Keeper review – The latest example of video games as playable art feels lacking

Games are an amazing medium because they can run the gamut of action-packed titles like Call of Duty and Super Mario to playable cinematics with little player involvement.

Keeper definitely falls into the latter category. The latest from Double Fine Productions and Lee Petty, this Xbox Game Studios title shines when bringing the beauty of its variety in the market to the forefront. Unfortunately, I think it falls flat when compared to similar titles, even if games like this feel as necessary and important as ever from well-established studios such as this one.

A beacon of light in the dark

Keeper’s playable characters are a lighthouse and a sea bird (seriously) on an adventure to save their world’s flora and fauna from an unspoken plague, and all of this is figured out through just playing the game. Wielding the lighthouse’s spotlight and a handful of buttons on the Xbox controller, the entire story is told through gameplay, context clues, the environment, and a handful of cutscenes in between sequences. There’s no spoken dialogue. It’s definitely a relaxing game, but maybe a bit too much so.

Keeper feels like a playable art exhibit with its surreal aesthetic and odd world full of inanimate objects come to life, and the main form of gameplay is exploration, traversal, and very light puzzle-solving. The game holds your hand in numerous areas with button prompts that pop up on screen (which can be turned off), but even when it doesn’t, the puzzles are shockingly linear and solvable with little thought involved. This bodes well for a variety of gamers to try it out, but I was left wanting.

Over the course of Keeper’s stunningly short runtime, basically everything is done in just a few buttons (left stick to move, right stick to aim spotlight and RT to focus it, X to use the bird, A for interaction and some other abilities), and the puzzles are solved just as simply. I’m not usually the biggest fan of puzzlers as they tend to frustrate me after a while, so I didn’t mind the ease of use, but I still wanted a bit more of a challenge or work to be done on my behalf to finish the game, as it all felt very on-rails most of the time.

The main challenge I found within Keeper was navigating its fixed camera angles, which are there to show off the game’s beauty but are often cumbersome or annoying, especially when combined with needing to turn the spotlight at odd angles when the direction of the camera shifts as you move around the environment.

The journey is usually the part you remember

Keeper isn’t alone in this genre, as one can compare it to titles like Abzu, Gris, or Journey, although I greatly prefer those. That’s not to say Keeper is without its enjoyable moments, as I did enjoy a good chunk of the overall experience, but it pales in comparison. It’s lacking something—whether it be character or excitement or more of an overt message, I’m not sure.

Sitting here and recollecting the events of Keeper after just finishing it, I’m left struggling to remember many specific parts. The lighthouse and bird team up to do a variety of good deeds throughout the events of the game’s short run-time, but none of them felt too remarkable outside of a time-travel segment where you must go back and forth between past, present, and future to clear obstacles.

The less you know about Keeper before going into it, the better, so I won’t spoil much of the game’s events or menial plot points. It’s just overly simple in the end, which some may appreciate, but I feel as though most gamers will be left wanting more when the credits roll after a handful of play sessions.

I finished Keeper in about six hours or so, and I enjoyed the experience for the most part. If you’re a fan of playable rides like this one or have an active Game Pass subscription with a few hours to kill, I’d say go for it. But as far as $30 games go in 2025, your money is definitely better spent elsewhere.

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