Creature Keeper Review
Summary: Overall my impression is that Creature Keeper has a lot of potential, and is an impressive accomplishment for a sole developer – and needs more time. However I was left disappointed by how significantly the bugs I experienced...
2
Buggy
I was really excited by the promise of Creature Keeper – unfortunately I can’t provide the glowing review I hoped. I struggled with this game given the UI bugs I encountered. Scheduled for release May 8th, I would have been more understanding of some of the friction if this was releasing into Early Access instead. I’m not sure if my struggle to connect with the story and combat tarnished my experience with bugs, or vice versa. I would not recommend trying this game – yet. I will probably come back to it in 4-6 months and see if I go an hour or two without having to reload the game and lose progress. If you are keen to give this a go, I suggest joining the Steam community page and the developer’s Discord and watching how it lands is supported after release, so that your first impression is given the best chance it can to connect with the charming potential that I believe is yet to be realised.
I’ll cover the basics first – Creature Keeper is a top-down action RPG, with pixel graphics reminiscent of Zelda’s Link’s Awakening from the 90’s crossed with creature collecting. You play as “Blank” – yes, this was literally the allocated name of my character and I did not notice a way to change this? – and you progress through the story exploring a corruption affecting the creatures of the region, battling with fist and/or weapons, blocking with shields, and avoiding damage with a nifty little dodge or backstep too. Upon booting up the game it recommended a controller rather than keyboard and mouse, which was a lovely tip (although I experimented a little with keyboard and it’s fine for anyone who was used to gaming on PC in the 90’s or early 2000’s). The pixel art-style is mostly charming and more detailed than I would usually expect – although there is a strange screen slide that I’ve noticed in most objects and map tiles.
The tutorial is very brief, I was grateful for being thrust into action however I suffered for the lack of exposure to some key mechanics early. Very soon after commencing Creature Keeper you are introduced to your Pocket Garden which is aimed at allowing you further customisation of your creatures’ combat capabilities. I saw the garden and got over-excited – this is more of a mini-game than a stand-alone feature, although it is well worth spending a little bit of time to gain sufficient benefit.
You don’t catch your creatures, you ‘befriend’ them by feeding them with fruit. I will confess to a perverse enjoyment in feeding enormous amounts of fruit they didn’t like until they joined my team. I like to imagine they said yes just to stop me from feeding them. There’s a large roster (50), and whilst each belongs to 3 broad categories in a rock-paper-scissors style of strength and weaknesses, there is enough variety in attack variations and additional elemental damage that they all feel unique and interesting in their own utility. You also have the option to further customise with items that unlock special skills – for example, walls of flame, or strong buffs and debuffs – and… hats.
I would have appreciated extra information on the mechanics related to game progression. I’m not sure if this is a deliberate choice – like I referenced above, I was reminded of Zelda’s Link’s Awakening playing this…however I was only 6 years old then, and therefore a lot of the opaque mechanics and difficulty went over my head, literally, and a lot of the difficulty I had was because of my limited capability. With Creature Keeper, I can’t tell if this is a design choice to direct players towards discovery and independent mastery, or if it’s a gap in the onboarding process. Please keep in mind that I have yet to finish a From Soft game despite my completionist habit, so if your social circumstances allow you the time then maybe you won’t notice the same friction I did.
My primary issue with the combat – I’m not having fun. Most of the combat animations feel pretty good for the style of game, maybe the sword and boomerang feel a little fuzzy. I thought it would be a delight to have monsters battle alongside me. Instead, I do most of the damage in between activating a higher damage skill from my creature and use them as a distraction. After the first few times I lost progress to bugs, I stopped feeling particularly compelled to try and match attack or monster types and managed to get by ‘mashing’ between sword, shield and boomerang. After a while I stopped feeling like I had accomplished anything when I won a battle, but that I simply got lucky weathering another slow encounter.
I have not been hooked by the story, which is unfortunate, because maybe I would have had an easier time overlooking my tedium of combat if I had cared about the story. The tone of the writing is irreverent but not over the top, and it was interesting to have the roles of hero and villain challenged. I have been navigating the map mainly be chance and memory, moving from map grid to grid without any real understanding of whether I’m heading in the right. So far I’ve gotten relatively lucky and mostly arrived at the quest points, but not without wasting significant time exploring parts of the world I didn’t intend to find, let alone the weird map bug that requires me to restart the game and lose progress when I access it. And that unfortunately characterises my time so far – I feel like I’m wasting it when I’m exploring, which is a terrible feeling for a new game and new world. I feel like I’m passing time when I’m in combat, which is a shame given the fantasy of fighting alongside creatures.
Maybe I’m too jaded by Tunic, Pokémon, (remember Jade Cocoon or Unholy War for PS1?) or turn based strategy and/or RPGs, where my combat choices seem to matter more – but so far the combat with and alongside creatures has felt disappointing, and nowhere near as exciting as I would expect for real-time action. My experience of the bugs has been unfortunate. I have lost count of how many times I got stuck in a menu and had to close and restart the game, losing all progress from my last crystal save point. Far too many times I’ve closed the game for the night having with a full roster of creatures in storage (significant because I can’t collect any more new creatures) only because the game won’t let me release them; and when I do manage to release 3 or 4 of them after 20-30 minutes of persistence, I will encounter a bug, have to reload, and resume at a save point with a full roster again!
Final Thoughts?
Overall my impression is that Creature Keeper has a lot of potential, and is an impressive accomplishment for a sole developer – and needs more time. However I was left disappointed by how significantly the bugs I experienced impacted on my gameplay, which is such a pity given how much Fervir has managed to achieve already. I would not recommend this in its current state and instead suggest we all wait and see. In recognition for what it gets right despite the bugs, 2/5 stars.
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