No matter if you're playing a game or watching a movie, a work of art is almost assuredly made better by the presence of strange little dudes. This basic fact is a major part of what powered Star Wars creator George Lucas, who, yes, envisioned wars of light and dark with space wizards clashing across planets, but who also really just wanted as many odd-looking fellows as he could cram into a single frame.
Now, it's become apparent to me that this is also clearly understood by director Lee Petty and the rest of the team at Double Fine Productions, which launched the game Keeper earlier this year.
I was extremely busy in October — at one point, I was actually writing my review of The Outer Worlds 2 while in a hotel room preparing to check out a preview of Halo: Campaign Evolved — and so I did not have time to play Keeper until recently.
As my colleague Zachary Boddy wrote in their review, Keeper is a "work of art" as it tells a gorgeous story of the unlikely bond between a walking lighthouse and a bird. To my delight, it's also stuffed to the brim with more strange little guys than I could've imagined.
Mere minutes after the lighthouse takes its first lumbering steps, I found the first of many, many, many weird little guys. Some of them lounge outside of their tiny houses in the middle of a small island, oversized eyes peeping with curiosity. Others dash around cliffs, look from underneath craggy overhangs, or even dance frenetically as I found ancient ruins off the beaten path.
That would be fun enough if it were all the same type or two, but every new area seemed to also introduce a completely fresh type of strange little guy. Some have a single huge eyeball. Some have no discernible features whatsoever, resembling a pile of rocks imbued with rhythm. Others resemble clockwork critters, rolling around through a town.
I also appreciate their reactivity, as almost every single one of the little guys reacts when the lighthouse shines its light directly down on them and intensifies the beam. Some fall overs, others try to hide; it's a cute way of adding more interactivity to what is a very straightforward game.
Before long, I quickly realized that one of my main goals as I journeyed through this game wasn't just to enjoy the breathtaking artistic design or to try to piece together some idea of the story based on Achievement descriptions. No, I was simply excited to see what other weird little fellas were in store.
More games in general could use strange little folk of a greeble inclination, so I'm happy Keeper overdelivered on this extraordinarily particular point for me.
Double Fine Productions head Tim Schafer stated back at Gamescom 2025 that the studio is working on multiple different games. None of them are Brutal Legend 2 — in fact, all of them are new IPs, so there's no new Psychonauts in development right now either — but the odds are good that they'll have copious amounts of strange little guys.
I look forward to verifying this in the future whenever Double Fine's next project (or projects) come to light.
In the meantime, if you've not played Keeper yet, you absolutely should, as it's a wonderful game that stands out in an impressive year. Keeper is currently available on Xbox Series X|S consoles and Windows PC, and is also included in both Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
What are your favorite strange little guys in video games? Let me know in the comments!
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