🔗 Share this article

Usually, if a bird discovers an deserted lighthouse, it may perch, relax briefly, leave a mess, and fly away. That's not the case in Keeper, an forthcoming over-the-shoulder puzzle adventure game created by the development studio; here, the lighthouse grows little legs, forms a friendship with the bird, and sets off on an daring hike.

While a recent preview at Gamescom clarified some questions, it also ignited a curiosity to learn more about this absurdist lighthouse-meets-bird tale. Thus, we sat down with the creative director, the creative director behind Keeper, to shed light on his team's colorful creation.

An Unconventional Adventure Experience

Although at its core built as an exploration title, Petty explains that Keeper aims to deliver a unique gameplay through a combination of surreal graphics, enigmatic setting, approachable puzzles, and, most notably, the absence of words. He calls the game a “refreshing break,” a short adventure unlike anything gamers have experienced before.

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

As a result, Keeper isn’t just a sequence of challenges, nor is its exploration very objective-driven. Taking place in a post-civilization world without humans, you will explore the world as a living lighthouse accompanied by a bird companion named Twig, but there is no death, there are no skill trees, and you’ll never have to grind for items.

Puzzle Design and World Integration

“When we set out to create the puzzles, we aimed to develop puzzles that felt very integrated into the world and the characters there. In a standard adventure game, you may find a obstacle first,” Petty clarifies. “You're like, oh, I can't get in this door, and you usually understand that, because there are characters there explaining so with dialogue.”

“But in our game, we aimed to really create this feeling of an peculiar, atmospheric world and not tell you precisely what it's about. Our puzzles function a bit uniquely, so you often sort of stumble upon them without knowing what you need to be doing.”

Handmade Aesthetics and Limited Interactions

To impart the game a “handmade” atmosphere, Keeper avoids using numerous variations of the identical concept. “We implement that to a degree, as it's not like each element is done only one time and thrown away,” Petty explains, “but there is a lot of distinct setup. Every few steps away, you encounter something very different from the rest of the game.”

In response about sustaining player’s attention without of failure and clear objectives, Petty is adamant: “I think we engage the player's attention through the unexpected. Players aren’t entirely sure what's going to happen around each corner.”

This curated approach is additionally evident in Keeper’s restricted set of interactions. To find your way through its dreamlike world, you don’t need more than a handful of buttons, as the lighthouse’s main 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 grow, shine toward a creature to make it squint, and use it to uncover secrets and tackle puzzles.

Partner Mechanics and Gameplay Variety

Twig, the lighthouse’s reliable bird companion, is typically perched on the lighthouse, from where it will occasionally fly off to indicate the path forward or trigger secrets. Apart from these scripted movements, the lighthouse can additionally direct the bird to do things like lifting objects, operating levers, or — perhaps the intriguing one — connecting itself to creatures.

The last example is a great illustration of how Keeper’s minimalistic design to the control system nevertheless provides a wide variety of gameplay mechanics. The various environments, items, and creatures pave the path to distinctive interactions, and particularly metamorphosis.

“For instance, there's a moment where a sort of pink pollen, which resembles fairy floss, gets attached to the lighthouse, making it lighter. For that segment of the game, the lighthouse can leap, float, and move around,” Petty explains. “A breath of fresh air from being anchored to the ground. So we try to change the rhythm up in a many different ways.”

Storytelling Devoid of Words

But exploring and interacting with their surroundings isn’t the only task bestowed upon the lighthouse and its bird; they must additionally convey a story of companionship, companionship, and surmounting obstacles together as they travel toward a magnificent mountain peak. To make matters more complicated, they must do so without using words — and without the type of expressions and facial expressions a human character could have used.

Although Petty assures that gamers will experience greater emotion than might expect from a lighthouse, it’s the bird, in particular, who is instrumental in expressing emotions. “When the bird is perched on the lighthouse, players have a whole button dedicated to just expressing with the bird, and often it will mirror the emotional tenor of that location,” he states.

“For example, when you enter a somewhat unsettling or darker area, the bird will hunker down and coil around the top of the lighthouse. And if you hit the expression button, instead of a cheerful chirp or guiding you, it will kind of glance about and duck down.”

Threats and Friendly Inhabitants

By “darker area,” Petty is referring to the threat that stems from something called the “Wither,” a malevolent ecosystem. As the lighthouse and Twig proceed on their journey, they’ll see increasing amounts of this purple, vitriolic substance, which may occasionally take the form of brambles, vines, and bugs. “It's what Twig is flying away from,” Petty clarifies.

In contrast to the Wither, the majority of creatures in Keeper are actually amicable. When Twig emotes at one of the odd critters, for instance, it may emote back and possibly produce an ambient noise — in the absence of words, audio cues and music are an additional tool used to tell Keeper’s story.

Story Closure and Inspiration

This method of non-verbal storytelling makes me wonder if Keeper’s narrative concludes in a ambiguous conclusion, but Petty assures that there will be a balance. “It's not a total mystery, but because it's wordless, it's naturally open to interpretation. We purposely aim to leave some room for that because that's my favorite thing about art; the discussions that happen after people experience something,” he notes, “But we include specific narrative arcs and closure.”

A quick look at Keeper’s snowy mountaintops, intricate cave systems, and odd rock formations will tell you that the outdoors formed one of the primary influences for this people-free tale. As Petty shares, the scenery is not only based on any old place: “I live in California and there's a lot of really cool mountains in this region,” he explains. “Close to where I live, there's an abandoned Mercury mine that was left like a century ago, and they've turned it into hiking trails; that's one of my major inspirations. It's not anything super remarkable, but what makes it interesting is the numerous hills, and as you're climbing up, you occasionally come across old pieces of machinery that you can’t identify 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 remains of humanity in there, I can see the direct connection to me trekking around all that stuff.”

Symbolic Significance and Final Reflections

Although Petty jokingly calls the lighthouse main character