It’s been some time since Tim Schafer’s completed press briefings, he admits. The top of Double Positive, a studio finest identified for the Psychonauts collection, is making an attempt to elucidate Keeper, a puzzle journey recreation the place you’re, actually, a sentient, strolling lighthouse. Double Positive is now certainly one of a number of studios purchased up by Microsoft and the workforce apparently took the chance to lean into all of the assets obtainable and, he stated, “make one thing bizarre.”
It’s positively that. The colours and environment of Keeper have at the very least the contact of Psychonauts DNA. Keeper places gamers answerable for the aforementioned lighthouse, woke up (and joined) by a curious, often aggressive, fowl named Twig. Apparently, the lighthouse at present has no identify.
Double Positive’s artwork director, Lee Petty got here up with the idea for the sport, apparently impressed by his time spent climbing in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. That is mirrored in a whole lot of methods, whether or not its the rolling hills and landscapes that the anthropomorphised lighthouse roams, or the truth that there’s not a single phrase of dialogue. The interactions between the fowl and constructing, which appear to pepper each cutscenes and gameplay, are like Pixar shorts.
The environments have a drippy surrealist model to them to, and the shortage of a map, well being bar or any HUD in any respect means you’re not distracted as you discover and resolve puzzles.
In some early gameplay footage, I noticed how the lighthouse’s essential type of interplay comes from its gentle beam. Not solely does this allow you to hunt down pathways and objects, nevertheless it may also be targeted on the numerous skittering creatures. Typically this causes creatures to flee, whereas different instances they’ll supply up magical orbs willingly and unwillingly, which open up later areas or deliver towering creatures (buildings?) to life. In Double Positive trend, issues look bizarre, too, with melted mountain peaks with greater than a dost of Dali.
You do not have to assault all the things, both. Throughout three totally different gameplay demos, I watched all types of creatures disguise, run, and simply exist on this world the place humanity has lengthy since disappeared. Oh there’s briefly a large flying whale too.
Utilizing the lighthouse’s beam on sure issues will go away an twinkling spark behind, which means that Twig the fowl can work together with it. Throughout a later phase, the lighthouse can manipulate time, turning its fowl companion again into an egg whereas a constructing repairs itself — and frees up a pathway. Twig stays an egg for some time till later, when the lighthouse can fast-forward time. Skills like this appear location-dependent, quite than a Metroidvania assortment of expertise constructed up over the sport. At one other juncture, the lighthouse walks right into a cloud of pink fluffy mist, unlocking the power to leap and float round ranges.
Schafer says the themes of life-changing and metamorphosis will proceed to bubble up throughout Keeper and the lighthouse and fowl duo is clearly central to all of it. It jogs my memory slightly of Banjo Kazooie (the latter was a fowl) but in addition Ico; at one level, the seemingly impervious lighthouse loses its footing, however Twig willfully tries to pull their accomplice to security. Did Twig even assist? Perhaps not, however the sentiment was there.
Keeper will launch on Xbox Collection S|X and PC on October seventeenth, together with Xbox Recreation Cross.
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