Dear Players of Keeper
Hi there, my name is Lee Petty, and I’m a Creative Lead here at Double Fine Productions. I’ve been at Double Fine for almost 20 years! I was the Art Director for Brütal Legend and Broken Age, but was also the Creative Lead for Stacking, Headlander, Autonomous, and RAD.
My new game, Keeper, was inspired by the events of the last few years. Like most, I thought a lot about isolation and connection with others. I’ve always been into hiking, backpacking, and spending time outdoors with my family. During the pandemic, it became even more important to me. I wondered if the wildlife around me would be all that is left in the future. Would it continue to develop, to evolve? I thought of the mycelium, the vast underground networks that connect fungi, and how they are also used by trees to share nutrients and communicate with each other.
I imagined an isolated island in a far-flung future without humans. What sorts of life would evolve there? Would this life still be possessed with a need to connect with others and to have a purpose?
When thinking about what this world could look like, I was inspired by Surrealist painters, like Max Ernst and Salvador Dali, who created vibrant dream-like worlds that are both familiar and unlike anything else. Some of my favorite movies, like The Dark Crystal and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, are about strange otherworldly places and unusual forms of life, and both present as family friendly films but have strange, weirder, darker undercurrents. This comes through in Keeper too, giving it a gameplay style that I like to call Weird, but Chill.
Meet Twig.
A story told entirely without words, Keeper is the tale of a long-forgotten Lighthouse on a post-human island, which awakens after eons of lying dormant. The Lighthouse’s ancient masonry crumbles and it falls to the ground, but then it grows legs, stands up, and sets off on a journey toward the mountain peak at the center of the island, joined by a spirited seabird companion, named Twig.
It’s a strange psychedelic tale of companionship and an adventure of mystifying metamorphosis, all set in a beautiful and surreal otherworldly realm beyond understanding.
It’s a game which is very much about the unexpected, and we have gone to great lengths to preserve the mysteries and surprises the game holds. I’m really excited for you all to discover them for yourselves as you play - and I’d like to ask you to please consider how you talk about these surprising elements, ideally preserving some of the mystery for anyone you share your adventures with. But please do share them, and tell us what you think!
Thank you for playing, we really hope you enjoy your time with Keeper.
Lee & The Team at Double Fine Productions
