Shadows have a habit of playing tricks on the human mind. A coat stand in the dark might seem like a towering humanoid figure. A chair with a dark piece of clothing on it might be concealing a deadly animal. Without light, furniture can become threatening and malevolent. But in some video games, furniture has always been rather evil.
A good villain can often make or break a game, and it can be difficult to design one that feels sufficiently ominous and original. With a plethora of human and monster villains in video games, here are several that might have drawn inspiration from a furniture catalog instead.
5 Skylanders: Trap Team
The Skylanders franchise features many iconic heroes and villains all with unique and memorable designs. The series spans several video games, comics, and even a TV show. Skylanders is known for its ensemble-style games in which real-world toys are used to unlock in-game characters.
In Skylanders: Trap Team, players are tasked with rounding up all the villains from across the Skylands after the evil Kaos frees them from Cloudcracker Prison. In the seventh chapter of this game, players will enter the Monster Marsh where they come across a voracious villain known as Chomp Chest.
Chomp Chest disguises himself as harmless, just an ordinary treasure chest, but will attack anyone who approaches him. His go-to move is a lunging bite attack and he seems to always be hungry. Due to being a sentient treasure chest, players will be rewarded with dropped money every time they hit Chomp Chest.
4 Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven Stars
Mario is well known for its iconic villain Bowser, but there have been many other villains taking part in the franchise since its inception in the early 80s. Indeed, the many Mario games have themselves taken different formats and styles as well. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is the very first RPG game in the series and features a turn-based style of combat.
This game follows Mario as he unites with Bowser, Princess Toadstool, and a couple of new friends in order to defeat the evil Smithy Gang who have invaded their world. One of the commanders of this gang is Count Down, a sentient clock creature with elemental attack abilities. Players will encounter Count Down in Smithy’s Factory with his allies the Ding-A-Lings.
3 Monster House
Based on the 2006 film of the same name, Monster House is a third-person shooter game with survival horror elements as well. The game follows D.J., Chowder, and Jenny as they navigate through the sentient house and seek to reunite with one another.
The main enemies encountered in the game are various sentient furniture monsters. Wooden chairs, TVs, lamps, stoves, and even pipes are faced off against as enemies. Players can defeat these villains by shooting them with water guns, hitting them with other weapons, or using water balloons.
There are also several furniture bosses that feature in Monster House as well. One of the first bosses in the game is a mannequin based on Constance Nebbercracker, the deceased wife of the house’s owner. Constance’s spirit is ultimately freed from the house at the end of the game when the building is destroyed.
2 Banjo-Kazooie
One of the most iconic cult classic game series is Banjo-Kazooie, with several games being released between 1998 and 2008. Though its list of titles is comparatively short when compared to other popular series, the demand for it earned the franchise several re-releases on various consoles. Most recently, the first game in the series was re-released on the Nintendo Switch.
Banjo-Kazooie is a platformer game in which the player controls the two protagonists. Players explore the nine worlds of the game’s universe and collect musical notes and puzzle pieces along the way.
Each world has a boss that must be defeated, and in Rusty Bucket Bay this role is filled by Boss Boom Box. This villain is a sentient crate that has the ability to split into multiple smaller versions of himself when attacked.
1 Creaks
This uniquely styled game is a puzzle platformer developed by Czech indie studio Amanita Design. In Creaks, players control a male protagonist who discovers a vast hidden world behind the walls of his bedroom. As he descends into an eerie and strangely alive subterranean building, he faces several dangers that might not be what they seem at first glance.
The first monsters that players meet in Creaks are squarish dog-like creatures, that bark threateningly and chase the protagonist. However, when met with light these creatures are revealed to be chests of drawers. Light and dark hold great transformative power over furniture in this game, with the latter causing them to take monstrous forms. Antique globes turn into patrolling jellyfish in the dark, and a hatstand becomes a shadowy doppelganger.
Creaks is inspired by the concept of Pareidolia, which is the tendency of the human brain to impose meaning onto vague stimuli. Game designer Radim Jurda says that the game was inspired by his nighttime walks through the forest, in which his imagination would fill in gaps of what he could and couldn’t see. As a result, Creaks showcases this concept and warns players of what might be waiting for them in the dark.