Keeper: A Surreal Journey of Friendship and Determination
Prepare yourselves for a surreal journey. With a mixture of exploration, puzzles, and some surprisingly emotional moments, it’s quite the unexpected adventure—a tale of friendship, change, and determination. This is our spoiler-free Keeper review.
Dream Big
I’m not sure where to even begin with Keeper, and this shouldn’t be taken as a negative. Double Fine has always created unique, surreal games. After Psychonauts 2, it’s hard to believe that Double Fine could get even more weird, but they’ve gone and done just that with Keeper. It’s a tricky one to review—no strict restrictions on coverage were given by the developer, but I’m loathe to spoil what lies ahead of you too much. Keeper has a few delightful surprises in store. I couldn’t put the game down, completing it in just one sitting, lasting around five hours.
The game begins with our bird companion, Twig, being chased by a dark cloud of little critters known as ‘The Withering’. She finds refuge on the top of a dilapidated lighthouse, and for some reason, it wakes up. Tearing itself from the ground, it pulls in roots and rock from the earth to fashion itself a set of spider-like legs. After a little bit of effort, it learns to walk. (This section reminded me of my partner after a couple of glasses of vino.)
After a short period where our lighthouse acclimates to being able to walk around, it has a vision—a vision of getting to the top of the mountain, the highest peak that lies at the center of this surreal-looking land. So, with our bird pal Twig in tow, we set off to achieve that dream.
A Whole New World
For this review, I’m only going to show elements from the first half of the game, and for a good reason that will become evident when you play it for yourself. Keeper’s story is told wordlessly, and as such, is somewhat open to interpretation. The achievements you unlock as you progress do contain some plot detail and world lore. As I was in the review program, I was unable to go back and read them, as they’re disabled for viewing until launch. The plot (and it sure does go places) is otherwise conveyed through animation, sound, and some incredibly imaginative world design.
Every new area you step into is like walking around a surreal dreamscape. Floating turtle-like creatures, living rocks with gangling legs that dive into the ground when you cast your light on them, and some utterly gorgeous skyboxes. It all feels alive and has some of the best HDR implementation I’ve seen in a while. Texture work is varied and incredibly detailed—look up close, and you’ll see what look like brushstrokes on some of the surfaces. It’s gorgeous. It’s also paired with these impressive visuals with a fantastic soundtrack and atmosphere, with plenty of quirky, percussive beats driving our walking building onwards.
Being a lighthouse, you’re equipped with a beacon, and light itself starts off as your primary way of interacting with the world. As the game continues, you’ll be able to focus that light to directly affect the world around you in different ways. Plants will blossom under your gaze, weeds will wither away.
Eventually, the bond between you and Twig will grow, and before long, you’ll be able to send Twig out to interact with all manner of switches and different objects to progress forward. Your beam of light can be focused, allowing for an even more powerful effect, and the game smartly layers new mechanics on you without being overwhelming or overly complicated.
One highlight is a city populated by mechanical beings that look like they’re straight out of a much less terrifying version of Return to Oz. They’re made up of lights and cogs, and they chirp and roll around you with some curiosity. The city itself appears to be overseen by a larger machine that can manipulate time, but alas—like many things in this world, it’s broken. Through manipulating time, you’ll be able to collect all the necessary parts to repair it. Seeing the world change from night to day, a broken building repairing itself before your eyes was a delight, and if anything, it’s a shame this mechanic wasn’t used more.
Another element I adored is the choice to not make the camera something the player can direct. Every shot and visual you see in Keeper feels deliberate, and they’ve done an excellent job at making the transitions and angle changes from shot to shot not feel odd when it comes to controls—up doesn’t suddenly become down just because the camera has moved. It all adds to the immersive experience of Keeper’s bizarre world.
Surprise, Surprise
At a certain point in the game, two things happened that I wasn’t expecting. The first, I won’t directly tell you about because it is far more powerful and wonderful and just so very Double Fine that I refuse to spoil it for you.
One I can at least elaborate on was that I realized I was genuinely emotionally invested in this lighthouse. I cared about what happened to this walking, emotive piece of architecture and its bird companion—yes, I realize how weird that sentence is now that I’ve said it out loud.
What was even more unexpected was what happened next. Even though there’s been no ‘strict’ guidance to not spoil the latter parts of the game (merely a polite request), I would just say that I was left grinning in sheer delight—more than once. It may not be the longest game in the world, but I do think it’s up there as one of the best Double Fine has made.
If I had to level some criticism (that’s what we’re all here for, right?), it’s that I never found any of the puzzles particularly challenging or difficult, and to play through it was pretty frictionless from start to finish. There are hidden areas and lore-related statues to find and reconstruct that will share a little more detail about the world, but this is very much a game to be experienced rather than one with huge amounts of replayability—though there is a nice chapter select option to go back and find anything you missed.
Keep on the Move
One element I was able to test thanks to it being an Xbox Play Anywhere game was how Keeper performed on the ROG Xbox Ally X. I chose to run the game at medium settings across the board, with the FSR upscaler in use on the Ultra Performance setting. Running at 1080P on the 13W ‘Silent Mode’, the game is a bit visually noisy, running anywhere between 25-30FPS. Bumping this up to the 17W ‘Performance’ Mode sees some improvements, with framerates climbing to somewhere between 30-36FPS. The 25W ‘Turbo’ mode sees a much more comfortable 38-45FPS most of the time, but obviously has the biggest hit on battery life.
Not fantastic performance then—but don’t lose hope. The team has advised that though Keeper isn’t currently optimized for handheld devices, they are working on patches to improve how the game will perform, so we can expect them to make some noise at some point in the near future. For now, stick to your Xbox console or PC for a gloriously pretty playthrough, though note that currently, PC doesn’t support Ultrawide resolutions.
Treasured Memories
It’s fair to say I really enjoyed Keeper. It stuck its hooks into me and didn’t let go, right up until the moment I rolled credits. I laughed, gasped in shock, and beamed as brilliantly as a lighthouse. Double Fine has made a lovely game here, one that throws in the sorts of surprises that only this medium can achieve.
Go in blind and just play it as soon as possible; I think it’s great!
