I’ve at all times had a gentle spot for Double High quality. It’s true that its output is sort of hit-and-miss, however that’s solely as a result of it’s one of many few builders on the market who’re prepared to only attempt something. When it was introduced below the Xbox Sport Studios banner, there was a worry that it’d be pressured into taking part in it protected, and positive sufficient, its first launch below Xbox was Psychonauts 2 — far and away the most secure wager the studio had available.
Fortunately, lots of these fears can now be allayed, as Keeper is right here to point out that Double High quality can nonetheless give you recreation concepts as bizarre because it ever has. You play because the Keeper, a sentient lighthouse creature whose gentle can repel the corruption encroaching upon the world. A cute fowl/fish creature lands in your head, and so your quest begins to achieve the distant mountain high to cleanse the world of this corruption as soon as and for all.
You instantly get an excellent sense of character injected into what is actually an inanimate object. The sport’s aesthetic strikes an excellent stability between considerably life like magnificence and cartoony components that can help you respect all of the little cracks and crevices chipped into the lighthouse’s physique, whereas nonetheless including components like little metallic eyebrows over its central gentle so it might probably emote.
The storytelling is all “present don’t inform”, and it’s excellently executed. There isn’t a single phrase of dialogue, however you get a correct sense of every little thing. The Keeper will spend the primary jiffy continually dropping its stability and falling over as a result of it’s solely simply began strolling for the primary time, which is good and endearing, although additionally somewhat unsettling, as you accomplish that whereas strolling by way of a graveyard of the Keepers who got here earlier than you and perished.
That stability of lighthearted and dreary tone is Keeper’s best trick. The world is vibrant, colourful, and full of caprice, however it might probably additionally develop into oppressive and gloomy at a second’s discover. It’s not simply the corruption that brings this variation both; generally the surroundings is peril sufficient to deliver that sense of hazard as you puzzle-platform your means up the mountain.
It does an excellent job of taking you thru totally different segments of this world, introducing a puzzle mechanic, riffing on it for some time, after which shifting swiftly on as soon as it’s bought all it might probably out of it. It makes this three-hour recreation transfer alongside at an ideal tempo, as you’re by no means caught on one thought for too lengthy, each aesthetically and mechanically.
The puzzles aren’t notably tough, however each has enjoyable concepts injected into it that provide help to respect it on a stage outdoors of the pure mechanics. The most effective segments sees you activate nodes that transfer you backwards and forwards by way of time. Mechanically, this makes for enjoyable puzzles about altering the surroundings round you, however what makes it rather more pleasing is the way it represents this. The primary time you progress backwards by way of time, you’ll see your beautiful fowl companion immediately pop again into being an egg, or going forwards could have them disintegrate into bones and develop into a ghost till you come to the current.
It doesn’t simply follow one format, both. I used to be fairly shocked to seek out that midway by way of, you rework from a lighthouse into a ship after which spend a bunch of time fixing puzzles on the excessive seas as a substitute. Then the sport climaxes in some fast-paced Sonic the Hedgehog-style gameplay — I’m not going to clarify that final one, play it and see for your self.
It’s continually supplying you with recent concepts to wrap your head round that dramatically change the model and tempo of the gameplay. From slowly waddling round as a lighthouse, to briskly drifting alongside as a ship, to rolling round on the pace of sound, it leverages its brief runtime to allow you to mess around with an excellent number of ideas, then will get out of there earlier than it drags on too lengthy.
There are areas that might do with refinement although, and the digicam is the most important one. It largely does job of framing the place you’re speculated to be going, however it might probably annoyingly lurch to take a look at one thing in the other way from the place you’re attempting to go. Whereas Keeper is a totally linear recreation, there are a couple of secrets and techniques right here and there that gives you lore, and discovering these is somewhat irritating when the digicam doesn’t appear to need you to achieve them. The identical goes for the few events the place it’s a must to back-track, because the digicam strikes far too slowly in the event you attempt to flip round — particularly within the later sections the place you’ve gotten a lot sooner motion.
It’s additionally not at all times clear what components of the surroundings are interactable. It didn’t occur usually, however there have been a small handful of occasions the place the immediate to focus my gentle on an object appeared, and I had no thought what a part of the surroundings it was referring to. Whereas the attractive and colourful world design seems nice, it does imply that some components fail to face out after they actually need to.
Nonetheless, strange concepts with a handful of mechanical imperfections is type of Double High quality’s entire model when you consider it. In Keeper’s case, it does such job of making a compelling and exquisite world with a candy, if easy, story of two unlikely creatures bonding and saving the world, so the minor frustrations simply wash away after I take into account the expertise as an entire. You retain being you, Double High quality.
Keeper. Keeper. 8. Puzzle platformer. PC
