I usually start these reviews with a little non sequitur based on the game. That’s true of Creature Keeper too, but it’ll be a little weirder than normal. When I see a creature collecting game, all I can think about is my plan to train an army of crows. See, crows are wicked smart. They can remember faces, and attack people they don’t like. There’s also a regular murder that hang out in a park that’s on my route to work. So, through regular application of corn, maybe I can begin to form a crow army.
The plan falls apart a bit when I realise that I’m far too absent-minded to remember to bring corn, and that I’d have nothing to do with my army. Not unless they can be trained to steal sausage rolls and cider. Anyway, that’s why I’ll stick to collecting animals in games. To its credit, Creature Keeper has a lot of promise in the field of collecting creatures and throwing them at each other. It even has a decent world to put things in. Unfortunately, much like my crow army, Creature Keeper doesn’t really know what to do with what it’s got.
Gotta Keep ‘Em All
Our story centres around an unassuming guy named Blank. No, I didn’t forget to enter in a name. That’s what he’s called. Just roll with it. Blank is a brand new member of the Sodland guard, who have to undergo a year of Creature Keeper training. It’s mostly pulling up weeds. Anyway, this intense training is soon interrupted when corrupted creatures spill into Sodland, and Blank gets pushed into sorting it all out. So begins a journey across Thera to try and find someone who knows what the heck is going on.
As fantasy plots go, it’s fairly routine, but Creature Keeper puts in the work to build the world. There are little snippets of lore all over the place that establish the history of the towns and their people. The different regions feel nicely distinct, which is good. Writing all around isn’t too bad. It’s very deliberately comical, and most of the jokes landed for me. It can sometimes be a little grating, but I’ve a weakness for puns and Creature Keeper has a love for bread puns. The humour isn’t exactly upper crust, but it doughs the job well enough.
Alright, let’s forget I typed that and move on to the gameplay. It all revolves around the titular creatures. Cute little buggers, that range from giant toads, to big Venus fly traps, to giant, fluffy owls. Or zombies, I guess. Anyway, shove enough berries down their throats and they’ll join you. You can then summon them to help you in battle. Fights play out in a Zelda-esque way, where you madly swing at enemies, with the added bonus of your creatures getting a few good hits in.
Falling Apart
Problem is, Creature Keeper struggles to make the most of this potential. The gimmick of setting creatures on your enemies requires a few things, but the biggest is sensible AI. Creature Keeper‘s is a bit… dense. When creatures aren’t just getting stuck, they’re wandering off or only attacking once in a blue moon, even when commanded to. When things go right, clearing a room does feel satisfying. But roughly 75 percent of the time, I did the heavy lifting while I waited for them to get the message. Though it’s balanced out by the other issue: Creature Keeper is way too easy.
The basic boomerang weapon can stun all enemies, and your fists punch as fast as you can tap. So there wasn’t much reason to use anything else. It’s the first in a rather big list of strange issues with Creature Keeper. Creatures level up through battle, for example, and can unlock perks. These are buried in menus and come with an intense drawback in addition to a positive. So I just didn’t use them. It’s also pretty buggy. In addition to graphical glitches, I had to repeat the final level three times. At one point, people start repeating their very first lines of dialogue to me. Thought I’d gone back in time for a second.
Another, somewhat bigger, issue is that Creature Keeper‘s world feels a touch bare. There are a few sidequests throughout, but the vast majority of the world is just elongated dungeons full of the already threadbare combat. What characters we do have are quite interesting, like a old keeper whose mind’s been addled by a strange fruit, but Creature Keeper needed a little bit more reason to poke around in the corners, beyond more weapons to clutter up the bottom of my bag. It also has a big world, but no real world map outside of fast travel, which I’m pretty sure is some form of sin.
Creature Keeper – Promising, But Loosely Held Together
Still, there are points where Creature Keeper hits on good ideas. The bestiary, for instance, is cleverly done. You gain bestiary points for capturing and training creatures, which can improve your stats and make it easier to fight them in the future. All the creatures have a little lore snippet too, which is a big plus in my book. It also had promise in its garden mechanic, where you plant seeds to give your creatures bonuses. Somewhat undercut by the lack of difficulty, but a nice idea. Coupled with the light-hearted dialogue and quite lovely pixel art and animation, it makes Creature Keeper hard to dislike.
My final feeling towards Creature Keeper is that it had a good idea at its core – throwing creatures at each other is rarely a bad idea in video games – but the end result feels held together with string. Even excluding the general bugginess, the wildly unbalanced and somewhat repetitive combat that makes up most of the game feels quite frustrating. Throwing a giant, fluffy owl at enemies should be a wonderful experience. Creature Keeper tries its best to hold things together, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all fallen apart by the end.
