Keeper is strange. This may seem unsurprising given that it's the latest game from developer Double Fine, which has for years carried itself with a distinct oddball identity, but Keeper is unusual even by the studio's standards. It doesn't fit cleanly into a traditional genre, and at some points feels more like a prestige art project. But this is also Double Fine at its most uncompromising, and the experience is better for it.
The closest analog for Keeper is 2012's Journey--the two games share a wordless approach to narrative, an emphasis on movement that is at times slow and deliberate and at others joyfully fluid and fast, and even the seeming objective of making your way to a distant mountaintop. But that comparison feels reductive, because whereas Journey is a straightforward parable, Keeper keeps evolving, reinventing itself and its themes, and going to unexpected places. While you can quickly size up and understand the basic contours of Journey's world, the world of Keeper feels more alien, and the natural order of it isn't always clear.
Let's back up. Keeper begins when a lighthouse shines its light to save a bird from an encroaching swarm of parasitic darkness. The lighthouse itself topples, snapping into pieces, but then reforms itself and grows a tripod of spindly, wobbly legs. You play through these awkward first steps, frequently face-planting--does a lighthouse have a face?--as you learn how to move around the world.
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