Jarkeeper

Jarkeeper is a sorting game about restoring a house by returning its scattered jars to their proper shelves. You are the Jarkeeper: after you wandered off in your sleep, the house fell apart. Every jar you file helps it heal, while six bimbous who live with you teach you spells and call you their little sleepwalker.

Restore the house

Bats, brains, frogs, tongues, rubber ducks and the odd homunculus lie across the floors, halls and corners, with more jars on the wrong shelves. You scoop them up and put each one back in its assigned place. There are 3,120 physics-driven jars, each with its own spot, and the story has an ending.

The jars vary across 26 specimens, six colors and 10 catalogue codes, and can be bare or in bloom. The specimen determines the shelf, with a flower on the lid sending the jar to that shelf’s Bloom version; the color determines its row, and the catalogue code its position along the row. You can work through the sorting one row at a time, then a shelf, then the whole house.

Spells and upgrades

The game has eight spells, most with upgrades, plus two passive abilities:

• Kinstrike: Call down lightning outside the mansion to make every sibling of the jar you’re holding glow through walls and shelves.
• Magnet: Pull matching jars into your arms.
• Panic: Make misfiled jars glow red, shake and scream.
• Swarm: Have jars circle you and file themselves when you approach their shelf.
• Poltergeist: Send the jars in your arms floating off to find their way home.
• Collate: Sort the jars you’re carrying into catalogue order.
• Frog Leap: Double-jump to the second floor.
• Cashback: Reduce your spells’ cooldowns each time you file a jar correctly by hand.

Choose the house’s mood

Chill leaves you with the rain, the shelves and the bimbous. In Spooky, the house has bad nights: the power cuts out, earthquakes knock jars from shelves, and noir episodes turn everything into scratchy black-and-white film with gramophone music. Nightmare keeps the lights off and the film running, with stronger earthquakes. You can switch between Chill and Spooky whenever you like.

Sorting by hand

Squash-and-stretch animations and sound effects accompany the task of putting the wrecked house back in order. A newborn bimbous also lends a little help.