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Typically, if a bird stumbles upon an deserted lighthouse, it may land, rest momentarily, make a deposit, and fly away. Not so in Keeper, an upcoming over-the-shoulder adventure puzzle game created by the development studio; in this world, the lighthouse grows little legs, forms a friendship with the bird, and embarks on an ambitious hike.

While a latest preview at the gaming convention clarified a few questions, it also ignited a desire to discover additional details about this surreal lighthouse-meets-bird tale. Therefore, we connected with the creative director, the creative director behind Keeper, to illuminate on his team's colorful creation.

A Unique Journey Gameplay

Although at its core built as an exploration title, Petty states that Keeper aims to provide a distinctive experience through a combination of surreal visual style, world mystery, accessible puzzles, and, most notably, the lack of words. He refers to the game a “refreshing break,” a short adventure different from anything you’ve played before.

“Keeper conveys fewer details than a standard game,” he says. “It was essential for us to let the player unwind and not stress about making mistakes; just take a moment to try and embrace the weirdness.”

Consequently, Keeper is not merely a sequence of challenges, nor is its exploration very goal-oriented. Set in a post-apocalyptic realm devoid of humans, you will explore the world as a sentient lighthouse accompanied by a bird companion named Twig, but there is no death, the game lacks skill trees, and you’ll never have to grind for items.

Puzzle Design and World Integration

“When we began to create the puzzles, we aimed to craft puzzles that felt very integrated into the world and the characters there. In a standard adventure game, you may encounter a obstacle first,” Petty explains. “You're like, oh, I cannot enter in this door, and you typically understand that, since there are people there telling you so with dialogue.”

“But in our game, we wanted to really create this feeling of an peculiar, evocative world and not tell you exactly what it's about. Our puzzles work a little differently, so you often sort of wander into them without knowing what you need to be doing.”

Artisanal Aesthetics and Minimalist Controls

To give the game a “crafted” atmosphere, Keeper avoids using numerous variations of the identical concept. “We implement that to some extent, as it's not like each element is created only one time and discarded,” Petty elaborates, “but there is a lot of distinct setup. Every short distance away, you encounter something very different from the remainder of the game.”

In response about sustaining player’s attention without of failure and clear objectives, Petty is adamant: “I think we engage the player's attention through the surprising. Players aren’t entirely sure what's going to happen around each corner.”

This curated method is also noticeable in Keeper’s restricted set of interactions. To navigate through its dreamlike world, you don’t need only a few buttons, as the lighthouse’s primary way of engaging with the world is through its beacon, which has a default mode and a focused mode. For instance, you can direct it at plants to make them flourish, beam toward a creature to make it react, and use it to uncover secrets and tackle puzzles.

Companion Mechanics and Diverse Interactions

Twig, the lighthouse’s reliable bird friend, is typically sitting on the lighthouse, from where he’ll occasionally fly off to indicate the path forward or trigger secrets. Apart from these automatic movements, the lighthouse can additionally command the bird to perform actions like lifting objects, operating levers, or — perhaps the intriguing one — attaching itself to creatures.

The latter is a great example of how Keeper’s streamlined design to the control system nevertheless provides a broad range of gameplay mechanics. The diverse environments, items, and creatures pave the path to distinctive interactions, and especially metamorphosis.

“For instance, there's a segment where a type of pink pollen, which looks like fairy floss, gets attached to the lighthouse, rendering it lighter. For that portion of the game, the lighthouse can leap, float, and move around,” Petty says. “A breath of fresh air from being stuck to the ground. So we aim to change the pace up in a many different ways.”

Narrative Devoid of Words

But exploring and interacting with their surroundings is not the sole task assigned upon the lighthouse and its bird; they must also convey a story of companionship, bonding, and surmounting obstacles as a team as they travel toward a breathtaking mountain peak. To add to the challenge, they must do so without using words — and without the type of expressions and emotional cues a human character might’ve used.

Although Petty assures that players will get to sense greater emotion than one would expect from a lighthouse, it’s the bird, in particular, who is instrumental in expressing emotions. “When the bird is perched on the lighthouse, you actually have a whole button dedicated to just emoting with the bird, and a lot of times it will reflect the emotional tenor of that location,” he says.

“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 press the emote button, instead of a cheerful tweet or directing you, it'll sort of glance about and duck down.”

Dangers and Benevolent Creatures

By “darker area,” Petty is talking about the threat that derives from something called the “Wither,” a malevolent ecosystem. As the lighthouse and Twig proceed on their journey, they’ll see more and more of this purple, corrosive substance, which sometimes appear as of brambles, creepers, and insects. “It's what Twig is flying away from,” Petty clarifies.

In contrast to the Wither, most creatures in Keeper are actually amicable. When Twig expresses at one of the odd critters, for instance, it may respond and possibly create an background sound — without of words, audio cues and music are an additional tool used to tell Keeper’s story.

Narrative Conclusion and Inspiration

This method of wordless storytelling raises the question if Keeper’s narrative ends in a cryptic ending, but Petty reassures that there will be a middle ground. “It's not a total mystery, but since it's without dialogue, it's inherently subject to interpretation. We did intentionally want to leave some room for that as that's my most loved thing about art; the discussions that happen once people play something,” he says, “But we include specific narrative arcs and closure.”

One glance at Keeper’s snowy mountaintops, intricate cave systems, and unusual rock formations will reveal that natural scenery served as one of the main influences for this people-free tale. As Petty shares, the scenery is not only based on any old place: “I reside in California and there's a plenty of amazing mountains around here,” he explains. “Near 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 big inspirations. It's not anything extraordinary, but what adds intrigue is the numerous hills, and as you ascend, you occasionally discover remnants of machinery that you can’t identify what they were for.”

“They kind of look like weird monuments, just resting within nature, with nature reclaiming 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.”

Symbolic Significance and Final Reflections

While Petty jokingly calls the lighthouse protagonist