Keepsake

There comes a time in every die-hard action gamer’s life where I suppose he/she has to put down the BFG or rocket launcher for a few hours and play something a little slower paced, just to keep from going insane (you know, changing from caffeinated coffee to beer now and then). Thanks to The Adventure Company, I know that if the time to blast away needs to be put on hold to stop and just relax a bit, there’s no shortage of point-and-click adventure /puzzle games to choose from. Their latest release, Keepsake, fits that mold perfectly.

Keepsake follows the adventures of a young girl named Lydia as she arrives for her first day of magic school. What makes it even better for her is the fact that her best friend in the whole world, Celeste, should be waiting for her at the gates with open arms but alas, Lydia shows up to find that the massive, gothic academy is empty of all life …Celeste included. My first thought here was that it was either spring break or maybe they were out on a field trip, but since that wouldn’t make for much of a game adventure, I soon found myself guiding Lydia through the empty and often eerie Harry Potter-style corridors (minus the paintings that talk and watch you as you go by) trying to figure out where everyone went.

Keepsake is a point-and-click adventure title driven by a decently entertaining story, and nothing more or less than that. Lydia wanders the immense hallways looking for clues to the disappearance of the students, teachers, and caretakers, and has to solve a variety of puzzles along the way in order to obtain information, items, or access into new parts of the academy. Along the way she will find a keepsake of Celeste’s (if you figured out that the game got it’s name from that Keepsake … you’ve solved your first puzzle. Congrats!) and a friend to keep her company, and try to help out a bit as she goes along.

Gameplay in Keepsake is pretty much as you’d expect from an adventure title, as it moves along as quickly as you can solve puzzles and figure out where to go next. Lydia is easily guided from hall to hall and room to room by simply pointing the mouse and clicking where you want her to go as she meanders down static or moving pre-rendered backgrounds with a fixed camera angle, and the cursor will change as you run across things you can pick up, inspect, or manipulate … such as levers or the puzzles that you have to solve. As an added little nifty feature to the game, there is also a hint button to help you along if you need some advice on where to go next or what to do to solve a particularly frustrating or difficult puzzle.

Overall, Keepsake is a pretty entertaining story title that will provide a decent amount of entertainment for those of you looking to get into more brain action than mindless killing. However, it is simply a point-and-click adventure title, so those of you who need a little more going on than figuring out how to open a door by trying to make chimes ring in a certain pattern or using water weights to start up a magical machine should probably steer clear of Keepsake and move on to something else.

Gameplay: 7.8
Basically it is what you’d expect from a point-and-click adventure title. Click on the screen, walk there … click on an item, pick it up, solve a puzzle, so on and so on. Thankfully, since some of the puzzles can be a bit tricky or difficult, there is a help button which will even solve it for you if you happen to be like me after not getting enough sleep.   

Graphics: 7.9 
While the backgrounds are pre-rendered, some moving and some static, there was some really nice work done on textures and most of all … lighting. In addition, the FMV story cutscenes were done in a neat mixture of live animation and still shots. The character animations however were a bit robotic and even floaty in some areas.

Sound: 7.7
The sound effects and music weren’t too bad at all, and while the voice acting in many parts was decent, there were times where it sounded a bit too much like they were reading from cue cards.

Difficulty: Medium
While die-hard puzzle game geniuses may find some of the puzzles to be challenging, others who don’t play these types of games as much may find some of them to be extremely difficult. Again, there was a nifty help button thrown in to lend assistance though which will help out anyone, and if it can work for me … then I know 99.9% of you will be fine.  

Concept: 7.9 
While it doesn’t do a whole heck of a lot to add anything really new to the genre, it does offer a good story which will keep you searching and playing until the end to find out what happened to everyone.

Overall: 7.8
While I found this to be a good break from my normal routine of demon slaying or killing other gamers online with high velocity lead poisoning, if you aren’t a fan of point-and-click adventure titles than don’t bother even considering this one. For those of you who are fans of sitting down and getting wrapped up with a decent puzzler that will keep you entertained and guessing, this is one worth giving a run.