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Typically, if a bird stumbles upon an deserted lighthouse, it may perch, rest momentarily, make a deposit, and fly away. Not so in Keeper, an forthcoming third-person adventure puzzle game developed by the development studio; here, the lighthouse sprouts little legs, forms a friendship with the bird, and sets off on an ambitious hike.

While a recent preview at Gamescom answered a few questions, it also sparked a desire to learn more about this surreal lighthouse-meets-bird story. Thus, we sat down with the creative director, the visionary lead behind Keeper, to shed light on his team's colorful creation.

An Unconventional Journey Gameplay

Although at its core built as an adventure game, Petty explains that Keeper aims to provide a unique experience through a blend of dreamlike visual style, enigmatic setting, accessible puzzles, and, most notably, the lack of words. He calls the game a “refreshing break,” a brief adventure different from anything gamers have experienced before.

“Keeper communicates less than a typical game,” he says. “It was important for us to let the player relax and not stress about messing up; just take a moment to attempt and embrace the unusual aspects.”

As a result, Keeper isn’t just a series of challenges, nor is its exploration very objective-driven. Set in a post-civilization world without humans, players traverse the world as a living lighthouse accompanied by a bird sidekick named Twig, but there is no death, there are no skill trees, and there is no need to farm for items.

Gameplay Mechanics and Environmental Interaction

“When we set out to create the puzzles, we wanted to craft puzzles that felt deeply woven 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 cannot enter through this door, and you usually grasp that, because there are people there telling you so with dialogue.”

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

Handmade Aesthetics and Limited Interactions

To give the game a “crafted” feel, Keeper steers clear of using many variations of the identical concept. “We do that to a degree, as it's not like everything is created only one time and thrown away,” Petty explains, “but there is a great deal of unique setup. Every few steps away, you see something distinctly new from the rest of the game.”

When asked about maintaining gamer’s attention without of failure and defined objectives, Petty is adamant: “I think we engage the player's attention through the unexpected. You're not really sure what's will occur around each corner.”

This thoughtfully designed approach is additionally noticeable in Keeper’s limited set of interactions. To navigate through its surrealist world, you don’t need only a few 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 instance, you can direct it at plants to make them grow, shine toward a creature to make it squint, and use it to uncover secrets and tackle puzzles.

Companion Dynamics and Diverse Interactions

Twig, the lighthouse’s trusty bird companion, is typically perched on the lighthouse, from where he’ll sometimes take flight to indicate the path forward or activate secrets. Apart from these scripted movements, the lighthouse can additionally direct the bird to perform actions like raising objects, operating levers, or — maybe the intriguing one — connecting itself to creatures.

The latter is a great example of how Keeper’s streamlined design to the input scheme still provides a wide variety of gameplay mechanics. The diverse environments, items, and creatures pave the path to distinctive interactions, and especially metamorphosis.

“For instance, there's a segment where a sort of rosy dust, which resembles fairy floss, gets attached to the lighthouse, making it lighter. For that portion of the game, the lighthouse can jump, float, and navigate,” Petty explains. “A welcome change from being anchored to the ground. So we try to vary the pace up in a many different ways.”

Storytelling Without Words

But exploring and fiddling with their surroundings is not the sole task bestowed upon the lighthouse and its bird; they must also convey a story of companionship, bonding, and overcoming obstacles together 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 facial expressions a person might’ve used.

Although Petty assures that players will get to sense greater emotion than might expect from a lighthouse, it’s the bird, specifically, who plays a major role in expressing emotions. “When they're riding along on the lighthouse, players have a whole button assigned for just emoting with the bird, and often it will mirror the emotional tenor of that location,” he says.

“For example, when you enter a kind of tense or gloomier area, the bird will crouch and curl around the top of the lighthouse. And if you press the emote button, rather than a playful chirp or directing you, it will kind of look around and hide.”

Dangers and Friendly Creatures

By “gloomy zone,” Petty is talking about the menace that stems from something called the “Wither,” a hostile ecosystem. As the lighthouse and Twig continue their journey, they’ll see more and more of this violet, corrosive substance, which sometimes take the form of brambles, creepers, and insects. “It's what Twig is escaping,” Petty clarifies.

In contrast to the Wither, most creatures in Keeper are in fact friendly. When Twig expresses at one of the odd critters, for instance, it might respond and possibly produce an background sound — in the absence of words, audio cues and music are an additional tool used to tell Keeper’s story.

Story Closure and Influences

This manner of wordless storytelling makes me wonder if Keeper’s narrative concludes in a ambiguous ending, but Petty assures that there will be a middle ground. “It's not a complete mystery, but since it's without dialogue, it's naturally subject to interpretation. We purposely want to leave space for that because that's my favorite thing about art; the conversations that occur once people experience something,” he says, “But we include specific narrative arcs and closure.”

A quick look at Keeper’s snowy mountaintops, intricate cave systems, and odd rock formations will tell you that the outdoors served as one of the main inspirations for this people-free adventure. As Petty shares, the scenery isn’t just based on any old place: “I live in California and there's a plenty of really cool mountains in this region,” he says. “Near where I live, there's an abandoned Mercury mine that was left like a century ago, and they've turned it into walking paths; that's one of my major inspirations. It's not anything super remarkable, but what adds intrigue is the many hills, and as you're climbing up, you occasionally discover old pieces of machinery that you can’t identify what they were for.”

“They kind of look like strange monuments, just resting within 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.”

Metaphorical Meaning and Final Reflections

While Petty humorously calls the lighthouse protagonist