Creature Keeper

Creature Keeper was provided by Graffiti Games for review. Thank you!

Creature Keeper is one of a growing number of creature collection games that live on Steam, and the comparisons to Pokémon are impossible to ignore in this genre. And how can it not? Pokémon is the biggest entertainment franchise in the world, after all. However, it differentiates itself from its rivals in a multitude of ways, like real-time combat and strong world and character building. While the experience was an enjoyable one, it was marred by some troublesome issues that should hopefully be fixed by release or soon after.

Creature Keeper does not look like much on the surface, but it has a ton of self-awareness and mockery of the fantasy formula that intrigued me. As a Keeper in the fantasy world of monsters and taming, your first day does not start well. The tutors are lazy assholes who make the recruits pick weeds and do not care whether you like that or not. The game's dialogue is generally well-written and doesn't fall into the trap of other comedies. The introduction is hilarious, but the characters don’t feel like they are trying too hard to be funny.

After the hilarious tutorial sequence in which you pick your first critter pal and learn some combat against your childhood friend (and get stung many times by wasps), you set off on your journey. A strange force corrupts monsters, and the guy tutoring you is trying to take over as the village elder. After being given a bizarre pocket universe by an old couple, the game begins in earnest. You are correct if you think Creature Keeper sounds a little bonkers, and it can be a bit challenging to keep track of, but it oozes charm.

While being ‘just pixel art,’ the visual design is striking, with exploration taking on a Metroidvania style that suits the game quite nicely. There is a wide range of creatures to collect and fight, and I was delighted to find a codex in the menu that stores all sorts of information about the creatures. There are still ‘learning’ points you accumulate through encountering them organically through gameplay, which makes them easier to tame and improve their stats.

Unlike many collector titles, Creature Keeper offers a unique monster-taming experience. Instead of battling creatures into submission, you tame them with food, with each monster having specific preferences. This refreshing approach reduces the grind and makes creature taming feel immersive. It's a significant departure from the ‘pound the tar out of everything’ approach, adding depth and strategy to the gameplay.

The combat took me by surprise as well. Usually, in this ‘We have Pokemon at home’ genre, fighting is a turn-based affair, but Creature Keeper bucks this trend with a fast-paced real-time combat system. Your creatures still fight alongside you, but you can swing swords while dodging attacks, healing yourself and your pet by petting them, and doing combo attacks to increase damage. It is a perfect example of keeping things simple, and Creature Keeper is delightful when fighting, albeit slightly chaotic at times.

In the overworld, you can generally avoid combat if desired, except for corrupted creatures that will attack you. Occasionally, progress is locked until you defeat the encounter, but there's time to prepare. Creature Keeper respects the player’s time, and I greatly appreciate that! Remember the little pocket dimension? It is a little hub area to return to from fast travel points and a garden to grow fruits for more taming.

All these things sound great, and the gameplay loop is wonderful. However, I found some issues. While you can access the overworld map through fast travel points, there is no minimap or navigation during gameplay. You have to rely on memory to get through the routes. The hands-off exploration style is not bad, but I sometimes found it confusing where to go next. I ran into my first major problem early on when I had to locate a temple for a quest, and the map layouts looked identical. I preferred a minimap so I could navigate the world better.

Balance also needs some work. Some mandatory boss fights are challenging, such as the dragons, which are very early in the game. Even though I was over-leveled, I kept getting killed, though there was no penalty for defeat.

I also ran into some frustrating bugs. The game froze whenever I activated a fast travel point outside the Pocket Garden. It worked after waiting a couple of minutes, though I had to rebooting twice.

The performance could use some optimization. I saw frequent stutters and frame drops during heavy action scenes, and the settings menu occasionally brought the FPS down to the mid-10s. Sometimes, the taming interface would bug out and be cut off on the screen on my Steam Deck.

Creature Keeper needs some TLC and patches to reach its full potential, but the fundamental game design is on point, and the world will keep you entertained. The game respects your time with the main story while maintaining enough side content to satisfy most players.

Creature Keeper - Steam Deck Performance

Overall, Creature Keeper is a solid enough experience on the Steam Deck, although the lack of options and aforementioned stuttering detract from it.

The fundamentals are all working, and while I couldn’t rebind any controls, the game comes with full controller support.

Recommended Settings

As usual, I tried two default options. There is no way to tweak graphical settings in Creature Keeper, not even screen resolution, so we are limited in options. With the stock 90Hz refresh rate and a full TDP, Creature Keeper was stable at this setting, although it will dip during combat scenes when a lot is happening on screen. Locking the frame rate to 60/60Hz made things smoother, and there isn’t much point going higher than this from my experience.

The power drain is surprisingly high if you don’t limit the TDP, with power spikes to 17 watts standard. The power draw was much higher than I expected because while Creature Keeper’s visuals are nice, they are nothing groundbreaking. Unfortunately, even with the unlocked TDP, accessing the menu still tanked the framerate.

Battery Saver Settings

Despite these issues, Creature Keeper is enjoyable if you need more battery life while playing. Once again, the lack of options hurts us, but a 5-watt TDP, framerate lock to 30FPS, and 90Hz refresh rate resulted in a decently stable experience. You will see more instability in combat, and the menu will slow things to a crawl, so this won’t be optimal for a truly smooth experience.

Of course, the significant advantage of this profile is battery life. I saw an average draw of 8 watts, a substantial gain in battery life. Do not turn on Half rate shading, as this will make the text unreadable.

Accessibility

Creature Keeper is available in English, Spanish - Spain, Portuguese - Brazil, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese, although some languages have not yet been fully implemented.

Creature Keeper is one of those games with the bare minimum accessibility requirements. You can adjust the volume and toggle Vync, but that is it for accessibility options.

Conclusion

While I have been critical of Creature Keeper, I still greatly enjoyed it. Creature Keeper is one of the most well-written ‘comedy’ games I’ve played in a while, and it comes with a refreshing take on the creature collecting genre. Fighting alongside your growing collection of monster pets does not get old, and the dialogue kept me engaged.

Despite this, I come away from Creature Keeper frustrated. All the weird freezes and interface bugs put me off, and the game's lack of handholding is both a strength and a weakness. The game is a decent performer on the Steam Deck, though the lack of accessibility options brings it down. I am glad the developers are aware of and working on the problems.

Creature Keeper will be much easier to recommend with some optimization and bug patches, but it has great atmosphere and solid gameplay, and it will definitely be an enjoyable time down the road.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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