Guardian Review – IGN
Blog Andrew Joseph 18 Oct , 2025 0
When thinking about the nature of a lighthouse (as people often do), you may think of words like stoic, isolated, or purposeful. But have you ever thought of them as cute, quirky, or even charming? Keeper is an atmospheric puzzle-platformer from developer Double Fine that cleverly reimagines an oft-forgotten seaside structure as a lovable, sentient scout embarking on a journey through the living world. Keeper blends a kaleidoscopic art style with nostalgic adventure game mechanics, and an emotional story beneath the gorgeous visuals to deliver a heart-warming odyssey that went far beyond the credits and left me unforgettable.
A seabird named Twig becomes separated from his flock while fleeing from a swarm of evil bat-like creatures, and is drawn to a dormant lighthouse on the outskirts of a mysterious island. The stagnant and lonely uninvited guest awakens the sleeping lighthouse, causing it to emit a beam of warm light and scare away the evil swarm of insects. The story of Guardians revolves around the exhilarating relationship between the unlikely duo as they battle a strange infection on the island, navigate its curious biomes, and attempt to climb its possessed, claw-like peaks. Even though “Guardians” doesn’t have a single line of dialogue during its roughly six hours of running time, I found myself completely invested in their plight—a testament to the couple’s dynamic in action.
It also helps that Keeper is one of the most visually interesting games I've ever played. The topology of the island is as wavy and confusing as an ant farm, with a towering summit that somehow sits on the edge of most frames, teasing you with its proximity. Every nook and cranny of the surreal painterly world hides vast deep wells, home to craggy coral, forgotten cave structures, and vibrant twisting vines that crisscross like details from a Where's Wally book. The use of fixed camera angles in Keeper is particularly inspired and evokes the cinematic atmosphere once created by games like Grim Fandango and Silent Hill.
Guardians doesn't explicitly explain the lore behind its mythical post-apocalyptic setting, instead relying on visual cues like shattered homes and wild cityscapes to create a sense of danger and scale. It helps that the environments you wander through blend seamlessly together, too, with changes in choreography and color palette alerting you to new areas or checkpoints more frequently than loading screens. This HUD-free approach better allows you to get lost in Keeper's spectacular scenery, increases your investment in the duo, and encourages you to tap into your strengths and discover tidbits of lore scattered throughout.
When it comes to interacting with the world, your beacon powers are relatively limited, but use them wisely. You can fire beams through obstacles to knock them down, and you can have your avian companion pull vines or interact with levers to open doors. At first, the path forward is simple and involves using your light to grow vines into bridges or scaring creatures into dropping key items you need to progress. Keeper gradually ramps up its challenge, though, introducing a healthy mix of logic and platforming puzzles that require you to weave some interactions together in order to progress. One of the puzzles involved finding and pulling a series of hidden levers to create a path through a rushing waterfall—to sniff out the levers, I needed to jump around space and use my beam to blast obscured brain-like nodes, lower platforms, and plant alien plants.
Not every reaction you can cause serves a game-specific purpose, though, and you can also use these powers to affect the Sussian flora and fauna around you, using your light to make trees change color or vibrate with life. Elsewhere, curious critters react with adorable animations along the edge of the path as you walk by. It's no exaggeration to say that nearly every screenshot of Keeper effortlessly looks like a work of art.
While your basic skills remain largely the same throughout the story, changes in the world keep things fresh. For example, your rudimentary torch can eventually activate strange monuments that warp time forward and backward, briefly transform a tree branch into a ghost that can fly through walls and spin gears, or an egg that can depress pressure plates – who says you can't teach old buildings new tricks?
If this sounds a little surreal, that's because it is, but within the context of Guardians' fascinating world, it all makes sense. There's no denying that each new mechanic is thoughtfully integrated into the story and world-building as a whole, and it helps that Keeper provides a subtle tutorial at the start of each new area with some can't-miss interactions. Similar to Cyan World's seminal puzzle game Myst, Double Fine cleverly teaches you how to solve the puzzles ahead without over-explaining them, which helps maintain a sense of momentum without completely freeing you from the larger plot.
There's no rush to reach the top, though. Half the fun of Keeper is the journey, with plenty of jaw-dropping sights along the way. Each level is its own microcosm, full of personality. You'll visit ethereal pollen fields filled with marshmallow bushes and cliff faces that look like flecks of paint that someone randomly scratched with their hand, as well as the cleverly named Clock City, a steampunk-style city with Greek-inspired architecture. The locations are often disorienting, with brushstroke details and rough textures reinforcing an organic, handcrafted aesthetic. They are further supported by composer David Earl's exquisite score, whose shimmering, dreamy arrangements strike a steady balance between calm and eerie, casting an uneasy feeling over the world.
But that's not all, as each area is inhabited by its own creatures, from towering multi-eyed whales to rocks with legs to narrow, cylindrical dragons whose fur looks like a woven quilt. This weird hodgepodge makes me feel like a kid in an aquarium, “tapping on the glass” with my lighthouse torch looking for a reaction. Despite their incredible designs, these creatures fit into the Guardians' world as if they had evolved over centuries to survive – a theme that permeates every corner of this existential story.
The themes in the game aren't overly complex, but understanding them does require you to read between the lines. As a lonely beacon, ideas of evolution and isolation are touched on – but importantly, your interpretation of each dialogue-free cutscene or puzzle is sure to be influenced by your own experiences, in a way that feels intentional. For me, “Guardians” is an exploration of friendship, adaptation, and the inimitable power of confidence in a world that struggles under pressure. Maybe it means something different to you. While I occasionally long for more concrete answers to questions, like the process of gazing at a painting, this story opens the door for you to find meaning in the artist's intentions and your own.
I've always considered Double Fine the Willy Wonka of game developers, and Keeper is a great example of that. It walks and talks like a fairly accessible adventure game, but also has a sense of experimentation and whimsy that makes it hard to fit into any one box. somewhere in the middle 'Three course dinner gum'and a ratatouille flashbackGuardians overwhelmed my senses, allowing me to view its world as a creation in its own right, but also as a mirror of my own.