Title: Ghost Keeper
Developer: Quest Craft
Release Date: Jan 28, 2026
Reviewed On: PC
Price: $12.99
From Quest Craft, Ghost Keeper calls itself a supernatural strategy game with puzzles and demons where plays can lead their fearsome minions against the living, but a number of design choices had me scratching my head. Repetitive with a slightly annoying UI and a number of bugs, Ghost Keeper isn’t just in early access, it came to the table raw.
Disclosure: Boss Rush Network received a review code for the PC version of Ghost Keeper. Neither Quest Craft or Gaming Factory made any stipulations upon this review, nor did they or any representatives read it prior to publication.
Analysis
Gameplay
View
The first problem you’ll run into with Ghost Keeper’s gameplay is the view. You have a choice of an overhead looking down view or a 30-45 degree angle that allows some additional detail of objects that blend a bit too much from the top only.
On each map, you’ll be given certain tasks, including freeing a new ghost to add to your collection. The tutorial holds your hand, but it needs just enough prompting to do so (and is just confounding enough to require handholding) that it feels like the game tries to obfuscate its methods and then sneers at you for needing it to explain its own ludicrous expectations.
Game Controls
WASD controls the perspective’s movement across the map with scroll on the mouse zooming and your right and left click being used for ghostly purposes. However, as you click around the map, even clicking directly on a character may not result in that ghost popping up. Over and over, I caught myself wondering, ‘Is this a bug or bad design?’ That question will become a regular question in your head as you play.
Ghost Abilities
Each ghost gets four abilities that can change between maps. In my playthroughs, the attacks didn’t always match with what was expected. In the Jaw of the Shadow level, Shadowmaw needed to get rid of at least two to score a check on one of the list goals; however, three of four abilities for Shadowmaw are attacks which will lead to death rather than scaring off the mortal. Killing more than two doesn’t give you the check, so unless that’s a bug, Shadowmaw needs to be responsible for scaring off people when the ghost dog’s main focus is murder. Similarly, the Assassin, like Shadowmaw, often has attack abilities that are less fear-focused and more health-focused.
As annoying as that might be, the game design simply isn’t intuitive. Cause and effect have some connection, like sealing a room cutting off the air for a fire; however, the same moves in a completely outdoor space cause the same results, which takes almost all sense out of it. Blocking a chimney may put out a fire, but putting up walls to gate off a section in a cemetery wouldn’t put out a candle’s flame.
Ghosts
Night Blade
The first ghost in your arsenal, the assassin has some clear Jack the Ripper vibes. Without a face, the sheet-covered phantom with his black top hat and large white eyes. This ghost is absolutely murderous. On the first and third maps, he has a lot of physical attacks that drain health for the NPCs while also causing their fear to increase. A win-win of a wunderkind, Night Blade carries if you want to just slaughter.
William
A dead poet, he lives up to the name, so to speak. His attacks are all pensive, coming right out of the diary of an emo pre-teen from the early 2000s. he fit well with Night Blade and Shadowmaw, leaning vengeful in his poetics. William is a staple sort of ghost, and his ‘despised’ moniker would be interesting to dive into though we rarely get much depth on the ghosts themselves, which is fine considering the general superficial nature of the game.
Phineas Crazy
William and Night Blade have an air for drama and a spin for tragedy and destruction, but after a first level that seems all about the horror, in comes the aesthetic cold water of Phineas Crazy. If he were one of many ghosts, that might’ve worked, or even a later introduction when the player has more variety to their phantom hoard, but Phineas is the full-on mad scientist with a voice akin to Doofenshmirtz and a slapstick humor that left me rather puzzled. If these were the ghosts of Danny Phantom, I might’ve understood the chaos, but even Danny started with comedy before playing with tragedy and murder. You have to start light and go dark. Starting dark and having the three stooges come in only to go dark again just doesn’t set an interesting tone, and considering Phineas becomes the narrator for the following levels, he continues to feel out of place.
Shadowmaw
The baddest of good boys? He just needs a bit of enrichment after being locked away. This church grim styled hell hound is absolutely ready to tear apart any mortal in his path. If they had truly wanted to lean into the funny and bridged the gap between our first two ghosts and our third, the developers could have made Shadowmaw an accidental horror. The whole custom of burying a dog first in a cemetery and the resulting church grim was specifically to avoid having anyone forced to stay behind as there was a wide belief the first being buried would stay back as a sort of escort to the afterlife. Frankly, I have no idea why the ghost of a doggy psychopomp. If he was running around scaring people because he wanted to play fetch, that could’ve been a cute little bit that would’ve given Phineas somebody else to play off of rather than being his own discordant slapstick.
Final Score (2 out of 5 Stars)
I loved the concept. Many people have compared the idea behind Ghost Keeper to Ghost Master, which would’ve been fun to see revamped, but the game has a number of issues. Some of those listed above could be fixed with a bit of extra time and work prior to release, including the bugs that resulting in NPCs being caught in corners or those where completed tasks remain unchecked, but even with extra time to polish, Ghost Keeper suffers from one of the worst indie game sins – it has no idea who it is. The four first ghosts which you can meet in the demo aren’t thematically consistent, and the one ghost who doesn’t fit with the rest, Phineas Crazy, is the narrator!
If Ghost Keeper wants to lean into a Luigi’s Mansion sort of humor, more power to it, but the murderous drama brought by William, Night Blade, and Shadowmaw fits the level designs and game better on a whole, meaning that the narrator creates unwelcome dissonance that makes the problems with gameplay all the harder to ignore.
I’d suggest waiting and seeing if the tide turns after a few updates but knowing that the developers may abandon the game completely if it doesn’t receive more immediate attention, I’d say just give this one a pass unless you’re looking at what not to do. Either way, don’t go into this expecting Ghost Master or anything too serious. It plays and feels a lot like a mobile game that would pass time on a commute, but it’s $10 more expensive than I’d pay for it.
Tell us what you think! Will you be playing Ghost Keeper? Share your reactions in the comments below or join the conversation on Boss Rush Network’s Discord and Facebook.
Source: Quest Craft
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