Double Fine and Xbox Game Studios’ Keeper is a gorgeous, surrealist, and enthralling adventure about a lighthouse and a bird that I won’t soon forget
At one point in Keeper, the sentient lighthouse you play as gets covered by a pinkish, cloudy substance that allows it to jump and glide. As I then frolicked through a vibrant mountainside, I came to understand just how beautiful of a game Double Fine’s Keeper is, even if that last sentence might sound absolutely insane out of context.
If you still have an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription after its massive price increase earlier in the month, then consider Keeper a must-play. Double Fine’s latest adventure is a gorgeous, surrealist adventure full of the quirk and charm that can sometimes feel like it’s missing from modern AAA games. It might not have the most innovative gameplay, but it still presents its ideas in a uniquely unconventional way.
While a game where you control a lighthouse and a bird might look extremely odd on the surface level, give Keeper a chance and you’ll discover one of the most beautiful games I’ve played in years. It’s a shame so many people probably unsubscribed from Xbox Game Pass right before this game dropped.
Price and Availability
Keeper launches today for PC and Xbox Series X|S. It’s a digital-only release available across Xbox, Windows, and Steam’s storefronts. There’s only one edition of the game, the Standard Edition that costs $30. Like all first-party Xbox Game Studios titles, it’s also a day-one release in the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate catalog.
What you need to know about Keeper before playing it
This surrealist adventure is hard to put into words
The elevator pitch for Keeper is that it’s a walking simulator about a lighthouse and a bird working together to climb up to the top of the mountain. The lighthouse can interact with the world around it by shining light from its sentient lens on different objects, while the bird can be commanded to grab, pull, rotate, or weigh down certain levels, switches, and other interactables.
Describing Keeper that plainly does feel like a bit of a disservice, though. I’m not a big fan of the term ‘walking simulator’, as I think it’s okay for game interactions to be somewhat plain if what is being done fits the core idea of what the game is trying to accomplish. And while most games of this ilk are content to star a humanoid character, Double Fine chose to center the game on a lighthouse whose form shifts throughout the adventure.
