🔗 Share this article

Typically, if a bird stumbles upon an deserted lighthouse, it might perch, relax momentarily, leave a mess, and take off. That's not the case in Keeper, an upcoming third-person puzzle adventure game created by Double Fine Productions; in this world, the lighthouse grows tiny limbs, forms a friendship with the bird, and embarks on an daring hike.

Although a latest preview at the gaming convention clarified some questions, it also sparked a curiosity to learn more about this surreal lighthouse-meets-bird tale. Thus, we connected with the creative director, the visionary lead behind Keeper, to illuminate on his team's colorful creation.

An Unconventional Adventure Gameplay

Although at its core designed as an exploration title, Petty explains that Keeper aims to deliver a unique gameplay through a combination of dreamlike visual style, enigmatic setting, accessible puzzles, and, importantly, the absence of words. He calls the game a “refreshing break,” a short adventure unlike anything gamers have experienced before.

“Keeper conveys fewer details than a typical game,” he notes. “It was essential for us to let the player relax and not worry about making mistakes; just take a moment to attempt and accept the weirdness.”

As a result, Keeper isn’t just a series of challenges, nor is its exploration highly goal-oriented. Taking place in a post-civilization world devoid of humans, you will explore the world as a living lighthouse joined by a bird companion named Twig, but you can’t die, the game lacks skill trees, and you’ll never have to farm for items.

Gameplay Mechanics and World Integration

“When we began to design the puzzles, we wanted to develop puzzles that felt very woven into the world and the characters there. In a typical adventure game, you may find a problem first,” Petty explains. “You're like, oh, I can't get in this door, and you typically grasp that, since there are people there telling you so with dialogue.”

“But in our game, we wanted to really create this sense of an unusual, evocative world and not tell you exactly what it's about. Our puzzles work a bit uniquely, so you frequently kind of stumble upon them without knowing what you're supposed to be doing.”

Handmade Feel and Minimalist Interactions

To give the game a “handmade” atmosphere, Keeper steers clear of using numerous variations of the same concept. “We do that to some extent, as it's not like everything is done only one time and discarded,” Petty explains, “but there is a lot of unique setup. Every few steps away, you see something very different from the rest of the game.”

In response about maintaining gamer’s interest without of failure and clear objectives, Petty stands firm: “I believe we captivate the player's attention through the surprising. Players aren’t entirely sure what's going to happen around each corner.”

This curated method is also noticeable in Keeper’s restricted set of interactions. To find your way through its surrealist world, you don’t need more than a few buttons, as the lighthouse’s primary way of engaging with the world is through its headlight, which has a default mode and a focused mode. For example, you can direct it at plants to make them flourish, shine toward a creature to make it squint, and use it to uncover secrets and solve puzzles.

Partner Mechanics and Diverse Interactions

Twig, the lighthouse’s trusty bird companion, is usually sitting on the lighthouse, from where it will occasionally take flight to show the path forward or activate secrets. Apart from these automatic movements, the lighthouse can additionally command the bird to do actions like lifting objects, pulling levers, or — maybe the most interesting one — connecting itself to creatures.

The latter is a great example of how Keeper’s minimalistic approach to the input scheme nevertheless provides a broad range of gameplay mechanics. The diverse environments, items, and creatures pave the path to distinctive interactions, and especially metamorphosis.

“For example, there's a segment where a sort of rosy dust, which resembles fairy floss, gets stuck to the lighthouse, making it less heavy. For that segment of the game, the lighthouse can leap, hover, and navigate,” Petty explains. “A breath of fresh air from being anchored to the ground. So we aim to vary the pace up in a many different ways.”

Narrative Without Words

But hopping around and interacting with their surroundings is not the sole task bestowed upon the lighthouse and its bird; they must also convey a story of friendship, companionship, and surmounting obstacles together as they travel toward a breathtaking mountain peak. To make matters more complicated, they must do so without using words — and without the type of gestures and facial expressions a human character could have relied upon.

Although Petty assures that players will get to sense greater emotion than one would expect from a lighthouse, it’s the bird, specifically, who is instrumental in conveying emotions. “When the bird is perched on the lighthouse, you actually have a whole button dedicated to just emoting with the bird, and often it will mirror the emotional tenor of that area,” he states.

“For instance, when you get in a kind of unsettling or darker area, the bird will hunker down and curl around the top of the lighthouse. And if you press the expression button, rather than a cheerful tweet or directing you, it will kind of glance about and hide.”

Threats and Friendly Creatures

By “darker area,” Petty is talking about the menace that stems from something called the “Wither,” a hostile ecosystem. As the lighthouse and Twig continue their journey, they’ll see more and more of this violet, corrosive substance, which may occasionally appear as of brambles, creepers, and insects. “It's what Twig is escaping,” Petty clarifies.

In contrast to the Wither, most creatures in Keeper are actually amicable. When Twig emotes at one of the odd critters, for instance, it might emote back and perhaps create an ambient noise — in the absence of words, sound effects and music are an additional tool used to tell Keeper’s story.

Story Closure and Inspiration

This method of wordless storytelling raises the question if Keeper’s narrative concludes in a ambiguous ending, but Petty assures that there will be a middle ground. “It's not a total mystery, but because it's without dialogue, it's naturally open to interpretation. We purposely want to leave space for that because that's my most loved thing about art; the conversations that happen after people experience something,” he notes, “But we do provide specific narrative arcs and closure.”

One glance at Keeper’s icy mountaintops, intricate cave systems, and odd rock formations will tell you that the outdoors served as one of the primary inspirations for this human-less tale. As Petty shares, the scenery is not only based on any old place: “I reside in California and there's a plenty of amazing mountains in this region,” he says. “Near where I live, there's an old Mercury mine that was left like a century ago, and they've turned it into walking paths; that's one of my major inspirations. It's nothing extraordinary, but what adds intrigue is the many hills, and as you ascend, you sometimes discover old pieces of machinery that you're not even sure what they were for.”

“They kind of resemble strange monuments, just sitting among nature, with nature reclaiming the space. When I look back at the game and the artifacts of humanity in there, I can see the clear connection to me hiking around all that stuff.”

Metaphorical Significance and Closing Thoughts

While Petty jokingly calls the lighthouse protagonist