Keeper

Amazing. Best played with your friend Lucy as it's a bit of a fever dream.

This cute and surreal game really touched my heart. The friendship between the birds and the cosmic horror and his slow transformation made me cry so much.

Great game, had an absolute blast.

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.

The music didn't work for me. There are lots of loud, wideband sound effects, and they just clash with the music so strongly that I had to turn it off. Loving the art though.

loved everything about it

One of the most visually gorgeous games I've ever played. The actual gameplay is pretty basic but what a treat to look at. Definitely pick it up on sale.

I have no idea what just happened there at the end but you know what? It was AAAAABSOLUTE CINEMA. 10/10 beautiful game! Almost made me cry. You should 10000% play it. Right now. It's worth every cent.

Fantastic game

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