How Keeper Tells a Story with No Dialogue

Keeper will soon be upon fans of Double Fine’s work, and one key aspect of its storytelling will help it stand out. Keeper will present players with a wordless story, one that toes the line of reality and dreamlike surrealism.

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From the minds at Double Fine, the studio behind games like Grim Fandango and Psychonauts, comes a surreal title with light gameplay and mind-bending circumstances. Keeper will see an abandoned lighthouse, left to ruin in an era long after the time of humans, gain the ability to walk and think, as well as the desire to explore the mysteries of its dreamlike surroundings. Game Rant caught up with creative director Lee Petty, who discussed how the team dealt with the challenge of wordless storytelling.

Double Fine’s Keeper Will Tell Its Story Without Any Dialogue

Going without dialogue, written or spoken, is well within the video game tradition, all the way back to early arcade games like Pong. While text often accompanied earlier video games, through onscreen words or through manual instructions, spoken dialogue took some time to become the norm. However, as storytelling in games has gotten greater in scope, games that use no words at all have fallen more and more by the wayside.

Petty addressed this matter in some respect, speaking to how distinct working on Keeper has been compared to a game series like Psychonauts. Moreover, he spoke more on the subject of getting a wordless project off the ground, and what that looked like in practice.

“I think where it started for me was something like the pandemic. There was a certain, I almost want to say, quietness to the world during that time, even though it wasn’t necessarily pleasant for a lot of folks. I think it felt right to kind of capture that, and I really wanted to elevate the visual and sonic side of things, like the sound effects and music are fantastic in this game. It’s kind of the idea of when someone loses a sense, the other ones get heightened; I think by pushing the reading side of your brain down a bit, it kind of lets you linger and be more emotive in this world than I think you would otherwise be.”

Furthermore, Petty went on to discuss how the gameplay of Keeper was geared towards a wordless approach. Petty described how development wasn’t as simple as adding or removing words, but rather that wordless storytelling was baked into the game from near-enough its foundation.

“We decided on no dialogue pretty early on. I’m sure I have some early treatments where I wrote some dialogue, and I was probably trying to figure out how the lighthouse would talk. But I’m really glad we went wordless. There are other games out there without dialogue, but I think it really does give it a special feel when you’re playing Keeper. It almost gives it a meditative feel, even during the dramatic moments. It’s an important ingredient to the unique experience.”

Many games have gone without dialogue in recent years, but few have put as much emphasis on the concept as Keeper has. With Petty emphasizing the emotional resonance brought to bear by eschewing typical dialogue conventions, prospective fans are in for an experience that will easily go against the grain. Luckily, with Keeper coming to Game Pass day one, players will have an easy route to quickly access the game and dip their toes into the bizarre experience.