While developer Double Fine is getting ready to release its narrative adventure title Keeper, the studio is also seemingly working on other projects, all of which are brand new IPs. During Xbox’s Day 1 show at Gamescom 2025, studio head Tim Schafer spoke about the studio working on projects other than Keeper.
Schafer also noted that none of the new titles will be sequels to older Double Fine games, saying that working on Psychonauts 2 resulted in “keeping us fine for sequels for a while”. This also means that Brutal Legend will likely not be getting a sequel any time soon.
“Well, I’m here to announce right now…that we are making other games too,” Schafer said (transcription via Windows Central). “We have multiple games going on at the studio, and the thing I will say is that they’re all brand new. They’re all brand new IP, we did Psychonauts 2 and that’s keeping us fine for sequels for a while.”
Schafer also took the chance to talk about Keeper, and how the title serves as the singular vision of game director Lee Petty. Schafer spoke about Petty having “interesting tastes” which range from The Dark Crystal to films inspired by Cronenberg as well as surrealist painters. This, Schafer believes, will result in a game where players will experience strange things.
Keeper was first announced all the way back in June. The narrative adventure game will put players in control of a strange lighthouse that has found itself being able to walk. The game will largely revolve around exploring the world and solving environmental puzzles with the help of the lighthouse’s friend, a bird named Twig.
The puzzles in Keeper will revolve around the lighthouse and Twig each being able to do only specific things, and thus having to work together to make it through the world. Over the course of the title, this leads to the two fostering an unlikely friendship, all of this happening without a single word of spoken or written dialogue.
More details about Keeper were revealed earlier this week courtesy of an Xbox Wire interview of Petty. In this interview, Petty spoke about how Keeper has been designed to get players to “embrace the unexpected” as they spent time in the strange world.
“A key tenet of this game is the unexpected,” explained Petty. “We wanted players to be able to relax a bit, chill out a bit, and embrace the unexpected. So to that end, there’s some experimentation, but there’s nothing the player can do to die in this game. They can’t mess up the experience. We sort of get the player on board early so that, when something unexpected is thrown at them, it’s not a moment of panic that they don’t know how to get through.”
Petty also described Keeper as being an accessible title, with minimal obstacles in the way when it comes to things like complicated control schemes. The title will also feature accessibility features, including remappable controls.
Keeper is being developed for PC and Xbox Series X/S, and is slated for release on October 17 with a price tag of $29.99. The title will also be available on Game Pass on day one of its release.
