The Game's Creative Director Urges Gamers to Welcome the Weirdness of a Walking Lighthouse

Typically, when a bird stumbles upon an abandoned lighthouse, it might land, relax briefly, leave a mess, and fly away. That's not the case in Keeper, an upcoming over-the-shoulder adventure puzzle game developed by Double Fine Productions; in this world, the lighthouse grows little legs, becomes BFFs with the bird, and embarks on an ambitious hike.

Although a recent preview at the gaming convention clarified some questions, it also sparked a desire to discover additional details about this surreal lighthouse-meets-bird story. Therefore, we connected with the creative director, the creative director behind Keeper, to shed light on his team's colorful creation.

An Unconventional Adventure Gameplay

While fundamentally built as an exploration title, Petty explains that Keeper aims to provide a distinctive gameplay through a combination of dreamlike graphics, enigmatic setting, accessible puzzles, and, most notably, the absence of words. He calls the game a “refreshing break,” a brief adventure different from anything you’ve played before.

“Keeper communicates less than a standard game,” he says. “It was important for us to let the player relax and not worry about messing up; just pause to attempt and accept the unusual aspects.”

As a result, Keeper isn’t just a series of challenges, nor is its exploration very goal-oriented. Set in a post-apocalyptic world devoid of humans, players traverse the world as a living lighthouse accompanied by a bird companion named Twig, but there is no death, there are no skill trees, and you’ll never have to farm for items.

Puzzle Design and Environmental Interaction

“When we set out to create the puzzles, we wanted to develop puzzles that felt deeply integrated into the world and the characters there. In a standard adventure game, you may encounter a problem first,” Petty explains. “For instance, oh, I cannot enter in this door, and you typically grasp that, because there are characters there explaining so with dialogue.”

“But in our game, we aimed to truly establish this sense of an unusual, atmospheric world and not tell you precisely what it's about. Our puzzles work a bit uniquely, so you frequently sort of stumble upon them without knowing what you're supposed to be doing.”

Handmade Feel and Minimalist Controls

To give the game a “crafted” atmosphere, Keeper avoids using many variations of the same concept. “We implement that to a degree, as it's not like everything is done exactly once and thrown away,” Petty elaborates, “but there is a great deal of distinct setup. Every few steps away, you see something very different from the remainder of the game.”

When asked about sustaining player’s interest in the absence of failure and defined objectives, Petty stands firm: “I believe we engage the player's attention through the surprising. You're not really sure what's going to happen around each corner.”

This curated method is also evident in Keeper’s restricted set of interactions. To navigate through its surrealist world, players require 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 direct it at plants to make them flourish, beam toward a creature to make it squint, and use it to uncover secrets and tackle puzzles.

Companion Dynamics and Gameplay Variety

Twig, the lighthouse’s trusty bird friend, is typically sitting on the lighthouse, from where he’ll sometimes fly off to indicate the path forward or activate secrets. In addition to these scripted movements, the lighthouse can additionally direct the bird to do things like raising objects, pulling levers, or — maybe the intriguing one — connecting itself to creatures.

The last example is a great illustration of how Keeper’s minimalistic approach to the control system still provides a broad range of interactive features. The various environments, items, and creatures pave the path to distinctive interactions, and especially metamorphosis.

“For instance, there's a moment where a type of rosy dust, which resembles cotton candy, gets stuck to the lighthouse, making it less heavy. For that segment of the game, the lighthouse can leap, float, and navigate,” Petty explains. “A welcome change from being anchored to the ground. So we aim to change the pace up in a many different ways.”

Narrative Without Words

But exploring and interacting 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 overcoming obstacles as a team as they travel toward a magnificent mountain peak. To make matters more complicated, they must accomplish this without using words — and without the type of expressions and emotional cues a human character could have relied upon.

Although Petty assures that gamers will get to sense more expression than one would expect from a lighthouse, it’s the bird, in particular, who is instrumental in expressing emotions. “When they're riding along on the lighthouse, players have a whole button assigned for just expressing with the bird, and a lot of times it will mirror the mood of that area,” he says.

“For example, when you get in a somewhat tense or darker area, the bird will hunker down and curl around the top of the lighthouse. And if you press the expression button, instead of a playful chirp or guiding you, it will sort of glance about and duck down.”

Threats and Benevolent Inhabitants

By “gloomy zone,” Petty is referring to the threat that derives from something called the “Wither,” a malevolent ecosystem. As the lighthouse and Twig continue their journey, they encounter increasing amounts of this purple, corrosive substance, which may occasionally appear as of brambles, vines, and insects. “It's what Twig is flying away from,” Petty clarifies.

In contrast to the Wither, the majority of creatures in Keeper are in fact amicable. When Twig expresses at one of the odd critters, for instance, it might emote back and perhaps produce an ambient noise — in the absence of words, sound effects and music are an additional tool used to narrate Keeper’s story.

Narrative Conclusion and Influences

This method of non-verbal storytelling makes me wonder if Keeper’s narrative concludes in a cryptic ending, but Petty reassures that there will be a middle ground. “It's not a complete mystery, but since it's wordless, it's naturally open to interpretation. We purposely want to allow some room for that because that's my favorite thing about art; the discussions that occur after people play something,” he says, “But we do provide defined narrative arcs and closure.”

A quick look at Keeper’s snowy mountaintops, elaborate cave systems, and odd rock formations will reveal that the outdoors served as one of the primary influences for this human-less adventure. As Petty shares, the scenery isn’t just inspired by ordinary locations: “I live in California and there's a lot of really cool mountains in this region,” 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 hiking trails; that's one of my big inspirations. It's not anything super remarkable, but what makes it interesting is the numerous hills, and as you're climbing up, you sometimes come across remnants of machinery that you can’t identify what they were for.”

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

Metaphorical Meaning and Final Reflections

While Petty humorously calls the lighthouse main character