Psychonauts studio Double Fine returns with a surprising, shapeshifting adventure of captivating wonder and beauty.
Part of me thinks I should tell you what happens a couple of hours into Keeper. And then how it continues to evolve, again and again, from there. These are such big, magical moments in Psychonauts developer Double Fine’s latest adventure – a mesmerising trek through a mysterious world, with, perhaps, a touch of thatgamecompany’s seminal Journey in its DNA – that slapping five stars on it without delving deeper almost feels like I’m doing my job wrong. But to hell with that. Instead, I’m going to do my best to preserve at least some of Keeper’s secrets, so you might get to enjoy its remarkable sense of goggle-eyed wonder unsullied too.
Keeper begins, more or less, on a rock. In the background, rugged spires arc menacingly out of churning waters, rising above a bleak coastline into a green-grey sky. Here, in these grim surroundings, an unlikely hero is born; a dilapidated lighthouse made suddenly sentient, teetering on spider-like legs of rope and stone. At first, its heaving, shifting weight demands careful balance to stay aloft. But slowly, with a little encouragement from Twig – a strange seabird newly nestled upon its lantern – its tentative steps find a more confident rhythm. And so begins a wordless journey, buoyed on by the merest wisp of a narrative, through some wondrous sights, all leading toward the island’s mysterious, omnipresent peak.
You begin your tottering trek stumbling across a desolate, if distantly recognisable landscape of crumbling highways and long-abandoned homes. The colour palette may be bleak, but the ceaselessly shifting camera finds beauty everywhere, pulling back to reveal waves hammering the gloomy shoreline or shifting upward to frame the shambling lighthouse in perfect silhouette as a wan sun spears the thick green clouds. But suddenly the pathway pinches, the camera swings, and the air of faint familiarity turns alien as a heaving, mountainous mass perched upon skittering, scrambling legs comes looming into view.
Keeper might well be the most beautiful game I’ve ever played (as the 276 screenshots I took can probably attest). From that first big reveal to its final fade to black, Double Fine’s world is one of such effervescent wonder, I don’t think there was a single moment across its five-or-so-hour runtime I wasn’t gawping at it in quietly stunned awe. Dusty planes and stampeding herds soon make way for perilous red rock cliff tops with dazzling sea views; crowded valleys of fallen stone and towering roots become teetering plateaus strewn with behemoth bones; flower-specked meadows become twilight caverns become vibrant coral fields become verdant fungal forests, and on it goes; each change perfectly matched by a wonderfully reactive soundtrack that shifts restlessly from jaunty percussion to swooning synths to cacophonous bells.
Every inch of Keeper is an explosion of iridescent colour, strikingly rendered in thick brushstroke swirls, and all framed for maximum impact by that ever-roving camera. Even its corridors are so meticulously textured and illuminated they could move an ae