholesome nature. The odyssey of the lonely lighthouse felt like playing through some of the greatest works of the singular Dr Seuss, which doesn’t get more wholesome, weird and unique than that.

In Keeper, you become a walking lighthouse that embarks on a journey with no reasoning, no words and nothing to guide you. With only a mountain in your sight, you embark on a journey full of ups and downs, that is anything but predictable and the less you know, the better.

Keeper harkens back to a simpler time when games had the freedom to be weird and didn’t need to be a live service, have DLC or be part of an existing IP. Keeper has a gorgeous painterly aesthetic, a captivating score, interesting gameplay that evolves with great pacing and although it doesn’t demand much from the player, it can offer plenty in return.

KEEPER REVIEW

Keeper is a minimalist atmospheric adventure full of symbolism where you are quickly thrust into the role of a lighthouse that suddenly has the power to walk when Twig, a prehistoric looking seabird lands on your head after escaping a precarious situation. This is the beginning of your unlikely companionship and where the journey starts.

Playing through Keeper felt like an adaptation through the most under-appreciated Dr Seuss book “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” due to the oddly beautiful Seuss aesthetic the world of Keeper had, but also because of the underlying narrative. “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” was the final book he wrote and was published just a year before he passed away. A book with such a powerful message that it could only have been written after experiencing life and all that is has to offer.

Unlike the rest of his immaculate catalog, this book offers a thoughtful and timeless view about life that is applicable to anyone, no matter their age. Compared to the rest of his work, this book is fairly dark. There were many parallels between this book and the experience of Keeper right down to the very end, which are nearly indistinguishable, but I don’t think any material was borrowed. Instead, I think it’s more representative of both being powerful stories. The complete experience of Keeper can be summed up in two short passages. The first passage represents the optimism, hope and ups of the journey:

Congratulations!

Today is your day

You’re off to great places!

You’re off and away!

While the second passage that comes a little later in the book, represents the inevitable downs that will also be part of the adventure.

I’m sorry to say so

But sadly it’s true

That bang ups

And hang ups

Can happen to you

These are just two excerpts from the book that encapsulate the experience. Keeper is extremely unique, not only because it feel like Dr Seuss, but it’s the first game where you play as a lighthouse, which feels like a concept from the PS2 era, and it feels slightly from the average atmospheric adventure that is typically told from a 2D perspective and with darker tones.

The job of a lighthouse keeper is filled with routine and monotony, but Keeper is far from monotonous as the experience constantly evolves with excellent pacing. The less you know about the experience, the better, but Keeper can and will regularly surprise you as you navigate the peaks and valleys.

The gameplay loop of Keeper involves moving from one large hub to the next. Figuring out how to get to the next hub will always be the engine of your adventure. The solution is always solving a bunch of smaller puzzles in each area and finding out how to unlock the next. For the most part, the puzzles will revolve around using the power of your light beam of utilizing how your seabird Twig can help you or even occasionally both. The puzzles are never challenging enough to keep you stumped for too long, they are fair and they are typically things you have done before with gears and levers that provide just enough resistance to keep you engaged.

The world of Keeper has a weird, but beautiful painterly aesthetic that creates an otherworldly experience that blends the line between Seuss and Scorn. It ranges from bright to dark and from beautiful to haunting. It’s also full of areas that should cause plenty of frustration by getting stuck or falling from ledges, but Double Fine create a resistance free experience that always keeps the player immersed.

Keeper is an extremely minimalist experience across all facets. There are no words and zero dialogue, but this doesn’t hinder the experience. You are always able to navigate your way with excellent environmental cues and emotion is conveyed strongly through great character design reminiscent of Wall-E and how human emotions can be paired with inanimate objects. The minimalism carries over to the controls as they rarely require the use of more than a few inputs. For the majority of the journey you will use one to move and the other to shine your light. The nature of designing a game with a less is more approach ensures that the focus is on the experience and the greater meaning, instead of getting distracted with too many systems and mechanics.

CRITICISMS

Keeper is a cinematic atmospheric adventure that takes place in 3D and features a very strong cinematic feel with plenty of fixed camera angles during the journey. This created a highly curated experience and forces you to see the world of Keeper in the way that Double Fine want to you to, but unfortunately it also led to some wonky angles that obstructed your vision or obscured what you needed to do.

Keeper also featured a few audio bugs that would cause the music or effects to cut out and in some cases, sometimes both. These audio bugs deflated an otherwise eventful moment and when the weight of your game hinges on these emotional moments, it hinders the experience.

The best atmospheric adventures strike the perfect balance with puzzle difficulty. Puzzles that challenge you and make you stop, but never frustrate or feel unfair. The puzzles in Keeper never became repetitive as they creatively moved from one idea to the next, but they also didn’t pose too much of a challenge to the player as they merely felt like minor roadblocks. Increasing the challenge and finding the optimal level of difficulty likely would have led to a higher feeling of gratification and stronger impact overall.

Is Keeper Worth it?

The acquisition of Double Fine by Microsoft in 2019 didn’t make sense from a business perspective. A studio that had only a few major releases on their portfolio, albeit with critical acclaim, but with a pattern of underperforming commercially. After finishing Keeper, it still doesn’t make sense financially for Microsoft as it’s unlikely to drive Game Pass subscribers or achieve breakthrough sales. However, Keeper is another Double Fine gem full of weirdness and heart that proves great experiences cant be created using spreadsheets because it’s not a science, it’s an art.

Environmentalism, terminal illness, mental health, spirituality, existentialism or merely just the strange tale of a Lighthouse coming to life, whatever meaning you settle upon, Keeper is a unique and joyous experience that is sure to linger with you long after the credits as the best atmospheric adventures do.

KEEPER SCORE

8.5

Early Review Access provided by Double Fine and Xbox.