There’s a primal human pleasure in merely discovering out what one thing does. It’s the explanation you’d nonetheless wish to push a button that claims “don’t contact”, or surprise what’s behind a locked door. Keeper thrives on that concept, constructing out a sport of discoveries and experiments round it.
Seeing prolonged gameplay for the primary time at gamescom, Keeper’s key trick – of telling its story in a never-before-seen world, all with out phrases – implies that nearly all the things you do is much less about finishing an goal you’re advised to observe, and extra about discovering out what the target is.
Shine Your Mild
First revealed at Xbox Video games Showcase earlier this yr, Keeper is a dreamy, otherworldly journey that places you within the misshapen physique of a abruptly sentient strolling lighthouse – however there’s no narrator, nor speaking sidekick to elucidate the place you’re, what’s happening, and what you need to be doing. Working this stuff out is the sport.
“A key tenet of this sport is the sudden,” Artistic Director Lee Petty tells me. “We wished gamers to have the ability to chill out a bit, sit back a bit, and embrace the sudden. So to that finish, there’s some experimentation, however there’s nothing the participant can do to die on this sport. They’ll’t mess up the expertise. We kind of get the participant on board early in order that, when one thing sudden is thrown at them, it’s not a second of panic that they don’t know how one can get by means of.”
In three parts taken from early sections, I see how Keeper slowly introduces new concepts in delicate methods. With solely the power to stroll, shine a beacon, and the assistance of a fowl companion known as Twig, the participant must work out what they need to be doing by means of context clues.
“The lighthouse beam has two most important modes,” explains Petty. “It has an unfocused and a targeted mode. The unfocused mode is for exploring – as you shine it round, you would possibly see little delicate shimmers or reactions on the planet. Larger transformations happen when the participant focuses that greater, brighter beam on issues, and that’s usually used to resolve puzzles as nicely.
“Twig rides alongside on the lighthouse and might do issues that the lighthouse can’t. The lighthouse doesn’t have arms, solely legs. Twig nonetheless, can instantly manipulate issues on the planet. So what the participant can do, for instance, to resolve a puzzle is use a mix of that gentle capability and Twig’s capability to choose up and accumulate issues.”
I see this early on, because the lighthouse comes throughout a lumpen… factor blocking its path. Underneath the unfocused beam, the creature bristles barely, sufficient to indicate you that it’s reacting – and, focusing the beam, it places a claw in entrance of its eyes. This produces a shimmer, which attracts Twig, who flies to seize the claw, and an choice to “tug” seems on the display. Twig pulls on the creature, who flops to at least one aspect, revealing a seed that Twig stows away for a future puzzle.
It’s a sequence of purely natural discovery – the sport doesn’t inform you what you should be doing, and the weirdness of all of it means you don’t are available in with a preconceived thought of what you need to be doing, aside from making an attempt issues out. And that is repeated all through. I see the lighthouse successfully organising a dance of creatures drawn to its gentle to smash by means of a sheet of ice, a beautiful discovery that touching a sure spore-like plant will enable the lighthouse to subvert gravity itself, and even a wild sequence through which it turns into obvious that the beam can management the stream of time on objects it touches in a sure space.
The actual ace within the gap right here is that Keeper’s world is in contrast to every other – its bucolic landscapes inhabited by scuttling, alien-like creatures, bushes with faces, and flora with uncommon results. It implies that, even when you do work out the place to go, or what to take a look at, the results of your interplay stay a shock. Crucially, Double High-quality by no means need that feeling to go away:
“We wished all the sport to have this kind of natural, nearly handmade, bespoke really feel,” Petty provides. “It’s not a sport of repeating actions as a lot as a sport of wandering amongst distinctive areas and set items that change.”
In simply quarter-hour of gameplay, I see – by my rely – 11 totally different puzzles (to not point out smaller interactions as you prod and poke on the world round you). It’s clear that the purpose right here is to maintain shocking the participant with what they notice they’re being requested to do. Not all of that is ‘mission-critical’, both – the extra you discover, the extra you’ll discover:
“There’s lots of stuff for the participant to find alongside the expertise,” provides Petty. “A few of these come within the type of environmental storytelling, a few of these issues are within the type of hidden interactions with the varied creatures, and lots of it’s also simply concerning the gamers’ interpretation of the video games occasions, and discovering which means within the expertise.”
Crucially, although, that is all accomplished with the identical small pool of button presses. It may need been complicated for the builders to seek out so some ways to play with these toys, however they didn’t need the participant to be slowed down by an unwieldy management scheme:
“We wished Keeper to be an expertise that wasn’t particularly troublesome to play,” says Petty. “It’s not a sport about management, mastery or extremely onerous challenges, as a result of we wished this kind of distinctive, weird-but-chill expertise for gamers to go on. We don’t have a necessity for all these buttons on the controller.
“And we additionally simply have a very large set of accessibility options the place folks can map the controls to what they need. If they like to play with keyboard and mouse, or they play on a controller, we assist each of them.”
For a sport this overtly unusual, it’s a means of easing you in – in all methods, Keeper has been designed as a welcoming expertise, not an alienating one. You’re discovering this world, not being repelled by it – and it appears there’s an awesome deal to find. What I’ve seen is from its earliest phases, and a literal cliffhanger on the finish of the demo – through which the lighthouse tumbles into an abyss attributable to a bridge, nicely, ceasing to exist below its toes – guarantees that there are much more surprises to return.
Keeper arrives for Xbox Sequence X|S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, and Steam on October 17, priced at $29.99 USD. It is going to be an Xbox Play Anyplace title, and accessible day one with Sport Go.
Keeper
Xbox Sport Studios
From Lee Petty and Double High-quality Productions, Keeper is a phenomenal and surreal otherworldly journey, and a narrative advised with out phrases.
On an island in a long-lost sea, a forgotten lighthouse stands dormant within the shadow of a distant mountain peak. As withering tendrils unfold and coalesce, it awakens. Taken with a mysterious sense of function and joined by a spirited seabird, it embarks upon a heartening story of unlikely companionship, an odyssey of mystifying metamorphosis, and an sudden journey in the direction of the middle of the island, into realms past understanding.
