The world of Keeper looms from the screen like a dream coloured by psilocybin. Here is a gnarled landmass of bubblegum blues, powder pinks and strange, luminous beasts, where evolution seems to occur at light speed. This world’s considerable beauty is amplified by how it is rendered: like a 1980s fantasy movie filled with charmingly handmade practical effects. Keeper is the latest title from Double Fine, maker of trippy platformer Psychonauts 2, Kickstarter sensation Broken Age and many other idiosyncratic titles. It is an action-adventure resplendent with the lumps and bumps of life’s imperfections, as if its 3D modellers had sculpted the setting from papier-mache rather than using computer software.
Even stranger than the setting is the protagonist: you play as a lighthouse, coming to appreciate this gleaming ecological fantasia by shining its beacon about the environment. Long shadows stretch behind illuminated objects, making the outlines of spectacularly supersized plants and tiny critters all the more pronounced. The casting of light is how you interact with the world: it often causes vegetation to grow before your eyes, and sometimes unusual inhabitants will feast upon it. As you lumber through this environment – calm lagoons and sun-baked canyons filled with prickly cacti – there is joy to be found in simply looking, taking the weirdness in, and then bringing it to even greater life.
