combat

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. 

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