Keeper review – the strangest and prettiest game of the year

The makers of Psychonauts create the world’s most advanced walking lighthouse simulator, with a new adventure set in a gloriously surreal post-apocalyptic landscape.

Acclaimed indie developer Double Fine has been around for 25 years now and in all that time they’ve never had a significant hit. The closest they’ve come is cult favourite Psychonauts, while their other acclaimed titles include Brütal Legend, Stacking, and Broken Age. They’ve benefited a lot from their critical reputation, and from crowdfunding (and publishing other indie developers’ stuff), but frankly it’s a miracle they’ve lasted this long.

Not counting Psychonauts 2 in 2021, which was almost complete when Microsoft bought them, this is Double Fine’s first game as a non-independent studio and it’s a relief to find they’ve made absolutely no effort to appeal to more mainstream tastes. In many ways, it is more approachable than most of their other games, although the minute you start describing it, it seems anything but.

Keeper is a game in which you play as a sentient, ambulatory lighthouse, where there’s no spoken or written dialogue, and nothing is ever explained. But while the details are open to interpretation, the actual journey, and objectives along the way, are perfectly clear, in what is a brief but beautiful piece of interactive whimsy.

PIC 1

There’s not much we can say definitively about the setting or story but despite it looking like an alien planet it’s actually a post-apocalyptic Earth. This is only obvious by some burnt out cars and homes at the beginning and the fact that you play… as a lighthouse. At first you sit stationary, burning swarms of evil-looking bugs with your light, but as the intro shows you being overwhelmed you sprout legs and, after a brief vision, you take it upon yourself to climb to the top of a nearby mountain.

As you get closer to your goal there’s increasing amounts of black goop covering everything, that seems to be related to the bugs and is slowly overtaking the landscape. As infectious goop goes though, we’ve seen much more invasive examples in other games and, to be honest, the world only seems to be in relatively mild peril, but it’s your job to save it anyway.

The lighthouse’s only intrinsic ability is to shine and focus its light, which is able to burn away the goop and cause other changes to the landscape, such as encouraging plants to grow. But you’re joined in your travels by a bird-like creature called Twig, who is used to collect and place items, as well as do things like activate switches.

Mechanically, the game is very simple and there’s no real combat of any kind, in what at times almost seems like a walking sim. The primary gameplay is puzzle-based, with a good variety of obstacles, including some neat time manipulation ones. The problem is, they’re all extremely easy and the few that could potentially be more perplexing are neutered by the fact that their solution is virtually the only thing you can do in each situation, so very little abstract thought is required.

Everything in Keeper is very easy and we’re not sure there’s actually any way to die. There’s a platforming section in the middle, which looks, for a minute, like it’s going to be trickier but it’s really not and you’ll blaze through the whole experience in just six hours or so.

That probably doesn’t sound too enticing but that’s because we’ve left out all the good bits. For one, the game is absolutely gorgeous and wonderfully imaginative in its visual design. When we spoke to Double Fine boss Tim Schafer at Gamescom he listed artists such as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and Giorgio de Chirico as the main influences and you can absolutely see that in the surreal but somehow naturalistic landscapes, including giant snail-whale creatures and weird little robots and sentient hermit crabs.

The rolling landscapes look both familiar and completely alien, green hillsides embedded with giant skulls and topped by long abandoned buildings (not human buildings either, perhaps hinting that there’s been more than one apocalypse). There’s so much detail everywhere it somehow manages to make the bizarre setting seem believable and lived in, while at the same time retaining a dreamlike air of unpredictability.

There’s a minor problem with fluctuating textures but otherwise this is one of the most visually impressive games of the year, with 3D landscapes that look they’ve been painted into being, complete with obvious brushstrokes and inspired use of colour.

The excellent soundtrack is just as impressive, while there’re several gameplay twists, that we don’t want to spoil, which help to enliven the second half of the game and stop it from getting too samey. Although the final one being so obviously borrowed from a well-known Nintendo game is a little distracting.

Double Fine’s consistent flaw as a developer is that they’ve always had amazing ideas but mediocre execution. Psychoanuts isn’t a particularly good 3D platformer, for example, and Brütal Legend isn’t a very good beat ‘em-up, but Keeper has solid controls that are reliable and enjoyable in their own right, which is a welcome surprise.

Keeper is charming, imaginative, and beautiful but it’s also extremely slight. That’s reflected in the price but even if you’re playing it via Game Pass you can’t help but be disappointed when the game ends and you realise that was it.

The ending is very abrupt and although we suspect it might be possible to extend it, by activating hidden statues along the way, the game does nothing to indicate that and we’ve no idea if we missed one or not (if what we saw is the extended ending, then we hate to think what the standard one was).

Ultimately, we’re just happy that Double Fine got to make the game they wanted, but despite all its artistic qualities the lack of any tangible story, or challenging gameplay, means it’s not lingering in our imagination the way a more substantial game would. If this was released as a physical game, you’d play it once, enjoy it, and immediately sell it on, so ironically it’s not really a keeper at all.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S (reviewed) and PC
Price: £24.99*
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Developer: Double Fine
Release Date: 17th October 2025
Age rating: 7

*available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from day one

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