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Usually, when a bird stumbles upon an deserted lighthouse, it might perch, relax momentarily, leave a mess, and take off. Not so in Keeper, an forthcoming over-the-shoulder puzzle adventure game developed by Double Fine Productions; in this world, the lighthouse sprouts little legs, forms a friendship with the bird, and embarks on an ambitious hike.

Although a recent preview at Gamescom answered some questions, it also sparked a curiosity to learn more about this surreal lighthouse-meets-bird story. Thus, we connected with Lee Petty, the visionary lead behind Keeper, to illuminate on his team's colorful creation.

A Unique Adventure Experience

While fundamentally designed as an exploration title, Petty states that Keeper aims to deliver a distinctive gameplay through a combination of dreamlike visual style, enigmatic setting, approachable puzzles, and, most notably, the lack of words. He refers to the game a “palate cleanser,” a short adventure different from anything you’ve played before.

“Keeper conveys fewer details than a typical game,” he notes. “It was important for us to let the player relax and not stress about making mistakes; just pause to try and embrace the unusual aspects.”

As a result, Keeper isn’t just a sequence of challenges, nor is its exploration highly objective-driven. Taking place in a post-civilization world devoid of humans, players traverse the world as a living lighthouse joined by a bird sidekick named Twig, but there is no death, there are no skill trees, and there is no need to farm for items.

Gameplay Mechanics and World Integration

“When we began to create the puzzles, we aimed to craft puzzles that felt very integrated into the world and the inhabitants there. In a standard adventure game, you might find a obstacle first,” Petty clarifies. “You're like, oh, I can't get through this door, and you usually grasp that, because there are people there explaining so with dialogue.”

“But in our game, we wanted to truly create this feeling of an peculiar, evocative world and not reveal exactly what it's about. Our puzzles function a little differently, so you often kind of wander into them without understanding what you need to be doing.”

Artisanal Feel and Limited Controls

To give the game a “handmade” feel, Keeper avoids using many variations of the identical concept. “We do that to a degree, as it's not like each element is created exactly once and discarded,” Petty elaborates, “but there is a lot of distinct setup. Every few steps away, you see something very different from the remainder of the game.”

When asked about maintaining gamer’s attention in the absence of failure and defined objectives, Petty is adamant: “I think we captivate the player's attention through the surprising. Players aren’t entirely sure what's will occur around each corner.”

This curated method is also noticeable in Keeper’s restricted set of interactions. To navigate through its dreamlike world, you don’t need only a handful of buttons, as the lighthouse’s primary way of interacting with the world is through its beacon, which has a default mode and a concentrated mode. For instance, you can aim it at plants to make them grow, shine toward a creature to make it react, and use it to uncover secrets and solve puzzles.

Partner Mechanics and Diverse Interactions

Twig, the lighthouse’s trusty bird friend, is usually sitting on the lighthouse, from where he’ll occasionally fly off to show the path forward or trigger secrets. In addition to these automatic movements, the lighthouse can additionally command the bird to perform actions like lifting objects, operating levers, or — perhaps the most interesting one — attaching itself to creatures.

The latter is a prime illustration of how Keeper’s streamlined approach to the input scheme still provides a broad range of interactive features. The diverse environments, items, and creatures open the way to distinctive interactions, and especially metamorphosis.

“For example, there's a moment where a type of rosy dust, which resembles fairy floss, gets stuck to the lighthouse, making it lighter. For that segment of the game, the lighthouse can leap, float, and move around,” Petty says. “A breath of fresh air from being stuck to the ground. So we try to change the pace up in a lot of various ways.”

Storytelling Without Words

But exploring and fiddling with their environment is not the sole task assigned upon the lighthouse and its bird; they must also express a story of friendship, bonding, and overcoming obstacles as a team as they journey toward a magnificent mountain peak. To make matters more complicated, they must accomplish this without using words — and without the type of gestures and emotional cues a human character could have used.

While Petty confirms that gamers will experience greater emotion than one would expect from a lighthouse, it’s the bird, in particular, who is instrumental in expressing emotions. “When the bird is perched on the lighthouse, you actually have a dedicated button dedicated to just expressing with the bird, and often it will reflect the mood of that location,” he says.

“For instance, when you enter a somewhat tense or darker area, the bird will crouch and curl around the top of the lighthouse. And if you hit the expression button, instead of a cheerful tweet or directing you, it will sort of look around and duck down.”

Dangers and Friendly Inhabitants

By “darker area,” Petty is referring to the menace that stems from something called the “Wither,” a malevolent ecosystem. As the lighthouse and Twig proceed on their journey, they’ll see more and more of this violet, corrosive substance, which may occasionally appear as of brambles, vines, and insects. “It's what Twig is flying away from,” Petty explains.

Unlike the Wither, the majority of creatures in Keeper are actually friendly. When Twig expresses at one of the peculiar critters, for example, it may emote back and perhaps create an ambient noise — in the absence of words, audio cues and music are another tool used to tell Keeper’s story.

Story Closure and Influences

This method of wordless storytelling raises the question if Keeper’s narrative concludes in a cryptic conclusion, but Petty assures that there will be a middle ground. “It's not a complete mystery, but since it's wordless, it's naturally subject to interpretation. We purposely want to allow some room for that as that's my favorite thing about art; the conversations that happen after people experience something,” he says, “But we do provide specific narrative arcs and closure.”

A quick look at Keeper’s icy mountaintops, elaborate cave systems, and odd rock formations will reveal that the outdoors formed one of the primary influences for this human-less tale. As Petty shares, the scenery isn’t just based on ordinary locations: “I live in California and there's a plenty of really cool mountains around here,” he says. “Close to where I live, there's an abandoned Mercury mine that was abandoned like a century ago, and it has been converted into walking paths; that's one of my big inspirations. It's not anything extraordinary, but what adds intrigue is the many hills, and as you're climbing up, you sometimes come across remnants of machinery that you can’t identify what they were for.”

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

Metaphorical Meaning and Closing Reflections

Although Petty jokingly refers to the lighthouse main character