At Gamescom this week I got to sit down with Tim Schafer and some members of the team at DoubleFine and get a first look at their latest title, Keeper. This new game sees us take control of a Lighthouse in a peculiar land, and with our bird-friend Twig in tow, take on quite the surreal adventure.
Lighthouses Have Feelings Too
After Psychonauts 2, it’s hard to believe that DoubleFine could get even more weird, but they’ve gone and done just that with Keeper. You’ll take control of a Lighthouse, no longer happy to be confined to standing still guarding a shoreline. This it seems is all down to the arrival of a large, colourful bird named Twig, who wakes the Lighthouse from it’s slumber (do Lighthouses dream of bright coloured birds?) and it literally wrestles itself from it’s foundations, pulling in roots and stone to form itself a set of spider-like legs.
Keeper is the brainchild of DoubleFine developer Lee Petty, who also worked on titles like Stacking and RAD and a litany of others from back in the good ol’ days of Xbox Live Arcade. Interestingly, the world of Keeper was dreamed up during the COVID-19 Pandemic and fittingly, is devoid of human life, with the entire story told through animation, music and sound. Per Tim Schafer, when it came time to decide what the next game Double Fine would make should be now they’ve joined the Xbox family, it was going to be something weird.
“When we joined the Xbox family, we were supported by all the resources that add to everything we’d done up until now, and we don’t have to pitch a game with publishers; like, I want to make something really weird, like I really want to make something that like could probably never gets off the ground anywhere else. It sounds kind of scary, but it also sounded like an exciting time.
And so we came up with the idea – also inspired by being in the middle of the COVID pandemic, with us all locked in our houses. It was a weird time, remembering and thinking about nature and how even though humanity felt really threatened by that disease going on that nature was still going on without us. Also, how nature is all interconnected- All the life was interconnected. They go through these changes and cycles and metamorphosis and seasons – and that’s one of the main themes of the game. It’s also very inspired by surrealism and surrealist painters like Dali.“
-Tim Schafer
Many Coloured Lands
The preview starts off with our bird friend Twig waking the lighthouse up, and following our growing of legs, the building goes stumbling around (Tim Schafer quips ‘As lighthouses like to do”) and experiences a vision of sorts to get to the top of a mountain far off in the distance. With the lighthouse determined to reach this highest of vantage points, we’re off on a grand (and very DoubleFine!) adventure. The entire games story is told through animation, sound and visual cues, and Twig and our walking Lighthouse have quite the journey ahead of them.
“It’s a surprisingly emotional story. The bond between the Lighthouse and Twig will make you think about companionship and friendship – you can tell that they care about each other, and that all comes up through the animation and the visual storytelling. I was working on another project filled with dialogue, came in, tried to add a little lighthouse keeper, but the team said no.“
-Tim Schafer
What followed was a series of gameplay segments from early in the game, the first of which took us into a gorgeous meadow filled with what looked like creatures made from roots and slate rock. You can, being a lighthouse, interact with them by using your warning light, waking things up or, if focused, burning things away. Twig, our bird companion, can be directed by the light to interact with different things, and you’ll use this mechanic to solve puzzles throughout your time in Keeper.
Another section took us to a more populated area, filled with all manner of curious mechanical creatures living in warped, peculiar buildings. Here, there’s a time manipulation mechanic, as a building we’ve accidentally tumbled into can be reformed, from tiny broken bricks and mortar, reforming before our eyes to clear a path ahead. It even accidentally forces Twig to regress back into an egg, perched atop our lighthouse precariously. I asked Tim about the technical side of Keeper, because it really is stunning to look at.
“This is all in Unreal Engine 5.5. Lee is a very technical artist and understands the technicalities of shaders, and all the the advancements we can use. He definitely attracted great programmers to project that nailed the cool effects, the dynamic morphing of things, things like that.“
-Tim Schafer
There are other worlds than these…
The last section of the game we spent time in was set in a dazzling valley filled with a fluffy, pink cloud-like mist. When passing through, the mist sticks to our lighthouse like somesort of candy floss, allowing us to jump and almost float for a short time. This in turn allows for more platforming style challenges, as the new ability is utilised to navigate platforms and overcome obstacles. As our demo came to an end, I jokingly asked Tim just how high the team was when they designed Keeper.
[Laughs] “It’s funny and it’s very neat and hopefully it is the most beautiful, unique walking lighthouse game you’ve ever seen. But you can see elements of our previous games – you can see a lot of Psychonauts and surrrealism and stuff. We’ve always, at the studio, been drawn to things that we’ve not seen before. Things that seem to come from different themes and from paintings and different artists. I mean, I can’t vouch – I know a lot of whiskey has been dropped around.“
-Tim Schafer
To finish off, I asked Tim one last question – as this game was being worked on by Lee Petty, what exactly was Tim Schafer up to within the walls of Double Fine?
[Laughs] “Someone is daring me to say Brutal Legend 2…No, I have said before that we have multiple teams and they’re all working on brand new IP. We did Psychonauts 2 and that’s enough sequels for one decade.“
-Tim Schafer
Keeper is releasing on PC, Xbox Series X|S and of course, Xbox Game Pass on October 17th.
