Keepsake tells the story of Lydia, a young woman who arrives for her first
day of wizardry lessons at the Dragonvale Academy only to find the entire school
deserted. Even her old friend Celeste is nowhere to be found despite her promise
to meet Lydia at the fountain in front of the school. So the game begins as you
embark on your quest to solve the mystery of the missing students by solving a
number of logic puzzles…
 |
| Looking for the student body. |
Keepsake is an adventure game in the classic mold. You move from one
pre-rendered scene to the next, scanning each scene for interactive items by
sweeping your mouse across the screen. Yes, Keepsake is your basic old school
pixel hunt, so if you don’t like this type of game then there is no point in
bothering with it. Even if you’re a big fan of adventure games you may find
yourself disappointed by Keepsake for a number of reasons.
The biggest problem with Keepsake is that the Academy is a big place, filled
with many, many screens but almost devoid of interactivity. You’ll need to pass
through screen after screen of hallway and staircase scenes before reaching
rooms that look like they may hold something of interest. More often than not,
though, these rooms are just as devoid of interactivity as the staircases.
Seriously, when I come across a room filled with bookcases in an academy of
wizardry I expect there to be something of interest to find there and I suspect
you do as well. The game includes a hint system that will let you know what you
need to do next and this is more of a necessity than a helpful extra feature.
Without it you could very well give up on the game after wandering through
umpteen lifeless screens with only the occasional locked door to break the
monotony.
There are three elements that are key to a successful adventure game: story,
scenery, and puzzles. Unfortunately Keepsake drops the ball on the first two,
and one out of three may be a good batting average but it is not a good score
for a game. The lifeless environments utterly fail to carry the story along so
you only get random snippets of it when you eventually trigger the next cutscene.
Even then there is remarkably little to the story and most of it is crammed into
the end of the game. A school of wizardry where the students have mysteriously
vanished should provide the setting for a compelling and engaging story, but
Keepsake only manages to serve up a dull and half-hearted attempt at a story. As
for the scenery, whatever imagination went into bringing Dragonvale Academy to
life has had all of the magic sapped out of it because the backgrounds in the
game are all blurry or pixilated. It’s almost as if they were taken from postage
stamp-sized originals and enlarged by budget-priced graphics software. The
failure of the game on these two points strips it of any personality and just in
case they weren’t enough on their own, the game backs them up with
embarrassingly amateurish voice acting.
Keepsake would be a complete wash if it weren’t for the fact that it manages
to serve up some interesting puzzles. The puzzles are a mix of mechanical and
logic puzzles, with an occasional riddle thrown in to mix things up a bit. The
difficulty of the puzzles is pretty varied, with some being painfully obvious
while others are fairly obscure. You’ll never find yourself stuck though, as the
game provides help for every puzzle. The help for each puzzle consists of three
hints that start from a basic explanation of the puzzle to the solution itself.
Even if you need to ask for the solution, you don’t have to bother applying it
as the game will let you auto-solve the puzzle to skip it entirely. However,
since the rest of the game is so utterly uninteresting if you plan on letting
the puzzles solve themselves there’s really no point in even bothering to play
the game.
Keepsake will be a disappointment to even the more forgiving of adventure
game fans. Puzzle fans should also stay away unless they enjoy having their
puzzles separated by long bouts of aimless wandering from screen to screen.
Ultimately Keepsake feels as empty and devoid of life as the deserted Dragonvale
Academy.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
50%. Who knew that solving a mystery at a school for wizards would be
so tedious? 
