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Usually, when a bird discovers an abandoned lighthouse, it may land, relax momentarily, make a deposit, and fly away. That's not the case in Keeper, an forthcoming over-the-shoulder puzzle adventure game created by the development studio; in this world, the lighthouse sprouts tiny limbs, forms a friendship with the bird, and sets off on an daring hike.

Although a recent preview at Gamescom answered a few questions, it also ignited a desire to discover additional details about this surreal lighthouse-meets-bird tale. Therefore, 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

While fundamentally designed as an exploration title, Petty states that Keeper aims to deliver a distinctive experience through a combination of surreal graphics, enigmatic setting, approachable puzzles, and, most notably, the lack of words. He refers to the game a “refreshing break,” a short adventure different from any title you’ve played before.

“Keeper communicates less than a typical game,” he says. “It was important for us to let the player relax and not worry about making mistakes; just pause to try and embrace the weirdness.”

As a result, Keeper is not merely a sequence of challenges, nor is its exploration very objective-driven. Set in a post-apocalyptic realm devoid of humans, you will explore the world as a living lighthouse accompanied by a bird sidekick named Twig, but you can’t die, the game lacks skill trees, and you’ll never have to grind for items.

Gameplay Mechanics and World Integration

“When we began to create the puzzles, we aimed to develop puzzles that felt deeply integrated into the world and the inhabitants there. In a typical adventure game, you might find a problem first,” Petty explains. “For instance, oh, I cannot enter through this door, and you typically grasp that, because there are characters there telling you so with dialogue.”

“But in our game, we aimed to truly establish this sense of an peculiar, atmospheric world and not tell you precisely what it's about. Our puzzles function a little differently, so you often kind of wander into them without understanding what you're supposed to be doing.”

Handmade Aesthetics and Limited Interactions

To impart the game a “crafted” feel, Keeper steers clear of using numerous iterations of the same concept. “We do that to a degree, as it's not like everything is created exactly once and thrown away,” Petty explains, “but there is a lot of unique setup. Every short distance away, you see something distinctly new from the remainder of the game.”

When asked about maintaining gamer’s attention in the absence of failure and clear objectives, Petty is adamant: “I believe we engage the player's attention through the surprising. Players aren’t entirely sure what's going to happen around each corner.”

This thoughtfully designed approach is additionally noticeable in Keeper’s restricted set of interactions. To find your way through its surrealist world, players require only a handful of buttons, as the lighthouse’s main way of engaging with the world is through its headlight, which has a standard mode and a concentrated mode. For example, you can aim it at plants to make them grow, shine toward a creature to make it squint, and use it to reveal secrets and solve puzzles.

Partner Mechanics and Gameplay Variety

Twig, the lighthouse’s trusty bird friend, is typically perched on the lighthouse, from where it will sometimes take flight to indicate the path forward or activate secrets. In addition to these automatic movements, the lighthouse can additionally command the bird to do actions like lifting objects, operating levers, or — maybe the intriguing one — attaching itself to creatures.

The last example is a great example of how Keeper’s minimalistic design to the control system nevertheless offers a wide variety of interactive features. The various environments, items, and creatures pave the path to unique interactions, and especially metamorphosis.

“For instance, there's a segment where a type of rosy dust, which looks like fairy floss, gets attached to the lighthouse, rendering it lighter. For that segment of the game, the lighthouse can leap, float, and move around,” Petty explains. “A welcome change from being stuck to the ground. So we try to change the rhythm up in a lot of different ways.”

Narrative Devoid of Words

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

While Petty confirms that players will get to sense more expression than one would expect from a lighthouse, it’s the bird, in particular, who plays a major role in expressing emotions. “When the bird is perched on the lighthouse, you actually have a dedicated button dedicated to just emoting with the bird, and often it will mirror the mood of that area,” he says.

“For instance, when you get in a kind of tense or darker area, the bird will crouch and coil around the top of the lighthouse. And if you hit the expression button, instead of a playful tweet or directing you, it'll kind of look around and hide.”

Dangers and Benevolent Inhabitants

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

In contrast to the Wither, the majority of creatures in Keeper are in fact amicable. When Twig expresses at one of the odd critters, for instance, it might respond and perhaps produce an background sound — in the absence of words, audio cues and music are another tool used to narrate Keeper’s story.

Story Conclusion and Influences

This method of non-verbal storytelling makes me wonder if Keeper’s narrative ends in a ambiguous ending, but Petty assures that there will be a balance. “It's not a complete mystery, but since it's without dialogue, it's naturally subject to interpretation. We purposely want to leave some room for that as that's my favorite thing about art; the discussions that happen after people experience something,” he says, “But we do provide specific narrative arcs and closure.”

One glance at Keeper’s snowy mountaintops, intricate cave systems, and unusual rock formations will tell you that the outdoors formed one of the main inspirations for this human-less tale. As Petty tells, the scenery is not only inspired by any old place: “I live in California and there's a lot of really cool mountains around here,” he says. “Close to where I live, there's an old Mercury mine that was abandoned like a hundred years 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 numerous hills, and as you're climbing up, you occasionally discover remnants of machinery that you're not even sure what they were for.”

“They sort of resemble strange monuments, just resting 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 direct connection to me hiking around all that stuff.”

Symbolic Significance and Closing Reflections

Although Petty humorously calls the lighthouse main character