Hands-On Preview

Today was to be a big day for Lydia. After years of scrimping and saving, she managed to save enough money to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a student in the famous Dragonvale Academy of Magic. Her closest childhood friend, Celeste – already a student in the academy – was to meet her by the fountain on her first morning, but – to her surprise – Celeste is nowhere to be found. The mystery only deepens once she enters the academy and realizes that it has been deserted. Now Lydia – along with some unexpected help – must solve the mystery of the deserted academy.

Keepsake is a third person point ’n’ click fantasy adventure. If magic and dragons are your thing, then Keepsake must go onto your “most wanted” list.

The first character you will meet is Mustavio, a merchant who hangs around the woods outside the academy, selling his goods to the students. Mustavio will greet you and provide a small tutorial (in the most annoying voice you’ve ever heard in an adventure game). This tutorial is a very good idea, since it can help out beginner adventurers, saving them the time to figure out how things work. Once the tutorial ends, the game begins by presenting the first puzzle: how to open the academy doors.

The puzzles are for the most part of the mechanical and logical type – levers, buttons, gears, intricate locks, they are all here. The level of the puzzles is moderate and is certainly higher than what we are used to nowadays, but without being too brain taxing. Inventory is limited to a few specific items. This is something that you know up front, since all the items that can be acquired are shown grayed out in the inventory from the beginning. As soon as you collect one of those items, it appears in the inventory in color. Same applies to books and notes as well as cut-scenes. A very unique interface indeed.

The uniqueness of the interface also spreads to how Lydia walks/runs and how the dialogues and the saves work. One click of the mouse button moves Lydia. If the point clicked is near her, she will walk to it. If it’s far from her, she will run. Not a bad idea, but I still prefer the “single-click to walk / double-click to run” method. During dialogues there are two buttons available, one to skip and (finally) one to pause. A very important conversation is taking place in the game and the telephone decides “hey, perfect time for me to ring”? No problem. Just hit the pause button. An excellent idea that should be implemented in every adventure game.

The save system is very weird and inflexible and takes some getting used to. Every time you save, a new save-place is automatically created. Loading can only be done from the main menu and quitting from within the game takes you directly to Windows. So if you’re playing and want to load an earlier save, you have to quit and restart the game. Also, if you are playing an earlier save and decide to save, newer saves will be overwritten! I really don’t know what’s going on lately with the saving systems. After the awful save system of 80 Days we are presented with another new idea that doesn’t work too good and causes unnecessary grief. What was wrong with the good old “Enter a filename” multi-save/multi-load systems and why developers feel the need to innovate in that area is beyond me.

As expected, Keepsake is not reliant on characters or dialogue – after all, the academy is deserted. To alleviate Lydia’s loneliness, Zak appears early in the game to be her companion. Zak is a talking wolf who claims that he once was a dragon but some students used a shape-shifting potion on him. Zak is afraid of heights, ghosts and several other things, which puts a shadow of a doubt over his claims. Is he really a dragon? Or is there something he is hiding? One more mystery for Lydia to solve.

Visually Keepsake is stunning with some of the most gorgeous graphics and effects I have ever seen in an adventure game. Just seeing the water effect in the flowing river made my jaw slam on the floor. Words cannot describe the game’s beauty. You will have to experience it yourself, but for now just feast your eyes on the accompanying screenshots. The characters don’t follow in the same quality though, as they appear rough and slightly blocky, especially in contrast to the superb backgrounds. The music is also beautiful and ties in to the fantasy and mystical atmosphere and the voice-acting is about average – with the exception of Mustavio, who is downright horrible.

In a nutshell, Keepsake can be described in three words: Syberia meets Myst! If you loved both of those games then you are in for a treat. If not, consider this game a no-no, unless you love everything fantasy related. Of course, this comparison is only used to give an idea of what one should expect, since the game stands perfectly on its own, and in no case does it try to imitate those titles. Overall, Keepsake is a beautiful and slightly challenging adventure game that will appeal to all fantasy aficionados, eye-candy lovers, 3rd person p’n’c fans and will also capture some of the mechanical/logical oriented crowd. Certainly a game to look forward to. So, what are you waiting for? Take your spell book off the bookcase, grab your staff and prepare your dragon for a fantasy flight to Dragonvale!