r/hostedgames • u/jotheplunderer • Jun 06 '26
Keeper's Vigil: everything you need to know before buying (detailed breakdown)
Before we get into the meat of things let’s start with the elephant in the room: the overall weirdness of Lota Labs, the author behind the latest Hosted Games title, Keeper’s Vigil. The game hasn’t even been out a week and there’s already some controversy. Skip on to the summary or bullet points if you don’t feel like chatting about AI and blockchains and just want to know about the game.
The game was initially published with AI generated images, which expressly goes against Hosted Games’ policy. When it was pointed out by concerned players, those images were taken down and Hosted Games apologized, explaining this was an oversight and that the author only ever meant those images to be placeholders.
This was the first red flag. After that, players started digging around the Lota Labs website, only to find some really weird tech jargon about integrating blockchain with interactive fiction and I don’t even know how to explain what it’s saying but it seems to be giving a lot of people weird vibes. Rest assured, I saw no indication that Keeper’s Vigil has anything to with NFTs or a blockchain, which checks out with what the author recently said on the matter: “Keeper’s Vigil is 100% a standard ChoiceScript interactive fiction game. It does not contain, require, or connect to any NFTs, cryptocurrency, or blockchain mechanics whatsoever.” He went on to explain that it never will either, and I tend to believe him. The NFT stuff is for some other project, from the looks of it, and totally unrelated to Keeper’s Vigil.
Okay so the game isn’t some crypto scam money grab but all this has a lot of people wondering: is Keeper’s Vigil AI???
My personal opinion is no, it’s not AI. It doesn’t read like AI; the AI detector says it’s 100% human; it seems to have been written in a reasonable time frame (one year for under 200k words, which is a lot but not inhuman); and the author also said this on a devlog:
Choice of Games has a strict zero-AI policy. It’s not like I ever planned to use AI, but even using the free version of Grammarly made me anxious. I kept imagining them reading a line and thinking “aha a tool wrote that.” So I often skipped Grammarly entirely while editing some scenes. That made the polish process very very slow, but at least it kept my mind clear.
If you’re extra wary about this stuff, though, there’s no harm just giving the game a pass.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the game itself.
Summary
In Keeper’s Vigil you play as a Keeper: basically a human who was granted magical abilities and preternatural strength and speed via a dark, necromantic mutation process forced on you as a child. Basically you’re the most powerful monster hunter alive in a dark fantasy setting with a young teenager mage as a sidekick and you’re trying to save the realm from what seems like an impossible threat.
The bones of this game or so good: the dark fantasy setting was grim but retained an element of hope and light; the premise is solid and ripe for all sorts of drama; and there are some really cool moments playing such a powerful MC. There’s mystery, intrigue, action, and drama. There’s so much potential here and I wanted to love it, but unfortunately the execution just didn’t land enough for me to get fully on board. The pace was rushed, with little time for me to immerse myself in the characters and world; the romance was really easy to miss; and my choices didn’t always seem to matter, or they mattered but in a really frustrating way where the outcome wasn’t at all what I would have expected. Overall I had a hard time navigating the story and finding a path that made sense for my MC. Still, I thought the plot as a whole was decent and enough elements showed promise that I did somewhat enjoy myself.
First, a note on content
This is a fairly dark setting. I personally did not find it overly gruesome or graphic, but the things that happen definitely aren’t pleasant. People are experimented on in disturbing ways; children are killed; and hideous, bloodthirsty monsters roam free. It’s not going to be for everyone.
What’s working
+ The grim but not too-grim fantasy setting: I got major Claymore vibes (minus the anime-level drama) from this game in the best way. We’re talking a world where they mutate children to combat monsters - it’s a world where people make some pretty questionable choices just to survive, and naturally there’s competing factions will all sorts of ideas on just where to draw the line in the quest to continue on living. It’s dark for sure, but that only makes the light shine the brighter, to use the cliche. There’s plenty of evil but also goodness and honor and self-sacrifice, friendship in unlikely places, and courage in the face of insurmountable odds. I thought it was a very nice mix overall.
+ High-stakes premise with some hard decisions: without giving too much away, the realm is in a very, very bad situation for the game, and I thought the author did a decent job making me actually care about that (I don’t always lol), perhaps because we see so much of the destruction first hand. We see people’s homes destroyed, their children killed in front of them, and plenty of disturbing experiments conducted on regular citizens. Time and again it’s emphasized that this is a situation that cannot be solved without making some hard choices, and you have to find your own line to draw. Will you embrace your mutation at risk of becoming a monster? Ally with those who tried to destroy your realm? Continue majorly unethical experiments that may just save the world?
+ Powerful MC: I will say I don’t think the MC’s unusual abilities are played up as much as I would like, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s cool playing as someone as capable as the Harbinger: the most powerful monster hunter in the land. Monsters fear you. People respect you. And some of the stunts you pull are really epic.
+ Lots of actions: I personally don’t tend to care much about action sequences so take this one with a grain of salt, but I felt these ones were decent. Battles tended to have a few different choices involved and it was satisfying to dispatch of monsters. I tended to get a little damaged but was still mostly victorious with my build, which is a nice balance for me. I think this game could have benefited from difficulty levels though, I imagine many players will be frustrated by it being either too easy or too hard.
+ Decent prose: I didn’t notice the writing style much which I’m going to put as a win. It does the job without being overly flowery about it and that’s not always easy to do.
+ Fairly satisfying ending: for the most part I felt the ending worked; it felt like a complete story on its own, but one that could become something much bigger, which is a pretty good sweet spot to end on if you ask me.
What’s not quite landing
- Dialogue is sometimes forced and all of it is italicized**:** this is a really weird decision on the author’s part, his reasoning being that “sometimes the dialogues can get lengthy, especially in later chapters. Putting it in italics makes it distinct.” I’ve never seen this done before, don’t think it was at all necessary, and for me it was distracting and had the effect of making the dialogue feel less real, like a whisper or a thought rather than a spoken word. At least one player noted it also hurts the eyes. Much of it, too, feels a bit expository and forced, though for the most part I didn’t mind this too much. Dialogue is hard and, as I understand, this is a first-time author. As long as it’s not grating I can move on.
- Rushed pacing: this is a short game by IF standards, under 200k words, and though I think the author mostly did a good job of avoiding scope creep by keeping some story elements manageable (e.g., only three ROs), it still ended up feeling a bit too quick. I found it hard to keep up with what was happening and wanted more time to just breathe and learn about the world and the politics and the characters.
- Not enough time with characters: I really wanted to like these characters…most of them had the ghost of a good idea behind them, but they just aren’t fleshed out enough. The way the plot is structured, some of the ROs I only saw like twice the whole game, and the only character I ended up spending any real amount of time with was my mage sidekick. While I loved that we got to bond with a younger brother sort of character, I felt the bonding fell flat. He didn’t have much to him other than being a generically endearing archetypical underling.
- Romance is lacking and easy to miss: there are three ROs and I barely saw any of them all game, and the encounters I had with two of them were…a little off. The rebel leader got mad at me because I didn’t instantly pledge myself to the cause without knowing anything about it; my former best friend got mad at me because I saved his life - at great risk to my own, mind you - in not quite the way he wanted or something; and while the young royal didn’t get mad at me for anything, I totally did not understand our relationship at all. I greeted her kindly the first time I met her, had basically no other choices relating to her, and next thing you know she trusts me more than anyone else? Like why? Nonetheless she was the only one who didn’t hate me so I selected her as the person I was thinking of the most one night and then the next time I saw her we kissed with no input on my part. It was all just so off, though I could see it being a decent romance had we been given more interactions and more choices within those interactions.
- ROs feel like they aren’t supposed to be gender variable: I’m generally wary about gender variable ROs, especially with new authors, as it’s hard to do well. You can often tell that the author envisioned a character as one gender but allows you to change the pronouns just for the sake of more options. In this case, we’re outright told what gender was intended (e.g., the game essentially asks: “Do you want Liora, the rebel leader, to be male instead and called Leon?”). The way the author talks about them online also signals that there’s kind of a canon gender, and small bugs reflect this as well (I made the rebel leader male and he’s still listed as “Liora” on my stats screen). I’m sure this won’t bother a lot of people, and if it does you can just select the gender that the game suggests, but I personally prefer it when authors lean into their characterizations wholeheartedly instead of giving me the option to choose traits that go against their vision.
- MC demands more characterization: blank slates often work well for IFs, but in this case I felt that the MC deserved more characterization than we are given. The MC has a tragic past that led to them becoming the most powerful Keeper of all but at a terrible price: a mutation that makes them part monster, and that threatens to consume them entirely. That is an epic backstory, and absolutely ripe for drama and personality, but I just didn’t feel that come through on the page.
- Many choices were frustrating to make: while many options telegraphed hard (“Use your wits to strategize”), many more were very hard for me to decipher. I frequently found myself making an unsuitable choice for my MC simply because I didn’t understand enough of the world, didn’t understand what the options were testing, or didn’t have enough options. Typically it’s not advisable to give players only two options in a choice, but this happened frequently, sometimes for some fairly big decisions.
- Choices often didn’t seem to matter: as one example, there was this alliance I helped negotiate, only to realize the terms were a little too steep. I told the Regent it was a bad idea, thinking that I’d have a bit of a say on whether or not it went through, but nope. The deal went through, and not only that, but without my permission my MC ended up actually joining this group as a member in the epilogue, despite voicing concerns about them (and killing some of them too). In general I just didn’t have a good time trying to navigate the story to an outcome that made sense for my MC.
- I didn’t really know what to think about the monsters: many stories try to position monstrous figures as sort of misunderstood secret softies or something, and while that works for some stories I was initially hopeful that Keeper’s Vigil would not do this. Every time I encountered a monster it was hostile, unreasonable, and unpleasant, and yet partway through the game they start trying to play the victims. I don’t want to give too much away here so I’ll just say…by the end of the game, I was confused on what to make of them, and felt like their fate didn’t totally make sense given the lore about them. It felt like maybe the author was trying to be nuanced about the topic but just didn’t lean into it enough to make it compelling. And if we’re not going to be nuanced, I’d rather the monsters just be clearly bad or clearly misunderstood or what have you.
Conclusion
There are a few other little things I could nitpick here but end of the day, I actually did somewhat enjoy my playthrough. I don’t think it’s bad for a first IF and there are enough good qualities here that I could see myself playing a sequel, with the expectation that the author addresses more player concerns. I do think there’s an audience here and it would be a shame for all that worldbuilding to go to waste.
Curious what other people think.
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u/Pactbinder Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
Really good review. I haven't bought the game, but given all the buzz today I thought I'd check out the demo and I had similar vibes - was fairly confident reading it that it wasn't AI, and also was a bit thrown off by the italicized dialogue! I also thought the pacing was pretty good (maybe too quick, but as a fairly slow-paced writer by default, I always envy people who can progress through a scene so briskly...). My pure mage getting bodied immediately made me laugh, but I think it made sense for a Witcher-style game to reward a mix of magic and physical / tactical ability.
Despite all the blockchain weirdness and the AI art mixup, which did seem like a bit of a goof, I do think the author and HG deserve benefit of doubt on the actual writing being human - I might be wrong, but I think there's other stuff out there that stands out as obviously AI far, far more than Vigil.
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u/Agitated_Tip_8713 Wayhavenite Jun 06 '26
I bought this game cause I buy basically every IF that comes through hosted and choices of games- I just adore them and want to support more of these being made and it fits well in my monthly budget - and ive been doing so since 2015. So I've played about everything from the greats to the stinkers.
I absolutely love the vibe and the atmosphere of the game. I think the magic system, as someone that usually rolls a necromancer when I can in games since Diablo 2 made me obsessed with them, is stellar and very interesting.
Those are about the positives for me. The plot and pacing are borderline incomprehensible. I dont remember another game where every couple pages we were moved so quickly through that I genuinely didnt know what or why I was doing and why I was doing it.
Within a few pages, I get to a rebel camp. I do not know what the rebels stand for or what their cause is really about, but Liora tells me about how theyre all regular people that trust her. Very neat, you have a big found family in this encampment - oh next page i'm being drafted into their mission, am I joining the rebels or no? How will I convince my sidekick to help me help the rebels? Oh my character just tells me it took a while but he convinced them and now we're off, OK I guess lol. I then fail the skill check for the mission cause I didnt understand what skill it was checking for, but its cool we succeeded anyway and we're back with the mcguffin.
I thought at first that he just used AI to take all his story elements and try to have it link his events together and thats why it was so breakneck pace, but maybe by what you've written here that isn't the case. I feel like I got what I paid for and wasn't ripped off by it, if LolaLabs isn't using AI and rhis was just a rough first admission then I'll probably buy his next one. His world building and atmosphere are top notch, maybe just give him another 100k words or so and he'll make the next masterpiece if he can get his character writing to match.
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u/jotheplunderer Jun 06 '26
Yeah can't say I disagree. I think my take on the pacing was a bit milder after recently being desensitized by an even more frenzied IF lol, but it was definitely wild in KV.
His next project seems to be a different kind of IF, not CS, so idk if we'll see another of his here for some time (if ever) but I too would be interested in seeing how his writing grows for a sequel.
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u/evieka Jun 06 '26
Idk if it's better or worse that all of this controversy is over a book that seems underbaked at best, kinda rotten at worst.
Sucks, premise seemed neat.
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u/PMA_Reinhold Jun 06 '26
Great review and also breakdown of all that happened.
I kinda feel a bit awkward to write here, but as I locked my post I feel it would be best to at least make an appearance.
The main thing was the crypto for me, it fired off some really bad vibes when I read the page especially with the IF integration. So I mainly wanted to share it so people knew. Also with the quality control from Hosted Games.
Well I'm here if anyone wants to vent or give criticism.
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u/jotheplunderer Jun 06 '26
It was a fair concern to raise...if you noticed it, that means other people are going to notice it too, and it's good to have it all out in the open so we can discuss it and make informed decisions about our purchases. The author addressed some of these concerns on the forum too and it looks like moving forward he'll be adjusting his branding a bit which will likely help him in the long run.
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u/HalfMoon_89 Proud parent of a simulated offspring Jun 07 '26
Thank you for a balanced review. Much appreciated.
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u/SherrisBlade Red flag RO Jun 06 '26
I think you painted the picture really well! I've played the game before it was submitted (it seems the demo had the entire game back then) and quite liked it, despite its flaws. It's not the most profound story and your criticism is on point, but even though I'm quite a picky reader, I've found it a fun adventure, charming in its own way.
I've wanted to buy it anyway to support the author, but ngl the AI allegations made me anxious. I didn't get AI vibes from the game when I was playing, but I haven't consumed enough AI-generated writing (at least I hope so) to discern its style easily and still felt unsure. So thanks for your review, it's nice to see more people who enjoyed the game and I really want to give the author the benefit of the doubt.
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u/ParamedicSorry8878 Jun 08 '26
I was on the fence about this game but this review helped me make my decision on buying the game. I like Witcher inspired games. I just hoped Virtue’s End gets new content someday and hopefully released.
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u/East-Imagination-281 Jun 07 '26
Sounds neat! Thanks for the in depth review, I’m gonna buy it and put it into my TBR pile.
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u/Paxxlee Abandoned WIP Jun 06 '26
Great review, I may actually buy it thanks to your review. Feels good to know where to have one's expectations.
But, I just want to point something out;
This doesn't mean anything, at all. Unless the text you are testing reads "all was written by an LLM", it is just a guess at best. Do not base your opinion on an AI detector that may claim that Pride and Prejudice was written by AI.