Game Review: Keeper

Keeper is the latest full production from the fine folk at Double Fine Productions and published by Xbox Game Studios.  Lee Patty, who was the lead director on the development of Keeper has had a storied career in the world of game development so far, with credits in a number of games ranging back to 2000. It was noted Patty formed the inspiration for Keeper from his time backpacking during the COVID-19 pandemic. With a great amount of time exploring the natural world, he honed in on the idea of a game which reflected a world free of humanity’s negative influence.  Mix that with a surreal design approach, work on Keeper was fully underway and the game subsequently released on Xbox consoles and PC on October 17th 2025.  Critically, the game aggregated an 81 average score on OpenCritic and while there’s no official sales numbers from what I can see online, the steam database units doesn’t paint a pretty picture.  I imagine the game being on Game Pass may help it in the long run, but it doesn’t even seem like Xbox cared enough to market the games release which is sadly a repeating trend as of late.

The narrative of Keeper is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which civilization has long passed. With the natural world taking over, life has flourished in strange and mysterious ways.  The central character of this narrative is a living, sentient lighthouse, who is gifted life from a mysterious light from the mountaintop in the local area.  The lighthouse soon meets Twig, a bird separated from her flock after they were attacked by a dark presence known as the Wither.  Pairing together, the lighthouse and Twig venture forth with the goal of reaching the mysterious light atop the mountaintop.  On their way there they’ll come across many strange and unique forms of life that have risen up in the wake of the Wither’s infestation of the local area.  Helping those they come across, Twig and the lighthouse form a close bond as they seek to get Twig back to her flock and discover the mystery tied behind the Wither’s origins and the mysterious light on the mountaintop.

The unique quality behind Keeper’s narrative is it’s presented in a purely visual format. There’s no written dialogue delivered in this game’s story so it relies purely on the expressions of its main cast and the wider world around them.  I personally believe that was the best approach to take with the game’s story mainly because of its surreal nature.  The world itself exists to define the story you’re experiencing within it, seeing and soaking in the reality of this world wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if it was all explained to you.  The idea is you have to form your own interpretation of the history of the world because civilization has long past so there’s no real sense of recorded history or preserved-knowledge.  With such a strange and bizarre world, it helps ground the narrative for all players with the endearing relationship the lighthouse and Twig share.  They are easily able to project emotional aspects to the player and in turn allow them to feel for the struggles they endure on their journey together.  I did not have crying at a sentient lighthouse and its bird friend on my 2025 bingo card, but Keeper’s ability to so easily immerse you in the emotions of its story will effortlessly do that to you.

I think where the game slightly lacks, despite its best efforts, is in the gameplay department.  With the games intent to have you soak up as much of the world as possible, your primary engagement in the game will be walking and exploring.  That’s not inherently a bad thing, again when the world is this imaginative, it does make exploring it compelling in its own right.  Even with it’s short 4-to-5-hour length though, the game struggles to escape its tedious intersections between the stages in which the gameplay shifts up.  On the point of the gameplay shifts also, I cannot take anything away from them, as the game really does try to present the player with different formats of gameplay that ties together nicely with the plot’s progression.  It does sadly feel however that these gameplay sections often overstay their welcome each time, as the repetition of their implementation does sadly break the immersion the game worked so hard to provide.  It’s not a glaring issue by any means and I was able to forgive it as an ingrained flaw for the most part.

From a visual end, the game is one of the most expressive and surreal games I’ve played in a long time.  It was noted that Petty and his team took inspiration from surreal artists and media to really get an impression for the games art style and that really shows.  So much of this world feels beyond comprehension, it’s law and logic are outside the realms of reality and in turn offer the player something truly unique to form an impression from.  The way the camera work is able to shift to showcase the scale or orientation goes a long way to help the games presentation.  David Earl is the credited composer for this game and his contribution to the games soundtrack also helps further the surreal aspect of the game’s presentation.  His tracks give off this often-otherworldly vibe yet are able to incorporate a small sense of familiarity, especially in the more emotional moments. 

Keeper is a game definitely worth trying just for its surreal offerings alone.  While I don’t think the gameplay side of things is able to come off nearly as inviting as it’s wider world, that’s not enough to diminish the enjoyment the game provides, at least for me.  In world filled to the brim with games with literally no soul or ambition, I will always happily recommend games like Keeper, because for whatever their flaws may be, they are able to present something unique and generate an appropriate response as a result.