As someone who currently has access to Game Pass Ultimate, I’ve been playing random games on Xbox Series X. I’ve been focusing primarily on newer titles which interest me, as of course it’s worth the most amount of money, but also been dithering about in random other titles as it’s happened.
The most interesting thing that I’ve played was Keeper, a little adventure game from Double Fine, that just came out recently and was a Day 1 release on Game Pass. I’m going to attempt not to spoil it here, but fair warning, it might get a bit close to spoilers… at least mentions of random things, though I do intend to avoid outright spoilers.
First of all, this is a game that must be experienced I think. If you’re a gamer that finds any interest in strange, new worlds… or walking simulators… or games that tell a story with no dialogue… or just weird crazy stuff… I think you owe it to yourself to play through this at some point. It’s pretty short overall ( think I beat it with around 60% of the collectable achievements in about 6 hours ish… and getting 100% with a bit more exploration would have been possible within another hour probably), so keep that in mind for your value proposition. This is one of those games that definitely falls in the category of “art” though, so do with that information what you will as far as your desire to wait for sales.
I loved this game. It was divided into roughly three acts (they are fairly obvious, though no text is shown) and each one was fascinating. I think if any of them had stuck around longer, it would have been a problem, but as it stood, it was the perfect length for each to give you the sensation of what you could experience in that act. Each act corresponds roughly to a mode of transportation (all I’m saying on that since I don’t want to spoil) and each played quite differently than the others.
The story was simple, but told elegantly… with no text or voice acting (tons of delightful sound design though) and had me interested in each story beat as it progressed. The general plotline is lighthouse + bird go on journey… and the journey was amazing.
It felt a bit “acid trip” in parts, but most of the time was generally a walking simulator with VERY light puzzles which flowed quite nicely. I think I only looked up one thing in a walkthrough and that was because my eyes are bad enough that I missed a visual cue that, after realizing what it was, I’m still not sure if it was obvious enough… but I’m slightly colorblind, I think, so your mileage may vary.
Delightful game, one of the best walking simulator style games that I’ve played (alongside Tale of Two Brothers) and definitely worth trying if you want to play a game that was created as a piece of art and storytelling, rather than something that was focused on gameplay mechanics.
If I was going to level any real criticism at it, I would have liked any camera control… but I imagine that creating that world from any other perspective than the forced camera angles would have been difficult.
Until next time, cheers!
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