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Usually, if a bird discovers an deserted lighthouse, it might land, relax briefly, make a deposit, and take off. Not so in Keeper, an forthcoming over-the-shoulder adventure puzzle game developed by the development studio; here, the lighthouse grows little legs, becomes BFFs with the bird, and sets off on an daring hike.

While a latest sneak peek at the gaming convention answered some questions, it also ignited a desire to discover additional details about this absurdist lighthouse-meets-bird tale. Thus, we sat down with Lee Petty, the creative director behind Keeper, to illuminate on his team's colorful creation.

An Unconventional Adventure Experience

While at its core built as an adventure game, Petty explains that Keeper aims to deliver a unique gameplay through a blend of dreamlike graphics, enigmatic setting, accessible puzzles, and, importantly, the lack of words. He refers to the game a “refreshing break,” a brief adventure different from anything you’ve played before.

“Keeper communicates less than a typical game,” he notes. “It was essential for us to let the player unwind and not stress about messing up; just pause to attempt and accept the weirdness.”

Consequently, Keeper is not merely a series of challenges, nor is its exploration very goal-oriented. Taking place in a post-civilization world without humans, players traverse the world as a living lighthouse joined by a bird sidekick named Twig, but you can’t die, the game lacks skill trees, and there is no need to farm for items.

Puzzle Design and Environmental Interaction

“When we set out to design the puzzles, we wanted to develop puzzles that felt very integrated into the world and the characters there. In a typical adventure game, you may find a obstacle first,” Petty clarifies. “You're like, oh, I can't get in this door, and you usually understand that, because there are people there telling you so with dialogue.”

“But in our game, we aimed to really establish this feeling of an peculiar, evocative world and not reveal exactly what it's about. Our puzzles work a bit uniquely, so you frequently kind of stumble upon them without understanding what you need to be doing.”

Handmade Aesthetics and Limited Controls

To give the game a “crafted” feel, Keeper avoids using numerous iterations of the identical concept. “We implement that to a degree, as it's not like each element is created exactly once and discarded,” Petty elaborates, “but there is a lot of unique setup. Every short distance away, you encounter something very different from the remainder of the game.”

In response about maintaining gamer’s interest in the absence of failure and defined objectives, Petty stands firm: “I think we engage the player's attention through the surprising. Players aren’t entirely sure what's will occur around each corner.”

This curated method is additionally noticeable in Keeper’s restricted set of interactions. To find your way through its surrealist world, you don’t need only a handful of buttons, as the lighthouse’s main way of engaging with the world is through its beacon, which has a standard mode and a concentrated mode. For example, you can aim it at plants to make them grow, shine toward a creature to make it react, and use it to uncover secrets and solve puzzles.

Companion Mechanics and Gameplay Variety

Twig, the lighthouse’s trusty bird companion, is typically sitting on the lighthouse, from where he’ll occasionally take flight to show the path forward or activate secrets. In addition to these automatic movements, the lighthouse can additionally direct the bird to do actions like raising objects, pulling levers, or — maybe the most interesting one — attaching itself to creatures.

The latter is a prime example of how Keeper’s streamlined design to the input scheme nevertheless offers a wide variety of gameplay mechanics. The various environments, items, and creatures open the way to unique interactions, and particularly 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 jump, hover, and navigate,” Petty explains. “A welcome change from being stuck to the ground. So we aim to vary the pace up in a many different ways.”

Narrative Devoid of Words

But hopping around and fiddling with their environment isn’t the only task assigned upon the lighthouse and its bird; they must additionally convey a story of companionship, bonding, and surmounting obstacles together as they travel toward a magnificent mountain peak. To add to the challenge, they must do so without using words — and without the kind of expressions and facial expressions a human character could have used.

While Petty confirms that players will get to sense more expression than might expect from a lighthouse, it’s the bird, specifically, who plays a major role in conveying emotions. “When the bird is perched on the lighthouse, you actually have a dedicated button dedicated to just expressing with the bird, and a lot of times it will mirror the emotional tenor of that area,” he says.

“For instance, when you get in a kind of unsettling or darker area, the bird will crouch and coil around the top of the lighthouse. And if you hit the emote button, rather than a playful tweet or directing you, it'll kind of glance about and duck down.”

Dangers and Friendly Inhabitants

By “gloomy zone,” Petty is talking about the menace that stems from something called the “Wither,” a hostile 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, vines, and insects. “It's what Twig is escaping,” Petty explains.

In contrast to the Wither, most creatures in Keeper are actually friendly. When Twig emotes at one of the peculiar critters, for instance, it may respond and perhaps create an background sound — in the absence of words, audio cues and music are another tool used to narrate Keeper’s story.

Narrative Conclusion and Inspiration

This method of wordless storytelling raises the question if Keeper’s narrative ends in a ambiguous conclusion, but Petty assures that there will be a middle ground. “It's not a complete mystery, but since it's wordless, it's naturally subject to interpretation. We purposely aim to allow space for that because that's my favorite thing about art; the discussions that occur after people play something,” he says, “But we include defined narrative arcs and closure.”

A quick look at Keeper’s icy mountaintops, intricate cave systems, and unusual rock formations will reveal that the outdoors formed one of the primary inspirations for this human-less adventure. As Petty tells, the scenery is not only inspired by any old place: “I live in California and there's a lot of amazing mountains around here,” he explains. “Close to where I live, there's an abandoned Mercury mine that was abandoned like a hundred years ago, and they've turned it into walking paths; that's one of my big inspirations. It's not anything extraordinary, but what makes it interesting is the numerous hills, and as you're climbing up, you sometimes discover old pieces of machinery that you're not even sure what they were for.”

“They kind of look like strange monuments, just resting among nature, with nature taking back the space. When I look back at the game and the remains of humanity in there, I can see the clear connection to me trekking around all that stuff.”

Symbolic Significance and Closing Thoughts

While Petty jokingly refers to the lighthouse protagonist