Crate Expectations/Playing With

Basic Trope: Video games often have crates.

• Straight: A video game Loud Planes has lots of crates scattered around. They usually contain 1 item per crate.
• Exaggerated:
  • A video game Crate Pusher have crates as a major part of the gameplay mechanic and are everywhere.
  • Sokoban
• Justified: The game is set in a warehouse and the crates are on pallets with fork lifts nearby. They also contain items which take up pretty much all the space inside the crate.
• Inverted:
  • An allotment of video games are shipped to the retailers in crates.
  • The crates attack the player. When the player dies, he drops all of his items, which the crates then pick up and use.
• Subverted: What looked like crates were actually drawings on a painted backdrop.
• Double Subverted: But they can be broken like other objects, and sometimes does contain items.
• Parodied:
  • The main character of Crate Pusher can even fall in love and marry a crate!
  • *cough*Portal*cough*
• Deconstructed: Destroying crates led to the main character of Loud Planes to be arrested by the warehouse authority.
• Reconstructed: There is a cutscene of him paying off his crime by boxing power-ups in crates for said authority.
• Zig Zagged: The crates in Loud Planes contain widely variable things, ranging from more crates to power-ups that themselves can be broken open to reveal more power-ups or, occasionally, more crates. Sometimes crates attack you for trying to break them. The joke boss is made of crates and seeks revenge for your crate-breaking.
• Averted: Loud Planes doesn't have crates.
• Enforced: The dev team needed the game to be set in a series of airplane storage hangers and, for realism's sake, had to include a lot of crates.
• Lampshaded: "So large a crate for such a small item?"
• Invoked: The Big Good leaves supplies in crates, knowing Emporer Evulz's guards would never think to look there, and that the player would.
• Defied: A sign in the Genre Savvy Big Bad's warehouse has a message dated a week prior saying "All crates removed by order of the Big Bad in case of heroic trespass."
• Exploited:
  • The Genre Savvy Big Bad seeds crates all around the world, hoping you'll open them, unleashing evil unto the world, just so he can GuiltTrip you into a HeroicBSOD with The Reveal.
  • Or he couldn't open them himself.
• Discussed: Your radio support tells you "If you find yourself in need of medical attention or ammo, just break open a crate. They're everywhere."
• Conversed: ???

---

Back to Crate Expectations