The Opening to Crypt Custodian – A Lesson in Starting a Game Story

The opening 10 minutes of Crypt Custodian are a masterclass in video game writing. 

While countless games have opened with a lore-dump cinematic to acclimate players to the game world and story, Crypt Custodian does something different. It shows players a 30-second clip of a cat falling through some liminal space, with imagery of broken asphalt and automobiles floating in the background, which transitions quickly into the gameplay point of view. In less than 90 seconds, we have control of the game.
Giving the player control of their character quickly is a proven way to engage them, as we have seen in highly acclaimed games like Limbo and Inside. However, unlike those games, Crypt Custodian gives players something to think about before they take the reins. Why were those cars and pieces of street flashed across the screen?

Our cat protagonist, Pluto, is instantly greeted by a smaller ghost kitty who tells us that we are in a type of afterlife. Ah, that explains those images we saw earlier! We must be roadkill.

This is just the first example of how this game uses its writing and narrative design to recontextualise information and let the player fit the plot together in their head. We are not (yet) told the cat was run over by a car, but the writing respects the player’s intelligence to put it all together.

The ghost cat companion tells us that we need to find Kendra, a judge who will hear our story and will either let us into The Palace, if we have been a good kitty or force us outside The Palace if we are found wanting. This is another great narrative device, grounding us in something familiar. We would be hard pressed to not have at least an inkling of knowledge about Heaven/Hell, Good Place/Bad Place, and the rich stories of the afterlife given how much they are explored in literature, film, and other media. 

Our quest to find Kendra and the world we find ourselves in is not as obtuse and enigmatic as it appears in other games. We are at the pearly gates of death and we want to go to the Good Place. We get it. We can fill in the blanks in our head. We move on. 

Next we come across a path blocked by old statues. In fact, there are statues at every turn in this world. Furthermore, they all have those incidental cracks in them, which is a universal cue that they are breakable. We have nothing to use to break them yet, so we press on down another path and lo and behold, we pick up a broom.

Naturally, we start smashing things with our broom. That is expected behaviour for many reasons. First of all, we have good reason to believe there might be goodies inside of breakable things in games. Secondly, we saw our path obstructed by breakable statues just moments earlier, so we know smashing will open us new pathways. The irony of causing destruction with a tool used to clean is not lost on us.

We break our way through the aforementioned statues to find Kendra. She is sitting in-between a door on her right, through which we can see bright skies, and another door on her left, showing us miserable darkness. We know which door we want to go through, but have we lived a good life?

Kendra reviews the book of life events of our feline friend, and things look promising. We are an innocent stray cat, adopted by some loving humans. We loved the humans in return but had an unfortunate accident in the street. Kenda orders The Palace gate to be opened but then suddenly tells us to wait. It seems like another page was just added to the book and her face suddenly twists in horror.

She learns that we, in the last few minutes, have spent our time smashing through her beautiful statues. She is appalled and reverses her decision to let us into The Palace. 

Pluto yells, “I thought that was what I was supposed to do!”, but it falls on deaf ears. Kendra opens the gate on the left, and we shuffle outside. As if to spite us, Kenda tells us to keep the broom because we are sentenced to clean things up for the rest of eternity.

The reason this intro stuck with me is because of how efficiently it gets the player invested in the story. The game recontextualises information, trusts the player’s intelligence to make sense of the world, and then gives players a very emotional, immersive experience to top it off.

We feel bad for the cat, not only because they died (sorry!), but also because WE, the players, got them banished. We were the ones who swung our broom around like a sword, smashing everything in sight because, well, it felt right. We didn’t know the consequences, and for this reason we are placed squarely in the shoes of the protagonist who cried out, “I thought that is what I was supposed to do!” 

Kendra’s decision to banish Pluto flipped the script on our gamer behaviour, pointed the finger at us (in a comical way), and pulled us into the story. We are invested because our actions have substantial weight to them. We feel connected to our part in this poor cat’s fate. It is something we regret and can laugh about given the tone of the game. Nonetheless, it is something we want to make right by playing the rest of the game. Justice for Pluto!

Best of all, this introduction happened in 7 minutes. 

I have not played a game that got me invested in its characters and world this quickly in a long, long time. Hats off to Kyle Thompson for showing us all that great writing is not a matter of word count, per se, but rather a matter of word choice. Every line, every bit of game design in this opening sequence does wonders to hook its players. Nothing feels cluttered, verbose, or disposable…other than perhaps all the smashed statue parts I left on the ground. I guess it is my fate to go clean those up. 

Experience Crypt Custodian for yourself on Steam, PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.