Keeper is unusual. This will appear unsurprising given that it is the newest recreation from developer Double Superb, which has for years carried itself with a definite oddball id, however Keeper is uncommon even by the studio’s requirements. It would not match cleanly into a conventional style, and at some factors feels extra like a status artwork mission. However that is additionally Double Superb at its most uncompromising, and the expertise is healthier for it.
The closest analog for Keeper is 2012’s Journey–the two video games share a wordless strategy to narrative, an emphasis on motion that’s at instances gradual and deliberate and at others joyfully fluid and quick, and even the seeming goal of constructing your method to a distant mountaintop. However that comparability feels reductive, as a result of whereas Journey is a simple parable, Keeper retains evolving, reinventing itself and its themes, and going to surprising locations. When you can shortly measurement up and perceive the fundamental contours of Journey’s world, the world of Keeper feels extra alien, and the pure order of it is not at all times clear.
Let’s again up. Keeper begins when a lighthouse shines its gentle to avoid wasting a chicken from an encroaching swarm of parasitic darkness. The lighthouse itself topples, snapping into items, however then reforms itself and grows a tripod of spindly, wobbly legs. You play via these awkward first steps, ceaselessly face-planting–does a lighthouse have a face?–as you learn to transfer all over the world.
Gallery
Because the lighthouse will get extra accustomed to motion, you stroll towards your objective with the chicken you saved perched atop your roof. A mountain within the distance appears to name to you, so that you begin getting in that path. At this level, it is what you may name a shambling simulator. Your steps really feel heavy. Your key mechanic, apart from motion, is shining your gentle on issues, or generally focusing it extra intensely, or sometimes dispatching your chicken pal towards interactable objects.
So proper from the beginning, Keeper is a recreation that rewards persistence and taking it by itself phrases. Nearly all of the expertise is shifting from place to put and fixing largely easy puzzles. It ceaselessly acts like a tone poem. There isn’t any demise or failure, and also you spend a big period of time simply taking within the landscapes and watching the unfamiliar beings that occupy the world as they scuttle round you. No matter drive animated the lighthouse appears to have stuffed the entire world with life, and there is an emphasis on discovering the sweetness in ugly issues. The world is stuffed with trash, decay, and irregular shapes like coral, however it’s additionally brimming with exercise. The animation of each the lighthouse and the chicken are explicit standouts, imbuing each of them with persona and coronary heart.
The digicam is strictly managed, leaving your proper stick free to dictate the place your gentle is pointing. However this serves one other goal: Keeper rigorously frames each shot like a tightly directed movie, and the result’s spectacular. That is simply Double Superb’s best-looking recreation thus far, and virtually each second appears to be like prefer it may very well be printed and held on a wall. That is aided by a wonderful however refined oil-painting impact.
Consider me after I say that there are visible moments on this recreation which can be not like something I’ve ever seen in video video games. I am not even positive I might describe a few of them.
Roughly midway via the sport, Keeper makes the primary of a number of main shifts. With out spoiling the specifics, I’ll say that at this level, the digicam briefly will get a lot much less tightly managed and you’ve got extra freedom to discover, which comes on the slight expense of it changing into tougher to inform precisely what you must do and the place to go. I discovered myself needing to poke round far more on this part, or backtracking to areas I had already been.
However earlier than you recognize it, Keeper reinvents itself but once more. Every time it does this, the brand new actuality feels smart, and what you have been doing as much as that time contextualizes it and serves as the muse for what’s new. I’ll have felt briefly misplaced within the center part, however the core mechanics of learn how to transfer and what to do with my talents at all times felt comprehensible. That itself is spectacular. And all of it feeds into the themes of Keeper, concerning the stress between man-made issues and the pure world and the way they adapt to one another.
Because it continues to alter and evolve, Keeper goes to locations I by no means would have anticipated— each mechanically and, particularly, visually. Consider me after I say that there are visible moments on this recreation which can be not like something I’ve ever seen in video video games. I am not even positive I might describe a few of them. You simply should see them for your self.
Coming within the present second, as Microsoft struggles with its Xbox enterprise and has simply hiked the value of Sport Move, makes Keeper really feel awkwardly timed. I typically avoid speaking about commerce or enterprise concerns in evaluations, preferring to deal with the character of the work itself. However I could not shake the sensation that Keeper looks like a remnant of an earlier time in Sport Move, when this was the best-case argument for the subscription service: A inventive studio was given the liberty and backing to make one thing remarkably bizarre and confident, with out compromises. Keeper looks like a ardour mission, private and valuable, even with the may of a complete studio and mega-publisher behind it. It made me surprise if we’ll proceed to see video games like this coming from Microsoft. I hope so.
Keeper is Double Superb at its most assured: a visible feast, a tone poem, an exploration of motion mechanics, a fable concerning the world and what we owe to it. It is recognizable as an evolution of the studio’s earlier works whereas additionally feeling contemporary and creative. Double Superb video games have at all times been dense with artistry, however it’s Keeper–a recreation with out words–that feels most prefer it’s letting the artistry communicate for itself.