Keeper is quintessential Double Fine, a strange creative concept with a truly wondrous execution: "We wanted to make something that we could probably never have gotten signed and published"

If Tim Schafer is the face of Double Fine Productions, then you could think of Lee Petty as its spirit. The art director defined the inimitable style of Brutal Legend and Broken Age, and led production on Headlander, Stacking, and RAD – "Next to me, he's the person who made the most Double Fine games," Schafer tells me. So there was little hesitation when Petty approached the studio's founder with his next big idea, in the months following the acquisition into the Xbox Game Studios network in 2019. "We were like," Schafer continues, "'Well, what can we do now that we couldn't do before – now that we have support, resources, and a little more freedom?'"

You need only look at Xbox's 2025 output to see how the acquired studios have wielded these elements. id Software unleashed Doom: The Dark Ages, a shooter with wider combat arenas than ever before; Compulsion Games pursued South of Midnight, an action-adventure with a handcrafted, stop-motion inspired visual style; and Obsidian Entertainment is ready to deliver The Outer Worlds 2, an RPG overflowing with depth and detail. The keywords here are: Bigger, bolder, more ambitious.

Double Fine has purposefully gone in a different direction. Keeper is smaller than the studio's last release, 2021's Psychonauts 2, and far stranger. "Lee and I wanted to get really weird," Schafer laughs. "We wanted to make something that we could probably never have gotten signed and published when we were independent. It's really artistic and it doesn't make sense at first, but it's really engrossing."

That much is clear from the 30 minutes of Keeper I was able to see behind closed doors at Gamescom 2025. What Double Fine is putting forward here is a surreal, third-person adventure game where you take control of a lighthouse. The crumbling structure is awarded sentience after encountering a spirited seabird, the unlikely duo embarking on a journey towards the center of a mysterious island – stumbling towards realms beyond understanding. Keeper is the result of four years of development, time which has clearly been invested into conjuring something as mystifying as it is utterly mesmerizing.

Into the unknown

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I'll be honest, it's really difficult explaining these sorts of ethereal adventures. At just six-to-eight hours in length, Double Fine is hesitant to pull the curtain back too far – should it risk revealing too much about this dreamy stage production. There's a story told without a word spoken too, so the studio doesn't want to risk implanting its own perspective on events before players have an opportunity to bring their own to the experience. And because it is so dreamlike in nature, it's difficult for me to really frame what is being put forward either; you're either feeling the vibe or you aren't. Keeper is the sort of video game that Xbox Game Pass was built to house.

So here's what I will say: I was utterly taken aback by Keeper. Verdant visuals invite you into worlds unknown, the camera lingering just above the lantern room as you crawl through verdant meadows and small villages populated by little mechanical creatures. Light puzzle mechanics act as an expansion of the exploration, a counterweight which shifts you between passive observer and active participant in the strangest realm conjured from the Double Fine ether yet.

"There are three major ways that a player can interact with this world," says Schafer. "There's a beam of light that the lighthouse casts into the world, causing things to happen in the environment. There's a focused beam of light, which makes more exciting things happen – specific actions. And one of those actions may be to highlight a perch point, a little spot in the environment where Twig [that's the bird, usually seen perched atop the lighthouse] can land and maybe turn a crank or open a door. Keeper is an adventure game with light puzzles, but it's mostly about atmosphere."

It's an atmosphere I'm keen to immerse myself in come October 17, where Keeper will launch on Xbox Series X, PC, and Game Pass. In the opening moments of Keeper, we see withering tendrils spread and coalesce around a toppled lighthouse, allowing it to sprout legs and follow the siren call of a beacon atop a distant mountain. After just 30 minutes with the game, I feel as if those same tendrils have invaded my psyche, calling me to embark on a similar journey. You should be there with me too.

You simply will not guess the main character of the Psychonauts studio and Brutal Legend art director's new mind-bending adventure

To read articles from the GamesRadar+ Autumn Preview, head on over to our Gamescom 2025 coverage hub.