Keeper

The Wither, a force of corruption, is spreading across the mountain. As darkness begins to take root, Twig is separated from their flock during a migratory flight. Twig is almost captured by The Wither, but lands upon a small lighthouse. The lighthouse awakens as a purifying light, Keeper, and together the two set out to reach the peak of the mountain. Keeper is a game which is hard to ascribe much of a narrative to beyond the most surface level analysis. There is no narration, nor dialogue to provide any explicit context, leaving much of the game up to interpretation. Twig and Keeper become friends pretty quickly after the opening of the game; however, their motivations for staying together are predicated on trying to reach the summit. While they often come to the other's aid, Keeper features several time skips during which their continued alliance feels increasingly less plausible. Story aside, Keeper features some really stunning art direction, with vibrant use of color. While it sometimes creates friction with the gameplay, the game frequently deploys a wide variety of camera angles. The direction makes for an experience which is rarely boring on the eyes, bordering on overwhelming the player with its striking composition. However, the music is fairly muted, leaving only a few sections of the game which felt like they really complemented the visuals. The gameplay for Keeper is fairly minimalistic, with most of the game rarely using more than a single button for entire chapters. While not quite as restrictive as a walking sim, players can expect to spend a majority of the game holding down the movement stick as they progress through the chapters. Most of the puzzles in the game are built around the light shining mechanic, which entails aiming Keeper's light beam, and pressing a button to focus. A far from original gameplay design, this mechanic is used to open doors by shining light at obvious receptacles, or burning away Wither corruption to progress through an area. Since Keeper moves relative to the camera perspective, there are times when the artistic changes in camera perspective can make it a bit difficult to fluidly control Keeper's movement. Similarly, on the subject of movement, there was an opportunity to make Keeper a faster paced gameplay experience. Particularly towards the middle section of the game, some puzzles were so painfully obvious, they felt more like intentional progress blockers to lengthen the experience. I appreciated that Keeper changes up the feeling of movement a few times throughout the game, with some sections offering a jumping option, and others featuring significantly faster movement speeds. Keeper is a tentative recommend for its art design; however, it is an overall mediocre experience when it comes to gameplay and narrative. For players who struggle with challenging gameplay, or simply want to relax with a colorful game, Keeper feels like a relatively good fit. Although, I found several segments a bit boring, even despite Keeper's short play length. While Keeper's art direction is a powerful guiding light, the overall experience gets a bit diluted as it's absorbed by a mountain of lackluster elements.

loved everything about it

Love love love. Визуал не для всех, но для любителей сюрреализма. Очень трогательная история без единого слова.

[i]Keeper[/i] is a short and charming puzzle adventure that doesn’t overstay its welcome. The visuals and character designs resemble the vibrant, colorful, comic-book-inspired style of Moon Studios’ games ([i]Ori[/i] and [i]No Rest for the Wicked[/i]). I especially appreciated the minimalist interface and the lack of excessive hand-holding. That approach works well because the controls are simple and the puzzles are generally straightforward, with the solution usually located within the same room or immediate area. Solving puzzles and moving through the beautiful environments was enjoyable in its own right, but the narrative didn’t fully land for me. Although the story clearly aims for an emotional connection, I never became particularly attached to either the main protagonist or the bird companion. That may be partly because you play as an inanimate object, and the game provides very little context about the world or its inhabitants. Even the central goal of the journey -- reaching a distant mountain -- is left rather vague. I had a reasonably good time with [i]Keeper[/i], but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it falls short of its full potential.

Just WOW!!!! Unlike any other video game I have ever played in the last 30+ years. Incredibly imaginative worlds to traverse with an amazing feeling of freedom to go wherever and yet somehow artfully directed. Many different challenges to work through at just the right level of difficulty giving you a sense of real satisfaction when you worked through the most initially inscrutable ones. And a continuing thread of guiding the intrepid and beloved lighthouse through an increasingly inhospitable world ever threatening its destruction. Really loved this game! Kudos to the incredible team that created it!!!

This game is beyond explanation: it's a piece of art. The story, the graphics, the music, the creativity, the emotional involvement, the continuously evolving gameplay: art. The point about art is that it is up to personal interpretation: to me this game was about life, beauty, mystery, hardship, friendship, death and enlightenment. Extremely recommended and an example to follow for all game developers,

Art design is astonishing. I loved every next phase of the game, it was beautiful from the beginning till the very end. Not stressful at all, strongly recommended! P.S. UE5 was a stressful one to carry, but DLSS took the load off my graphics card and it didn't spoil the picture.

One of the most imaginative games I've ever played; it activated a childlike sense of wonder in me. I was always surprised by each new surreal twist. Would have liked if the puzzles were a bit more complex, but overall it was a fantastic experience! The whole thing took about 5 and a half hours to complete, which was just enough to not overstay its welcome.

Overlong tech demo. This game is beautiful but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, get some play testers in there. I'm not looking for yellow paint, but some of the mechanics are extremely unintuitive. Nothing stands out from the background. Art Slop 3/10

9/10 Keeper est avant tout une anomalie. Le scope d'ambition graphique, de travail artistique, et même de technique pour un projet aussi simple, ciblant un public très réduit, est absolument étonnant. Il y a par exemple cette cinématique sous l'eau totalement gratuite, sans conséquence, sans narration même, dont la mise en scène et l'avalanche d'assets, de détails, joue à la table des plus gros AAA. Côté gameplay, le jeu est ce qu'il est : une ballade, un voyage. Il fait tout pour que vous ne soyez jamais bloqué, que vous ne reveniez jamais en arrière. La caméra non contrôlable fait d'ailleurs des merveilles pour cela, bien aidée par un level design fin et pas si basique que ça ( en dire plus serait du spoil ). Du coup, on se retrouve dans un état de constante découverte, d'émerveillement continu. Tiens, une nouvelle mécanique ? Deux énigmes plus tard on en entendra plus parler. C'est l'inverse d'un Cocoon, par exemple, qui obligeait le joueur a garder en tête toutes les mécaniques découvertes en les empilant et les exploitant dans des puzzles de plus en plus complexe. C'est typiquement du Double Fine, dans le sens où ce n'est vraiment pas fait pour plaire à tout le monde, mais pour marquer ceux qui adhèrent ( je n'ai par exemple pas aimé Psychonauts mais jamais je n'en dirais du mal, compte tenu de l'engagement artistique et scénaristique du projet ). Rien que notre duo de personnages ne convaincra pas chacun de s'identifier et de se sentir impliqué, mais si ça marche sur vous, vous aurez droit à un petit conte touchant, étrange, éthéré. Un dernier petit mot pour dire que je suis très triste que le projet ait reçu si peu de visibilité. Microsoft s'est trompé sur toute la ligne avec sa politique de "petits jeux à gamepass", la tarification hors abonnement n'était pas justifiée, et comme pour nombre d'autres jeux ils se sont coupés d'un public qui souhaite juste acheter les jeux qu'il désire. Les dernières nouvelles autour du studio et des financements de l'éditeur sont aussi très mauvaises, je leur souhaite à eux comme à Ninja theory et d'autres d'arriver à sortir de ce giron néfaste et d'arriver à se redresser. Ce sont de beaux studios, capables de nous emmener sur des terrains surprenants, ce qui est devenu trop rare dans cette industrie.