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Keeper Review – Surreal Wonder

Keeper Review – Surreal Wonder

Reviewed on: Xbox Series X/S Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Publisher: Xbox Game Studios Developer: Double Fine Productions Release: October 17, 2025 Keeper is absolutely worth playing, but not necessarily because of its gameplay. A frustrating fixed camera, a frequent sense of aimlessness, and a general lack of intention behind your actions all combine to diminish interactivity and engagement. At the same time, however, Keeper is an astonishingly beautiful visual experience, made all the more special by its unspoken narrative and wildly creative artistic presentation. You are a lighthouse, and for reasons not entirely clear, you decide to uproot yourself from your station along the coast and set forth upon spindly legs of stone and driftwood, spider-like, to crawl across the ruined and weird world before you. You are joined by a strange bird, roosting at your peak, occasionally flitting out to interact with a world of many-eyed turtles, pink puff clouds, or tentacles that dissolve at the touch of light. From the opening moments, it’s a step into the surreal and dream-induced. Art-inclined players may find themselves reminded of the likes of Salvador Dali or Max Ernst, revealing astonishing places touched by the weird or impossible. In practice, Keeper is an adventure game, filled with straightforward environmental puzzles along a linear path, many of which revolve around illuminating dark things. Place a strange ball-shaped creature here, pop a balloon-like projection there, and new paths open ahead. The most clever of these puzzles play around with time manipulation, with brief excursions into the past and future to change the shape of an object or path. But many are more nebulous, less interesting, and lack a clear directive. I often haphazardly wandered the open spaces of a level, tapping or adjusting a device without a clear idea of what I was doing, just waiting to see how it changed things around me. That absence of intention or purpose started to leave me frustrated, even if it sometimes fed into the sense of hypnagogic consciousness at the heart of Keeper’s aesthetic. As if framing individual moments of conceptual art, the fixed camera is consistently used as a guidepost and target-finder to encourage exploration. While that often leads to instances of beautiful still frames, it also left me frustrated and, at times, struggling to find my way. Without the ability to rotate and view the world around me, I was often trapped and confused by the spaces through which I was exploring. That was especially true in some mid-game sections focused on water, where I started to feel genuinely lost in a landscape of strange silhouettes and winding pathways. Besides its sumptuous visuals, the most compelling elements of Keeper are a few particularly magical moments that I’d be loath to spoil in a critique. Suffice it to say, this game explores the power of resiliency, the ability to change, and how our friendships and connection to the world around us enable both. Even acknowledging some of the things I didn’t love about my playthrough, I’d also suggest that those inspired sequences are well worth experiencing for yourself. Keeper is strange in many ways, and sometimes crosses over into genuine psychedelia. In evaluating it as a game, some things didn’t work for me. As a piece of art and creative endeavor, it fares far better. Score: 7.5 About Game Informer's review system

Keeper Review – Surreal Wonder

Keeper Review – Surreal Wonder

Reviewed on: Xbox Series X/S Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Publisher: Xbox Game Studios Developer: Double Fine Productions Release: October 17, 2025 Keeper is absolutely worth playing, but not necessarily because of its gameplay. A frustrating fixed camera, a frequent sense of aimlessness, and a general lack of intention behind your actions all combine to diminish interactivity and engagement. At the same time, however, Keeper is an astonishingly beautiful visual experience, made all the more special by its unspoken narrative and wildly creative artistic presentation. You are a lighthouse, and for reasons not entirely clear, you decide to uproot yourself from your station along the coast and set forth upon spindly legs of stone and driftwood, spider-like, to crawl across the ruined and weird world before you. You are joined by a strange bird, roosting at your peak, occasionally flitting out to interact with a world of many-eyed turtles, pink puff clouds, or tentacles that dissolve at the touch of light. From the opening moments, it’s a step into the surreal and dream-induced. Art-inclined players may find themselves reminded of the likes of Salvador Dali or Max Ernst, revealing astonishing places touched by the weird or impossible. In practice, Keeper is an adventure game, filled with straightforward environmental puzzles along a linear path, many of which revolve around illuminating dark things. Place a strange ball-shaped creature here, pop a balloon-like projection there, and new paths open ahead. The most clever of these puzzles play around with time manipulation, with brief excursions into the past and future to change the shape of an object or path. But many are more nebulous, less interesting, and lack a clear directive. I often haphazardly wandered the open spaces of a level, tapping or adjusting a device without a clear idea of what I was doing, just waiting to see how it changed things around me. That absence of intention or purpose started to leave me frustrated, even if it sometimes fed into the sense of hypnagogic consciousness at the heart of Keeper’s aesthetic. As if framing individual moments of conceptual art, the fixed camera is consistently used as a guidepost and target-finder to encourage exploration. While that often leads to instances of beautiful still frames, it also left me frustrated and, at times, struggling to find my way. Without the ability to rotate and view the world around me, I was often trapped and confused by the spaces through which I was exploring. That was especially true in some mid-game sections focused on water, where I started to feel genuinely lost in a landscape of strange silhouettes and winding pathways. Besides its sumptuous visuals, the most compelling elements of Keeper are a few particularly magical moments that I’d be loath to spoil in a critique. Suffice it to say, this game explores the power of resiliency, the ability to change, and how our friendships and connection to the world around us enable both. Even acknowledging some of the things I didn’t love about my playthrough, I’d also suggest that those inspired sequences are well worth experiencing for yourself. Keeper is strange in many ways, and sometimes crosses over into genuine psychedelia. In evaluating it as a game, some things didn’t work for me. As a piece of art and creative endeavor, it fares far better. Score: 7.5 About Game Informer's review system

Keeper Review – Surreal Wonder

Keeper Review – Surreal Wonder

Reviewed on: Xbox Series X/S Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Publisher: Xbox Game Studios Developer: Double Fine Productions Release: October 17, 2025 Keeper is absolutely worth playing, but not necessarily because of its gameplay. A frustrating fixed camera, a frequent sense of aimlessness, and a general lack of intention behind your actions all combine to diminish interactivity and engagement. At the same time, however, Keeper is an astonishingly beautiful visual experience, made all the more special by its unspoken narrative and wildly creative artistic presentation. You are a lighthouse, and for reasons not entirely clear, you decide to uproot yourself from your station along the coast and set forth upon spindly legs of stone and driftwood, spider-like, to crawl across the ruined and weird world before you. You are joined by a strange bird, roosting at your peak, occasionally flitting out to interact with a world of many-eyed turtles, pink puff clouds, or tentacles that dissolve at the touch of light. From the opening moments, it’s a step into the surreal and dream-induced. Art-inclined players may find themselves reminded of the likes of Salvador Dali or Max Ernst, revealing astonishing places touched by the weird or impossible. In practice, Keeper is an adventure game, filled with straightforward environmental puzzles along a linear path, many of which revolve around illuminating dark things. Place a strange ball-shaped creature here, pop a balloon-like projection there, and new paths open ahead. The most clever of these puzzles play around with time manipulation, with brief excursions into the past and future to change the shape of an object or path. But many are more nebulous, less interesting, and lack a clear directive. I often haphazardly wandered the open spaces of a level, tapping or adjusting a device without a clear idea of what I was doing, just waiting to see how it changed things around me. That absence of intention or purpose started to leave me frustrated, even if it sometimes fed into the sense of hypnagogic consciousness at the heart of Keeper’s aesthetic. As if framing individual moments of conceptual art, the fixed camera is consistently used as a guidepost and target-finder to encourage exploration. While that often leads to instances of beautiful still frames, it also left me frustrated and, at times, struggling to find my way. Without the ability to rotate and view the world around me, I was often trapped and confused by the spaces through which I was exploring. That was especially true in some mid-game sections focused on water, where I started to feel genuinely lost in a landscape of strange silhouettes and winding pathways. Besides its sumptuous visuals, the most compelling elements of Keeper are a few particularly magical moments that I’d be loath to spoil in a critique. Suffice it to say, this game explores the power of resiliency, the ability to change, and how our friendships and connection to the world around us enable both. Even acknowledging some of the things I didn’t love about my playthrough, I’d also suggest that those inspired sequences are well worth experiencing for yourself. Keeper is strange in many ways, and sometimes crosses over into genuine psychedelia. In evaluating it as a game, some things didn’t work for me. As a piece of art and creative endeavor, it fares far better. Score: 7.5 About Game Informer's review system

Meta is adding AI chatbot-focused parental controls to Instagram

Meta is adding AI chatbot-focused parental controls to Instagram

Meta is working on new supervision controls that will allow parents to cut off their teens' access to AI chatbots on its platforms completely. While the tools can remove teens' ability to engage AI characters on one-on-one chats, they'll still be able to access the general Meta AI chatbot. If parents don't want to block their teens from being able to access AI bots altogether, they can also just block specific AI characters. In addition, parents will be able to get insights into the topics their children are discussing with Meta's AI bots. The company is currently building these controls and will start rolling them out on Instagram early next year in English in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Take note that the images above are just illustrations, and the tools' interfaces could still change. The company has been under fire since an internal Meta document was leaked a few months ago, showing that it allowed its chatbots to have "sensual" conversations with children. In one example, a Meta chatbot told a shirtless eight-year-old that "every inch of you is a masterpiece — a treasure I cherish deeply." The US Attorneys General of 44 jurisdictions urged companies to protect children "from exploitation by predatory artificial intelligence products" after that information came out. The Senate Committee Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, chaired by Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), will investigate the company, as well. Shortly after the internal documents leaked, Meta started retraining its AI and added new protections to prevent younger users from accessing user-made AI characters that might engage in inappropriate conversations. It also introduced age-appropriate protections so that its AIs will give teens responses guided by PG-13 movie ratings . Plus, it now only allows teens to interact with a limited group of AI characters, focused on age-appropriate topics. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-is-adding-ai-chatbot-focused-parental-controls-to-instagram-100027229.html?src=rss

Meta is adding AI chatbot-focused parental controls to Instagram

Meta is adding AI chatbot-focused parental controls to Instagram

Meta is working on new supervision controls that will allow parents to cut off their teens' access to AI chatbots on its platforms completely. While the tools can remove teens' ability to engage AI characters on one-on-one chats, they'll still be able to access the general Meta AI chatbot. If parents don't want to block their teens from being able to access AI bots altogether, they can also just block specific AI characters. In addition, parents will be able to get insights into the topics their children are discussing with Meta's AI bots. The company is currently building these controls and will start rolling them out on Instagram early next year in English in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Take note that the images above are just illustrations, and the tools' interfaces could still change. The company has been under fire since an internal Meta document was leaked a few months ago, showing that it allowed its chatbots to have "sensual" conversations with children. In one example, a Meta chatbot told a shirtless eight-year-old that "every inch of you is a masterpiece — a treasure I cherish deeply." The US Attorneys General of 44 jurisdictions urged companies to protect children "from exploitation by predatory artificial intelligence products" after that information came out. The Senate Committee Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, chaired by Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), will investigate the company, as well. Shortly after the internal documents leaked, Meta started retraining its AI and added new protections to prevent younger users from accessing user-made AI characters that might engage in inappropriate conversations. It also introduced age-appropriate protections so that its AIs will give teens responses guided by PG-13 movie ratings . Plus, it now only allows teens to interact with a limited group of AI characters, focused on age-appropriate topics. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-is-adding-ai-chatbot-focused-parental-controls-to-instagram-100027229.html?src=rss

Meta is adding AI chatbot-focused parental controls to Instagram

Meta is adding AI chatbot-focused parental controls to Instagram

Meta is working on new supervision controls that will allow parents to cut off their teens' access to AI chatbots on its platforms completely. While the tools can remove teens' ability to engage AI characters on one-on-one chats, they'll still be able to access the general Meta AI chatbot. If parents don't want to block their teens from being able to access AI bots altogether, they can also just block specific AI characters. In addition, parents will be able to get insights into the topics their children are discussing with Meta's AI bots. The company is currently building these controls and will start rolling them out on Instagram early next year in English in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Take note that the images above are just illustrations, and the tools' interfaces could still change. The company has been under fire since an internal Meta document was leaked a few months ago, showing that it allowed its chatbots to have "sensual" conversations with children. In one example, a Meta chatbot told a shirtless eight-year-old that "every inch of you is a masterpiece — a treasure I cherish deeply." The US Attorneys General of 44 jurisdictions urged companies to protect children "from exploitation by predatory artificial intelligence products" after that information came out. The Senate Committee Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, chaired by Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), will investigate the company, as well. Shortly after the internal documents leaked, Meta started retraining its AI and added new protections to prevent younger users from accessing user-made AI characters that might engage in inappropriate conversations. It also introduced age-appropriate protections so that its AIs will give teens responses guided by PG-13 movie ratings . Plus, it now only allows teens to interact with a limited group of AI characters, focused on age-appropriate topics. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-is-adding-ai-chatbot-focused-parental-controls-to-instagram-100027229.html?src=rss