Keeper's Creative Director Urges Players to Embrace the Weirdness of a Walking Lighthouse

Usually, when a bird discovers an abandoned lighthouse, it may perch, rest momentarily, leave a mess, and fly away. That's not the case in Keeper, an upcoming over-the-shoulder adventure puzzle game created by Double Fine Productions; here, the lighthouse sprouts little legs, forms a friendship with the bird, and embarks on an daring hike.

While a recent sneak peek at Gamescom clarified a few questions, it also ignited a desire to learn more about this absurdist lighthouse-meets-bird tale. Thus, we sat down with the creative director, the creative director behind Keeper, to illuminate on his team's vibrant creation.

A Unique Adventure Gameplay

While at its core built as an adventure game, Petty states that Keeper aims to deliver a distinctive gameplay through a combination of surreal visual style, enigmatic setting, approachable puzzles, and, importantly, the lack of words. He calls the game a “palate cleanser,” a short adventure different from anything gamers have experienced before.

“Keeper communicates fewer details than a typical game,” he notes. “It was important for us to let the player relax and not worry about making mistakes; just take a moment to attempt and accept 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 realm devoid of humans, players traverse the world as a sentient lighthouse joined by a bird companion named Twig, but there is no death, there are no skill trees, and there is no need to grind for items.

Puzzle Design and World Integration

“When we set out to design the puzzles, we wanted to craft puzzles that felt very woven into the world and the inhabitants there. In a standard adventure game, you may encounter a problem first,” Petty clarifies. “You're like, oh, I can't get in this door, and you typically understand that, since there are people there telling you so with dialogue.”

“But in our game, we aimed to really establish this sense of an peculiar, evocative world and not reveal exactly what it's about. Our puzzles work a bit uniquely, so you often kind of stumble upon them without understanding what you need to be doing.”

Handmade Aesthetics and Limited Interactions

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

When asked about sustaining player’s interest without of failure and defined objectives, Petty is adamant: “I think we captivate the player's attention through the surprising. You're not really sure what's going to happen around each corner.”

This thoughtfully designed method is also noticeable in Keeper’s limited set of interactions. To navigate through its dreamlike world, you don’t need only a handful of buttons, as the lighthouse’s main way of engaging with the world is through its beacon, which has a standard mode and a focused mode. For example, you can direct it at plants to make them flourish, shine toward a creature to make it react, and use it to uncover secrets and tackle puzzles.

Companion Mechanics and Gameplay Variety

Twig, the lighthouse’s reliable bird companion, is typically perched on the lighthouse, from where he’ll occasionally fly off to show the path forward or activate secrets. Apart from these automatic movements, the lighthouse can additionally direct the bird to perform things like raising objects, operating levers, or — maybe the most interesting one — connecting itself to creatures.

The last example is a prime illustration of how Keeper’s streamlined design to the control system still offers a wide variety of interactive features. The diverse environments, items, and creatures open the way to unique interactions, and particularly 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 anchored to the ground. So we aim to vary the pace up in a lot of different ways.”

Storytelling Without Words

But exploring and interacting with their surroundings is not the sole task bestowed upon the lighthouse and its bird; they must also express a story of companionship, bonding, and surmounting obstacles as a team 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 gestures and emotional cues a person could have relied upon.

Although Petty assures that gamers will get to sense more expression than one would expect from a lighthouse, it’s the bird, specifically, who plays a major role in expressing emotions. “When the bird is perched on the lighthouse, players have a whole button dedicated to just emoting with the bird, and often it will reflect the mood of that location,” he states.

“For instance, when you enter a kind of tense or gloomier area, the bird will crouch and curl around the top of the lighthouse. And if you hit the emote button, rather than a cheerful tweet or directing you, it'll sort of look around and hide.”

Threats and Friendly Inhabitants

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

In contrast to the Wither, the majority of creatures in Keeper are in fact friendly. When Twig expresses at one of the odd critters, for example, it might emote back and possibly create an ambient noise — without of words, audio cues and music are an additional tool used to tell Keeper’s story.

Story Conclusion and Influences

This manner of wordless storytelling raises the question if Keeper’s narrative ends in a ambiguous ending, but Petty reassures that there will be a balance. “It's not a complete mystery, but because it's without dialogue, it's naturally open to interpretation. We purposely aim to leave some room for that as that's my favorite thing about art; the discussions that occur after people experience something,” he notes, “But we include specific narrative arcs and closure.”

A quick look at Keeper’s icy mountaintops, intricate cave systems, and unusual rock formations will tell you that natural scenery formed one of the primary influences for this human-less tale. As Petty tells, the scenery isn’t just inspired by any old place: “I reside 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 they've turned it into walking paths; that's one of my major inspirations. It's nothing super remarkable, but what makes it interesting is the many hills, and as you ascend, you occasionally discover remnants of machinery that you're not even sure what they were for.”

“They kind of resemble weird monuments, just resting within nature, with nature taking back the space. When I reflect at the game and the artifacts of humanity in there, I can see the clear connection to me trekking around all that stuff.”