Tag:

Adventure

I could look at Lego Voyagers for hours, but that’s not the only reason why this co-op adventure might be the next Split Fiction

by admin September 1, 2025

A spiritual successor to the excellent Lego Builder’s Journey, Lego Voyagers takes the serene puzzle action of its predecessor to new heights with a focus on two player co-op play. A celebration of friendship and creativity, I went hands-on with roughly half an hour of the game as part of an early preview session ahead of Gamescom 2025 and enjoyed every second.

For starters, it’s easily one of the best-looking Lego games ever made – capturing the look and feel of the popular building toy perfectly. Its world is crafted entirely from real-life Lego pieces, rendered with loving attention to detail. The way that tiles fit together with a tiny visible gap or at slightly uneven angles is not only impressively realistic, but lends the world a pleasantly tactile appearance.

It’s life-like, but beautiful too. Everything is bathed in soft atmospheric lighting that bounces off the plastic surface to give it an almost dream-like glow that’s incredibly warm and cozy. Even those with no affinity for Lego will be able to appreciate that Voyagers is one stunning game.

1×2

(Image credit: Annapurna Interactive)

You and your companion play as tiny little bricks (part 3005 for all the real Lego pros out there), complete with a cute animated eye. These unassuming protagonists are simply adorable, cutely rolling around the screen like characters from a stop-motion animation.

Rather than speaking, your character sings, triggered by the press of a button, adding to the gentle and melodic background music and occasionally helping you solve the many puzzles.

Like Builder’s Journey, this is ultimately a game about the joy of getting from A to B, so your objective is simply figuring out how to progress. You can attach yourself to almost any visible stud (that’s the round bit on the top of a Lego brick) in the game with a satisfying click, so it’s sometimes as easy as jumping between a few exposed points up the side of your obstacle.

There are more complex encounters, too, that require attaching yourself to loose bricks. Once stuck, you can roll around with them for easy transport, then hold a key to place them in order to construct bridges or towers.

As this is a co-op-only experience, you can expect lots of moments where teamwork is a necessity. One puzzle, for example, had my co-op partner triggering catapults to send valuable bricks my way, while another had them activating switches to keep vital platforms accessible.

If you’ve tried the likes of Split Fiction or It Takes Two, then you know roughly the kind of design to expect here, and I certainly felt that it scratched my itch for a new co-op adventure. As with those games, Lego Voyagers will feature a Friend’s Pass system in addition to full local co-op that lets a buddy join your game at any time for free.

(Image credit: Annapurna Interactive)

There are plenty of diversions along the way, too, clearly intended to evoke feelings of companionship. I never thought I would get emotional over two plastic bricks sitting on a swing staring into the sunset, but the excellent presentation means that it’s surprisingly poignant and effective.

This is on top of a host of amusing and creative ways to interact with the world, such as bizarre-looking flowers that shoot up into the air like a firework as you brush past, the little bucket piece you can wear as a hat, or being able to stick yourself to the scuttling crabs represented by red horizontal clip tiles – look up Lego piece 60470 and you’ll see the vision!

Although I ultimately didn’t get to see much of the world in my brief preview session, there’s something surprisingly somber about it. The areas you explore are full of industrial debris, abandoned train tracks, and hints of something much larger than you.

It’s all very mysterious, and I’m eager to see whatever Lego Voyagers has in store for me and a friend when it launches for PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC on September 15.

You might also like…

Source link

September 1, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Hell Is Us review: a somber but intriguing adventure with one foot in the soulslike genre

by admin September 1, 2025

Why you can trust TechRadar

We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Another month, another attempt to capture the magic of FromSoft’s genre-defining epic (even if French-Canadian developer Rogue Factor claims it isn’t). Yes, action-adventure game Hell Is Us sits with one foot in the soulslike category, but that’s not a criticism; it takes what it needs from Dark Souls and its ilk, discards what it doesn’t, then absconds in the night with a suitcase full of dodge-rolls and ominous-sounding characters.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PC
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Release date: August 12, 2025

See, as a big fan of FromSoft’s games, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s almost impossible to properly capture the magic of a game like Bloodborne or Elden Ring. Many have tried, and there have been some successes; Lies of P and Remnant II were two recent standout examples for me. I think the trick is not trying to mirror exactly what FromSoft does; it’s taking the formula and doing your own thing with it.

Does Hell Is Us succeed in this regard? For the most part, yes. If you’re a fan of either action-adventure or the best soulslike games – or are curious about getting into the oft-impenetrable latter genre – it’s worth a look. The setting is unique and interesting, the gameplay is enjoyable, and it’s more forgiving overall than most games within the soulslike genre, even if the underlying DNA is impossible not to notice.

Needless to say, the ‘Week of Peace’ did not go so well. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

Hard times

Straight off the bat, this game is bleak – the world you inhabit feels dark and dangerous, poised to collapse into unmitigated chaos at any moment, with only small glimmers of hope left. Wracked by a long and bloody civil war, the setting of Hadea is an insular, vaguely eastern European nation with a rich history of animosity between two religious factions, the traditionalist Palomists and the more progressive (but still pretty damn zealous) Sabinians.

By 1992, the war has reached a fever point, with brutal pogroms, fighting in the streets, and virtually every crime against humanity you could care to list. Seriously, this game is not for the faint-hearted; you’re going to see some pretty visceral evidence of those crimes against humanity.

Yep, that’s a mass grave. Don’t expect a cheery time in Hadea. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

It’s all rather horrible, but it does have a purpose. Although Rogue Factor didn’t seek to evoke any singular real-world conflict, the setting certainly echoes events like the Bosnian War, the Georgian Civil War, and the Croatian War of Independence. There’s even a thinly-veiled UN imitator called the Organized Nations, characterised by their blue helmets just like in real life. Considering that Hadea is entirely fictional, there’s an unsettling weight of reality to it all that stands as a testament to the quality of the world-building.

Our protagonist, Remi, doesn’t really give a shit about any of this, though. He’s come back to Hadea to find his parents, from whom he was separated as a young child. Naturally, said parents turn out to be entwined in the core narrative. See, that civil war is merely the backdrop; the real meat of the story here concerns an outbreak of bizarre, violent creatures, an ancient religious order, and a mysterious black-ops group doing nefarious things under the cover of Hadea’s present conflict.

The framing narrative is well-implemented, even if they do use the ‘well, that’s not how it happened’ joke sometimes when you die. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

Uncovering the mystery

The story is told via a framing narrative, which sees Remi – immediately recognisable as Elias Toufexis, best known as the iconic baritone of Adam ‘I Never Asked For This’ Jensen in the newer Deus Ex games – being drugged and interrogated by a deeply unpleasant man with a chainsmoking habit and about sixteen chins. See, Hell Is Us loves its classic environmental storytelling, but it’s also not above using actual cutscenes. There are also proper dialogue scenes with some (non-player characters) NPCs, which serve to both progress the story and deliver optional exposition about the world.

For the most part, I found the characters believable and (usually) likable. From sardonic war journalist Tania to the kind-hearted Abbot Jaffer, these NPCs inject the world with humanity and authenticity. Unfortunately, Remi himself doesn’t have quite the same screen presence. He’s the cold, brooding type, which mercifully does mean that he doesn’t chatter to himself constantly while you’re exploring or solving puzzles, but also results in him feeling a bit flat. Early in the story, it’s revealed that he’s a diagnosed sociopath with a military past, but this seems to serve mainly as a convenient reason to make him largely unbothered by the insanity unfolding around him.

Best Bit

(Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

A handful of sections later in the game pit you against literal hordes of weaker enemies, which are so much fun to carve through with reckless abandon.

Many of the people you encounter while journeying across Hadea have side-quests to offer you, though this is usually done in a roundabout way; in typical soulslike fashion, there’s no world map or objective markers. Instead, you might hear a soldier complaining about running low on his medication – and wouldn’t you know it, later on, you’ll find a bottle of the very pills he needs. Sometimes, the clock is ticking; I found a woman with a starving infant hiding from Sabinian soldiers, and by the time I returned with some bottles of baby formula, I was met with a shoebox with a pacifier on top. That hurt a little, honestly.

You can talk to many characters, but don’t expect them all to be friendly or helpful – there’s a war on, after all. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

There’s little handholding here, which admittedly had me wishing for a wiki on a few occasions while I was reviewing the game, but it’s not quite as oblique as the average Souls series entry, instead feeling strangely more like a retro point-and-click adventure game. Remi has a chunky tablet device that doubles as an inventory screen and ‘investigation log’, noting down key information you come across and helpfully sorting the stuff you find into quest-critical items and the many, many lore snippets you can uncover.

Often, the pace is slowed by the inclusion of a puzzle, and these range from laughably easy to moderately head-scratching. Thankfully, these puzzles rarely outstay their welcome; even when you’re hunting for the right combination of arcane sigils to unlock a door in some ancient ruin, you can expect to be set upon by ravenous monsters at any given moment.

Remi’s stolen APC takes you from A to B across Hadea, and also serves as a sort of mobile base of investigations. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

Fight for your life

Speaking of monsters: let’s talk combat. This is where Hell Is Us cribs from FromSoft’s homework the most, with the classic block-dodge-parry mechanics that should feel immediately familiar to any soulslike enjoyer. Of course, virtually every action consumes stamina, which is tied directly to your health bar, meaning that taking even a single hit immediately makes the fight harder.

Simply put, the combat gameplay is solid. Attacks that can be countered are telegraphed by the enemy pulsing red, with a reasonably generous parry window, but Rogue Factor still manages to distinguish itself from the usual business thanks to the ‘healing pulse’ mechanic. There’s no refillable healing flask here, and actual healing items are relatively sparse; instead, dealing damage to enemies releases particles, which periodically coalesce into a ring around you. At this point, you can tap a button to regain a bit of health based on the damage you’ve dealt, but you have to be fast, as the ring dissipates after barely a second.

As is typical of soulslike combat, you can lock onto enemies to more easily dodge and parry their attacks. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

You also get a gradually expanding suite of extra abilities. These take three forms: glyphs that can be slotted into your weapons and consume ‘Lymbic Energy’ (read: mana), powerful relics with long cooldown timers, and programs for the owl-like tricopter drone that perches on Remi’s shoulder and doubles as your flashlight in dark areas. You get three glyphs each across two equipped weapons, one relic, and four drone slots, making for a total of eleven abilities equipped at once – meaning there’s plenty of build diversity available here, even if Remi doesn’t have a traditional stat sheet. Most of these abilities are pretty fun – I was particularly partial to the drone skill that let me grab onto it and zoom forward, dealing heavy damage to anything in my path.

The creatures besieging Hadea are invulnerable to conventional weaponry, with the only way to kill them being ‘Lymbic weapons’. Unfortunately, there’s not a huge amount of variety here: you get a regular sword, twin axes, a polearm, and a hulking great sword, filling the usual melee weapon archetypes. These can be upgraded and imbued with elements (Grief, Rage, Terror, and Elation), but all this does is make them hit harder and determine which type of glyphs you can equip on them. I quickly settled into using a Polearm of Terror and Twin Axes of Rage, but if you’re the sort of gamer who enjoys experimenting with every new weapon you find, you might be disappointed here.

Some of the boss battle arenas are visually striking. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

There’s another issue with the combat that doesn’t emerge until later in the game, though: some of those special abilities are pretty dang overtuned. For example, once I got my hands on the max-level Rage Spike glyph (an explosive ranged attack), most fights became comically easy, with Remi repeatedly blasting enemies to smithereens from far outside melee range. It’s not a massive issue for me, since you have to conquer a good chunk of the game to become that powerful, but it did trivialize the majority of encounters towards the tail end of the story.

Rise to the challenge – or don’t

Speaking of difficulty, Hell Is Us isn’t overly punishing. I experimented with all three difficulty levels (described as Lenient, Balanced, and Merciless), which purely affect the combat and can be further fine-tuned in the settings to adjust enemy health, damage, and aggression, and found that the highest difficulty gave the ‘truest’ soulslike experience. Yeah, I know that customizable difficulty options are a personal affront to the most die-hard fans of the genre, but I honestly think it’s a good inclusion: on ‘Lenient’ difficulty, even someone who has never played a soulslike before could have a good time here.

There’s no shortage of ominous tombs to plunder in Hadea. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

There’s also no real penalty for dying; you just respawn at your most recent save point, and the enemies you killed remain dead (although there is an optional setting to make death fully reset any progress from your previous save). Hostiles *do* respawn, however, if you leave one of the game’s many areas by travelling between them in the armored vehicle Remi commandeers in the opening act. You can stop this – and render an area permanently safe – by collapsing Timeloops, which are large ferrofluid-looking orbs that sustain the creatures you face.

To do this, you have to track down specific enemies marked as ‘Timeloop Guardians’, kill them, then take a special item to the Timeloop and chuck it inside. These are mostly optional, but you do get loot for each Timeloop you shut down, and doing so is its own reward anyway; there’s a lot of backtracking to be done if you’re shooting for 100% completion, so it’s nice to return to a region and find it free of enemies.

Then again, the hostiles you face are actually pretty fun to fight. The ‘Hollow Walkers’ are a brilliantly creepy piece of enemy design, feeling like something straight out of the SCP Foundation universe, with unsettling, jerky movements and eerie vocalizations. Some Hollow Walkers are paired with a ‘Haze’, a floating ball of the aforementioned elemental emotions which must be slain before its linked Walker can be harmed – and if you’re not quick enough, the Haze will reform and you’ll have to kill it again.

These are another good example of strong audiovisual design, with the Rage Haze unleashing a barrage of attacks and screaming with fury, while the Elation Haze cackles maniacally as it zooms around. The creatures were unleashed by the negative human emotions that spiked because of the Hadean civil war, and that plays nicely into their design.

That’s a Timeloop: kill the guardians nearby to shut it down and stop them from coming back for good. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

Sadly, a lack of diversity again hampers enjoyment a little here, as you basically fight the same measly selection of enemies over and over throughout the game. There are three tiers of enemy threat levels, but only the Hazes actually change in appearance and moveset from tier to tier; the Hollow Walkers merely get bigger health bars and more damaging attacks, and there are only five types of Walker to encounter. There’s also a surprising dearth of boss fights – a common staple of both the action-adventure and soulslike genres – with only four real bosses to be found throughout the entire course of the game. The final boss, disappointingly, is just four much bigger versions of a basic enemy type. Clearly, no lessons were learned here from the final boss of the original Destiny campaign.

Hadean tourism

If I’m being honest, though, my criticisms are small. I really enjoyed my time with Hell Is Us, which clocked in at just shy of 30 hours for my review – and I was doing my best to do and see everything, which is possibly why I ended up being so overpowered. I played with both a gamepad and my usual mouse and keyboard, and although the game advises using a controller, I didn’t have any problems playing with the latter.

The biggest issue I have with the game is that I want more, which is quite the double-edged sword. The game is divided into three acts, but the third act is essentially just the underwhelming final battle, followed by a ten-minute cutscene that didn’t quite wrap things up to my satisfaction. Sure, it leaves things open for downloadable content (DLC) or an expansion and perhaps even a sequel (which I genuinely hope we get), but the finale feels a bit rushed, and it’s a shame not to end on a high note.

Arriving on the shores of the peaceful Lake Cynon reminds the player that underneath the violence of the civil war, this world can be quite beautiful. (Image credit: Rogue Factor / Nacon)

Still, it’s a super experience overall that I’d recommend to anyone who enjoys either soulslikes specifically or just dark action-adventure games in general. It runs on Unreal Engine 5 (which may set off alarm bells for some gamers), but I found it to be reasonably well-optimized, with no noticeable performance issues at 1440p on my RTX 5060 desktop or at 1080p on the RTX 4060 gaming laptop I also used for testing. Hadea is genuinely beautiful at times, too. For every dank cave and bombed-out village, there’s a vibrant field of flowers or the crumbling majesty of an antediluvian ruin.

If you like good melee combat and won’t be turned off by graphic depictions of war crimes, Hell Is Us is definitely worth a shot. Just be prepared to consult Google from time to time – or, like I did, keep a pen and notepad handy, so you don’t forget exactly where you were supposed to take those baby formula bottles.

Should you play Hell Is Us?

Play it if…

Don’t play it if…

Accessibility

We’ve got the usual selection of accessibility options here, with three color blind modes – Deuteranope, Protanope, and Tritanope – which can be adjusted to varying degrees of color correction, as well as being able to reduce or disable motion blur and camera shake.

There are also gameplay accessibility options, which let you independently adjust the health, damage, and aggression of enemies, plus some customization options for the HUD and the ability to automate enemy lock-ons.

Of note is a directional audio indicator: this displays an on-screen marker denoting the direction and distance of gameplay-related sounds, including enemy attack sounds in combat and the identifying noise emitted by Timeloop Guardians. Considering how important directional sound can be in Hell Is Us, this is a good inclusion for hearing-impaired players.

How I reviewed Hell Is Us

I played Hell Is Us from start to finish, which took me a little under 30 hours – though I was being very thorough in my exploration, and a speedy player less concerned with 100% completion could likely beat the game far quicker.

I used my gaming desktop, which uses an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Nvidia RTX 5060 with 32GB of RAM, as well as an Acer Predator gaming laptop with an Intel Core i7, RTX 4060, and 16GB of RAM. On desktop, I used an Asus ROG keyboard and mouse and a Razer Raptor 27 gaming monitor. With the laptop, I used a Scuf Instinct Pro gamepad.

I frequently took the time to adjust both the difficulty level and graphical settings in several in-game locations to get a good idea of both how much challenge the game presents and how well it runs. I naturally also tested out each new weapon and ability the game gave me – though I quickly found my favorites and stuck with those for the majority of the game.

First reviewed August 2025

Hell Is Us: Price Comparison

Source link

September 1, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Arcadian Days, A Relaxing Non-Linear Adventure, Hits Early Access Next Month

by admin August 28, 2025

Solo developer Immersiv Games reached out to me back in June to check out its non-linear adventure game, Arcadian Days, during Steam Next Fest, and it ended up being one of my favorite demos from the event. Now, Immersiv Games has revealed Arcadian Days hits Steam Early Access on September 16, and if you’re looking for something relaxing and unique to check out, I’d recommend giving it a shot.

During the Steam Next Fest demo, I was impressed by its minimalist, free-flowing exploration and sun-kissed visuals – throughout the demo, a gorgeous sunset created a painterly backdrop to my leisurely tasks, which included collecting plants for a crop or wood in a shed. The tasks I experienced weren’t too challenging, and completing them took little effort, but Immersiv Games’ self-proclaimed “non-linear” and “relaxing” makes me think this is by design. Though I love me some fast-paced, high-intensity action games, Arcadian Days’ demo reminded me that it’s equally as rewarding to check out a game that asks you to slow down and breathe.

I look forward to seeing how the Arcadian Days evolves during its Early Access period. Arcadian Days launches on PC via Steam Early Access on September 16.

For more, check out my Arcadian Days demo thoughts in this round-up here.

Source link

August 28, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Rusty Lake is back with another deliciously macabre adventure, and if you’ve slept on the overlooked series you’re missing out

by admin August 22, 2025

If you’ve been reading Eurogamer for any length of time there’s a good chance you’ve already seen me harp on about the shamefully overlooked Rusty Lake series. It’s a wonderfully macabre thing; strange, haunting, often unexpectedly disturbing, but also brilliantly accessible, and cheap as chips too. I love it, and will never stop telling people about it in a bid to share that love, so here I am again now that new game Servant of the Lake has been revealed.

Before we get onto the new stuff, though, a bit of background might be in order, seeing as Rusty Lake is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year and has one hell of a back catalogue to enjoy. Not including Servant of the Lake, the series now consists of 18 games and a short film; some are fully fledged premium offerings – usually lasting a couple of hours and most often released under the Rusty Lake label – while the rest, known as Cube Escape, are shorter (and somewhat less polished) free-to-play companion pieces.

By and large, though, all follow the same basic formula, melding casual point-and-click puzzling with room-escape-style conundrums. And with a few notable exceptions, the key word is “casual”; these are brilliantly accessible adventures, most memorable for their irresistibly macabre ambience, and the fascinating history of the mysterious Vanderboom family at their centre, rather than any radical design convolutions.

Servant of the Lake announcement trailer.Watch on YouTube

Early games are pretty shameless in their debt to David Lynch and Mark Frost’s seminal TV series Twin Peaks (right down to a murder victim called Laura and a detective called Dale), but it doesn’t take long for developer Rusty Lake to establish its own deeply weird, and decidedly idiosyncratic lore. And with each entry usually approaching the story from a radically different direction – one, for instance, plays out during a horrifically doomed birthday party, and another takes place entirely from within a cardboard box – it all adds up to a wonderfully sinister (and narratively intertwined) saga of standalone adventures.

Traditionally, I’ve tended to recommended Rusty Lake: Roots as a good starting point – it’s a beautiful and surprisingly moving tale, charting three generations of the Vanderboom family, from 1860 to 1935, as they live and die in the same house. Other standouts, though, include The White Door, which does some striking things with its engaging split-screen presentation; and if you wanted to see developer Rusty Lake really flexing its design chops, there’s the deeply impressive The Past Within, which reimagines the series’ familiar formula as a brain-melting co-op experience that demands constant communication as two players navigate the same room in different time periods.

It is, to reiterate, consistently fantastic – and often overlooked – stuff. All of which bring us to Servant of the Lake, the series’ first premium entry since 2023’s Underground Blossom, which took players on a journey through the life and memories of Laura Vanderboom as she travelled from one station to the next. As its name suggests, Servant of the Lake – a more traditional single-player point-and-click adventure – finds yet another new perspective to tell its story, this time visiting the Vanderboom House in the decades prior to Rusty Lake: Roots, as seen through the eyes of its housekeeper. “Solve the puzzles needed to fulfil your daily tasks,” teases its blurb, “look after the household, welcome the visitor and ensure their comfort while helping the family achieve their alchemical ambitions!” Death, darkness, and other assorted weirdness – usually involving saucer-eyed shadowmen – will almost inevitably ensure.

Here’s the equally unnerving Rusty Lake short film.Watch on YouTube

There’s no release date for Servant of the Lake yet, but this nebulous window between now and its eventual arrival would seem, if I might be so bold, to be the perfect opportunity to catch up on earlier events in the Vanderboom saga if it’s so far passed you buy. Better still, the bulk of the series – which was already absurdly inexpensive to start with – is currently discounted on Steam to celebrate Servant of the Lake’s reveal. The Cube Escape Collection, for instance – which includes nine smaller-scale games – costs £2.99, while the premium Rusty Lake titles cost between £1.19 and £3.99. Oh, and there’s an £18.11 bundle containing everything too! All this, I should say, works on both Mac and PC, and if you’d rather take the no-money-now approach, the Cube Escape series is free to download on iOS and Android. Thank you for listening to my TED talk on Rusty Lake. I will now be taking questions.

Source link

August 22, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Keeper Is A Salvador Dali-Inspired Surrealist Adventure With No Dialogue, No Combat, And A Walking Lighthouse

by admin August 21, 2025

It’s not often I’m thrown when previewing a video game. But thrown is exactly what I was when I stepped into the unassuming Xbox Room #10 in Xbox’s business hall booth during Day 1 of Gamescom 2025. There were six seats, a small table, and a television showcasing Keeper, the upcoming adventure game from Psychonauts developer Double Fine Productions centered around a walking lighthouse and a bird. Oh, and the studio’s CEO and games industry legend, Tim Schafer.

Nobody told me the person showcasing Keeper would be Schafer, and it’s kinda wild to walk into a room and be surprise-greeted by a developer you massively respect. Of course, Schafer is a true gentleman, kind, and genuinely hilarious, so the nerves quickly disappear as he walks me through three previously recorded gameplay segments of Keeper.

I promise I’ll talk about those segments, but everything Schafer told me beforehand was just as interesting (possibly more). First off, it’s his first time doing press since 2021 with Psychonauts 2, so Schafer explains that he’s nervous – ahhh, even ground – and his first time at Gamescom in 16 years! Though he was here in person to talk about Keeper, he mostly speaks about Lee Petty, the game’s director (and Brutal Legend and Broken Age art director) and the person behind the wild idea that is Keeper.

Schafer says Keeper wouldn’t exist without Double Fine becoming an Xbox studio. “Around the time we had just joined the Xbox family, we were wondering what we should make next,” Schafer says. “We have support; we have money; and we don’t have to worry about going out of business every day, and we don’t have to pitch to publishers, ‘Please make our game, it’s very commercial.'”

At the same time, Petty was busy thinking about his time during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was locked in his home like the rest of us, but he found solace in nature hikes amongst the hills around San Francisco. He couldn’t get an idea out of his head: what if humanity didn’t survive this, but nature did and took over in our place? It’s here that Schafer explains Petty is a “weird dude who loves strange images, and grew up loving Dark Crystal and Salvador Dali.”

The result of all that pondering is Keeper – weird and chill, like Petty and his interests, Schafer says. He then describes the game as an adventure game with puzzles – light puzzles, though, because Keeper is about the “atmosphere and vibes and companionship between these two.” The two he’s talking about are Twig, a sea bird, and an unnamed lighthouse. After a violent sea storm isolates Twig from her flock, she perches on a lighthouse. For some reason, this awakens the lighthouse, it tips over, and in the resulting crash, it grows legs. Typical lighthouse behavior.

Awakened and the new owner of legs, this lighthouse feels immediately called to a giant mountain peak atop the island it’s on. So, it begins heading that way, with Twig in tow. Controlling the lighthouse consists of moving through surrealist and fantastical landscapes and shining your beam on things. You can shine your beam on plants and sometimes they’ll grow; you can shine your beam on gears and sometimes Twig will fly to them and rotate them to unlock gates; you can shine your beam on strange pot creatures that crash to the floor beneath them, sometimes revealing objects for Twig to interact with.

Your primary method of interacting with this world is your beam, and second to that is Twig. This might just be a me thing as someone who lives a couple hours away from Disney World and has a fondness for the technology of animatronics, but Keeper most reminds me of a Disney dark ride. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, dark rides include Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion. It’s less about thrills and more about experiencing the things around you, watching animatronics move to tell a story, and soaking in the vibes. That’s Keeper.

I love that shining your light on objects causes them to emote or come to life with animation. It might not affect your journey forward or be part of a puzzle every time, but that’s okay – it’s about the vibes! It’s about watching the animatronics of this world, as it were, do things that make the surrounding area feel real, like it has its own story to tell.

The puzzles I see seem simple and quick, but I can’t help keeping an eye on the things outside the primary focus of these gameplay videos. I see sunflowers dance as light grazes over them, carrots come to life and dive bomb into the soil below, and more. It really feels like a Double Fine dark ride in the most complimentary way.

Of course, I see some other things that catch my eye. At one point, Twig becomes a giant egg atop the lighthouse for some reason. I see a village of tiny lil guys that are rusty watches. I see the lighthouse prance through pink pollen that gives it a light, low-gravity effect when it jumps. Everything I see looks vastly different from what I witness moments before, but it’s all oozing with Double Fine and surrealist Salvador Dali-inspired charm.

Some areas are more linear, designed around puzzles, Schafer says. Other areas are more open, prime for exploration. Regardless of where you are in the lighthouse’s journey to the mountain peak, Schafer says Keeper is ultimately about change; how nature changes, how Twig changes, how the lighthouse changes. Every character, including Twig and the Lighthouse, has a story arc, he adds.

When I ask Schafer why Petty decided to have players control a lighthouse, Schafer laughs – he doesn’t actually know. He says the lighthouse was one of the game’s side characters, but when he saw it walking with legs, he told Petty that needs to be the game. “It was compelling,” Schafer says. “It really looked like something from a surrealist painting.”

Schafer ends my presentation further explaining Double Fine’s love of nonsense and the bizarre, the type of work directors David Lynch and David Cronenberg are interested in making, he says. I see the vision.

Keeper is a weird game, but it has that undeniable Double Fine charm. I can’t wait to actually play it when it launches on October 17 on Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Source link

August 21, 2025 0 comments