Monster of the Week: Patches the Cat (Townsfolk Tussle)

Origin: Townsfolk Tussle, a boss-rush board game

Appearance: Patches is a big cat roaming around the town. It arrived from outside but immediately started to get the attention of the town. Maybe because the cat is unnaturally big. Or maybe because sometimes it walks on two legs. For sure when it drags out a knife or whispers something inside a victim’s ear, it attracts a lot of attention. Patches is a weird human “dressed” as a humanoid cat… and actually behaving like one. However, the only purpose of Patches is to rob and act mischievously while hidden behind the cat facade. Luckily, the players can steal pieces of his costume, removing one by one the pieces from Patches board till slowly revealing the creepy human beneath the fur.

Patches’ fight comes with an interesting costume mechanic. Compared with other bosses, Patches has a unique pad with all the costume elements. Once a player wounds Patches enough, they can steal one of the costume gears. Interestingly, the more pieces of costumes are removed, the more you can see the creepy man beneath the costume. Moreover, the players will discover how the different body parts are fake. For example, the tail is a chain, and the nails are knives. However, removing costume elements increases the difficulty of the fight, because now, without the protective fur, chains and knives will hurt much more.

Patches is extremely aggressive and will target specifically those who stole his costume, trying to recover it. Also, stealing the costume creates problems, seems the disgusting outfit can be sticky or full of parasites. Patches is even more creepy because he will often breaks his “cat behavior,” whispering in your ears creepy sentences such as “Give it back to me!” During the final showdown, Patches becomes even more disgusting, throwing up toxic furballs around the battlefield.

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Symbolism: Considering how the art-style of Townsfolk Tussle is inspired by 1930s cartoons, Patches symbolizes everything possibly deranged from those animations. Patches is a disturbed individual, a human dressed as a humanoid cat and living like it, while tossing furballs around and robbing people. The furballs also imply that his diet is extremely wrong. This could be, in the best scenario, only because of garbage… or cannibalism in the worst case. After all, in an old animation, Donald was eating roasted duck together with his three duck kids.

Patches is filthy, dirty, and extremely gross, probably never removing his costume. But let’s consider other anthropomorphic animals from animations of that time. What if Mickey was also behaving like a humanoid mouse, living inside sewers and spreading diseases? And this without considering how much “weirdly wrong comedy” was filling those old animations. Another explanation for Patches as a character is the classical example of a “wolf in sheep’s clothes.” In the beginning, the town took a lot of time before acting against Patches, simply tolerating that weird extra-large cat without doing much in regard. And maybe, not even believing people assaulted by that knife-wielding cat. 

While reading about Pacthes, I couldn’t stop thinking about a real story. In Japan, a man spent $16K to “become a dog.” Luckily, the price was not for some extreme and unethical surgeries but for a very believable costume. Now the man wears that costume when he pretends to be a dog. Of course, I don’t know if this story influences Patches, but knowing about the possibilities of real Patches existing out there is already enough creepy.

Monster of the Week: Alice (Killer is Dead)

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  Frontal view of Alice

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  Side view of Alice during the battle

Origin: Killer is Dead

Appearance: This action game created by the crazy mind of Suda51 hides a truly disturbing and upsetting boss. Alice is the first proper boss in the game, painted even before meeting her as a bloodthirsty monster. She lives in a house completely twisted and out-of-reality, with upside-down rooms, and eldritch architecture. Of course, the creature will completely reflect this insanity. The girl will go through a grotesque and painful mutation, something that could be out of a horror movie or a game such as Parasite Eve, where grotesque FMV transformations were a standard. Her face will rotate like if she is possessed, while her back will burn for the pain. Then, the mutation will become visual. Her body will twist and morph in a fountain of blood, while purple gigantic limbs will rip out from her body. The upper body will face the protagonist while reversed in a really disturbing way, while the lower body will sort of multiply creating a caterpillar-like figure. Seriously, this creature will be terrifying even in a proper survival-horror. She will attack with the giant arms, and will also crawl around the room like a cockroach, spitting acid. But this is not all, and after the main character will cut her arms, the creature will mutate even further. An additional insect head will erupt from Alice’s body, creating now an even more nightmarish creature. The monster will now generate grotesque creatures, sort of spider-like abominations made entirely of her head. If you watched Carpenter’s The Thing you know what to expect.

Symbolism: Alice lives in a twisted and eldritch apartment, a place without any logic and escaping the laws of reality. Because everything there is a reflection of how Alice’s mind truly is: a broken and insane place. At the beginning of the level, Alisa presents herself as Alice’s sister but, in the end, this is all a lie. Alice is the only person living in this flat, just her split personality gave birth to a fake sister called Alisa. Everything in her design is symbolising mental illness and schizophrenia, a girl trapped in her own subconscious. The grotesque transformation is the insanity that is taking control of her, her mind giving up to losing control. While transforming she is desperate, a victim, but when the pain will be too much she will just give up on the monster in her. The character shows also strong connections with a more famous Alice and the reign of Wonderland. Not only her clothes are really similar to the literary character, but also her house is furnished with cards, cupcakes, and tea sets. Moreover, her monstrous form is similar to a grotesque caterpillar, also a reference to the Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar of Alice in Wonderland. And if this was not enough, the Achievement for completing her level is called Alice in Dead Land.

Monster of the Week: Demit Lorong and Demit Pintu (Dreadout)

Origin: Dreadout (PC)

Appearance: During the first Dreadout, Linda, the protagonist, will have to face two very different kinds of Demits. The first foe is Demit Lorong, a gigantic abomination that lives and kidnaps people in an illusionary dimension. The creature is an enormous humanoid, with the body horribly twisted and somehow “wrong” proportions. The head is especially big, with long and dirty hair, white eyes, and a wide-open mouth. On the contrary, the limbs are long and thin, stretched on the side of the corridor where the creature is crawling to hunt its victim, defying gravity. Demit Lorong will crawl on the walls of its illusionary hallway, confined in this space too small for its body, wailing with a high-pitch cry while going toward the victim. Running is the only way to survive, hoping of course to find the exit behind the illusions.

Demit Pintu is the same species as Lorong, but its appearance is very different. The creature is in charge of guarding a door, making it impossible to open, manifesting only when strictly necessary as a gigantic head with also big hands. Demit Pintu is bodiless: the head, with long gray hair, and the enormous hands, with unnaturally long fingers and nails, are the only elements of this figure. The creature can abnormally open its mouth, stretching the skin as if the mouth was sealed with glue, creating filaments connecting the lips. Demit Pintu is lightly attached to reality since it is difficult to spot and it is intangible most of the time, making it a dangerous enemy. The creature’s main attack consists of regurgitating a river of maggots, which will deadly hurt the player. As well as the Demit Lorong, to defend the door that it is securing, Demit Pintu will drag the trespasser in an alternate dimension made of infinite darkness. And here is where the battle will take place.

Symbolism: The Demits are mythical creatures born from Indonesian folklore. They are a wide and complex class of legendary beings, often translated only as “The Myth.” Demit is a term often associated with general mystique entities, grouping together several Indonesian folkloric creatures, including ghosts. The term got quite famous for the recent horror-fantasy series Halfworlds, from the famous Indonesian director Joko Anwar. But the Demit can also identify a particular class of genies, or djinn, especially in Javanese folklore. They are hermit beings, living outside the human reality, usually linked to a specific place. Some creatures can be linked to natural places, such as mountains, while others can be more connected to urban areas. Demits are interesting beings that find their counterpart in different mythologies, guardian spirits or nymphs protectors of holy lakes, or hidden caves. A Demit is an excellent guardian and will protect that place with all its strength, for this reason, they can be also employed as guardians. This is happening in Dreadout: Demit Lorong is guarding a hallway, while Demit Pintu is securing a door. They both use a similar strategy, dragging the trespassers into an alternative dimension made of illusions or eternal darkness. Demit Lorong haunts an infinite illusionary corridor, stalking everybody inside, tricking them with dozens of fake doors that are hiding the only real exit from this insane dimension. Similarly, Demit Pintu also drags the victims in a dimension of complete and dense darkness. Their names are also encoding for their guardian function, since “Lorong” in Indonesian means “hallway,” and “Pintu” instead means “door.” A Demit marks a limit where human knowledge should end, a threshold while stepping into forbidden and hidden truths. A Demit is the scarecrow for human curiosity, but also a warning for trespassers of remote or isolated places, an unforgivable lesson on leaving old things alone.

Monster of the Week: the Scarecrow (Lakeview Valley)

Origin: Lakeview Valley

Appearance: During the day, the creature is an immobile and creepy scarecrow, standing outside the new home of the main character. The scarecrow has also a dialogue window, completed with a portrait of the creepy puppet, but of course, missing any line of conversation. The creature is immediately disturbing, with buttons instead of eyes, a sewed mouth, and straws coming out from the head. It is even possible to attack the inanimate entity, with no visible results. However, it is during the night that the scarecrow will reach its truly creepy potential. The creature will start to slowly follow the protagonist, nothing too aggressive, just really slowly jumping around the town. Surprisingly, if attacked during the night-time, the scarecrow will reveal its true form. A disgusting and viscid creature, like if a clown was created melting together tentacles, with a pink worm-like body, round protruded eyes, and a mouth full of sharp teeth. The mutant scarecrow will attack while screaming in a really disturbing way, jumping around while attacking with its multiple arms. After being defeated, the scarecrow will have a special and disturbing cutscene, where its eyes will melt in a white goo.

Symbolism: According to the official lore of the game, the scarecrow is the reincarnation of the husband of a couple of serial killers, now imprisoned in this artificial body, guarding the town and his beloved wife (https://lakeviewcabin.fandom.com/wiki/Scarecrow_(Lakeview_Valley)). The scarecrow is part of the Upper League, a group of unique humans that after dying, to be rewarded for their savage crimes, are reborn as twisted and sadistic monsters. The creature is not only a reference to different horror villains (I found the second form especially resembling the aliens from Killer Klowns From Outer Space, but this could be just me), but it is also a well-crafted representation of the feeling of being stalked. During the day, things could look less dangerous than when alone at night, for example, somebody that during the day was just there watching, could become an obsessive and dangerous stalker by night. Even if it was a human before, the creature now somehow thinks that being a scarecrow is like the ultimate reward. For example, if its beloved wife, old but still breathing, is killed by the main character, the creature will use her head to build a new and grotesque scarecrow.

Monster of the Week: Puppeteer (Dead)

Origin: Dead (STEAM)

Appearance: The Puppeteer is a creepy being that will feel at home in a dark version of Alice in Wonderland. The creature manifests as a giant psychotic smile, including two round and big eyes, defining the ethereal shape of a face. The music and the setting are focused on creating an hallucinatory and insane experience. The Puppeteer is a master of illusions, able to summon ravenous monsters from nowhere, or to create sentient eyeballs able to shoot the player. The smiling creature and all its attacks are only a mere manifestation of the isolated psyche of the Puppeteer. The only way to reach the main body of the entity is to use a mystic clock that will appear on the battlefield. This is the only door to reach the remote world were the real Puppeteer is self-isolating. The real form of the Puppeteer is a sad mass of a black liquid, hanged in midair, completely harmless. This is the only opportunity to damage the creature because, after that, the peaceful and sad moment will be broken again by the insanity of the battle against its smiling avatar.

Symbolism: As reported by an in-game file, the Puppeteer born as Law of Mental Health, in charge of balancing the mental stability of all the living things. It was listening, giving advice, taking on itself the mental burdens and the breakdowns of everybody. But this became too much and, at some point, it broke. It hid away its true self in another reality, alone and desperate. The Law of Mental Health became the Puppeteer, a psychotic manifestation affecting the reality like a storm of insanity. The boss battle is against the embodiment of all the psychosis of the Puppeteer, a moment of relief for the sad creature, throwing out all its sadness. The smiling creature is also an example of “pretending to be happy”, a mask to hide mental distress, to repress the suffering. The real Puppeteer is a sad and lonely being, tormented in its mind by the traumas of all existence, hidden behind the fake and tormented smile, protected by a barrier of psychological rage and destructive powers.

Monster of the Week: Exposito, Scion of Abjuration (Blasphemous) — Dark RPGs

Origin: Blasphemous Appearance: At first glimpse, he could even look like a normal child, a sort of oversized baby Jesus or a giant cherub. Then, his nightmarish profile will become very clear in all the sick details. The giant baby is blindfolded, and looks like that he is constantly crying tears of blood, flowing down […]

via Monster of the Week: Exposito, Scion of Abjuration (Blasphemous) — Dark RPGs

Monster of the Week: the multiple-bodies monster of Lorelai

Origin: Lorelai

Appearance: The creature is composed of multiple bodies fused together. After the brutal killing of all her family, including a neighbour and herself, Lorelai finished inside a surreal Hell. In this place, the corpse of her mother, her own corpse, and her murderous stepfather will fuse together in this grotesque creature. The different bodies are hanging in unnatural position, like puppets stitched together, shaking furiously like branches of the same trunk, or in this case the same torso. The creature has also the head of a pig fused on top of the body, which provides the dominant personality of the creature, since it will move erratically while squealing and grunting. If the abomination will catch the main character, it will kill her by stabbing her eyes with a key.

Symbolism: The creature is a direct embodiment of the guilt of the protagonist. She saw her family completely annihilated, before being killed herself by the hands of her abusive stepfather. All the victims of this insane violence are rooted in the same grotesque body, an aberrant, unstable, and twisted body, symbolism of this horrible crime. The main personality of the creature is anyway linked to the stepfather, which is still trying to kill the protagonist.  The stepfather and his abusive male-chauvinism are expressed by the pig, since this is own her own stepdaughter was seeing him. So in this personal hell, the stepfather will literally squeal like a crazy pig. The key that the creature is holding it’s representing the truth that the girl is looking for, but before achieving it, she must defeat her own guilt. But the truth sometimes is a double edged blade, and if she is unable to vanquish her guilt, it will kill her, like the monster will do by using the key as a murder weapon. This unnamed creature has also another interesting meaning, rooted in the concepts of classic afterlife. Each hell of each culture has a guardian, a gatekeeper preventing unwelcome visitors, and Cerberus is probably the most famous one. The guardian of Lorelai’s hell is a pig, not a dog, but it is anyway composed by three different bodies fused together. The monster is another representation of Cerberus, another gatekeeper with three heads trying to keep the unworthy outside of the main doors of hell.

And if you want to have a look at the disturbing underworld, the meeting with the pig, and the deadly chase, have a look at the video in the Surreal and Creepy YouTube channel:

Monster of the Week: Dot Matrix (Yuppie Psycho)

Origin: Yuppie Psycho

Appearance: There is nothing more weird and bizarre than a giant printing machine hunting workers while moving around on 4 giant human hands. The creature is a predator, crawling around the building while killing people, perceiving every noise with its supernatural hearing. The sound of its crawling around is really terrifying, moreover since it is impossible to defeat or to simply damage the creature. The Dot Matrix can release a pool of green acid to hurt people who are trying to hide, but its most deadly attack is executed when an employer is caught by one of the hands. A sting will come out from the printer to drill to death the poor victim. The only way to escape from this lethal attack is to use an ink cartridge while trapped, so the Dot Matrix will release the worker to feed on the ink. An interesting thing is that after the Dot Matrix has been defeated, its body can be used to navigate around by using the commands of the printer, each one related to a specific function, like if it was a giant robot.

Symbolism: The existence of the Dot Matrix is explained in the game, reporting an accident with a new prototype of 3D printer and the hand of an engineer. The other part of the story is quite obvious. From such a meaningless accident, the Dot Matrix reborn between a modern pagan god and a Dantesque punisher. As I previously specified in a longer article, Yuppie Psycho’s world is a sort of Dante’s Hell applied to a corporate environment, including the law of retribution. Since I already extensively analyzed the Dot Matrix in that article, I will use part of that analysis. If you are curious to read the more about the world of Yuppie Pyscho and the symbolic horrors of a working environment, check the complete article World analysis of Yuppie Psycho: horror symbolism and the stereotypes of a working environment. Doing photocopies is one of the most repetitive and boring tasks inside a working environment. What could be the horror and the punishment associated to repetitive and dull tasks, in a corporate hell? Of course to be hunted by a giant and monstrous printer. The employees of the 4th floor, at the beginning, are all surrounding the Dot Matrix, like if was a sort of sleeping God to be worshipped. The situation will change when the Dot Matrix will awake, killing everybody who was surrounding it while moving around on 4 huge human hands. The workers are terrified by the existence of the Dot Matrix, forced to hide in a constant hunting ground, with the printer as alpha predator. People are forced to do photocopies while avoiding to be brutally killed by the Dot Matrix, a monstrosity able to hunt just by following even the most silent noise. This is truly a Dantesque hell for the employees responsible of doing photocopies, following exactly the Dante’s law of symbolic retribution.

Monster of the Week: the Janitor (Little Nightmares)

Origin: Little Nightmares

Appearance: The creature is humanoid, but his body is weirdly twisted and bizarre. The face looks like made of glue, wax or clay, since it seems unnaturally like plastic. He wears old and dirty clothes, and a brown fedora hat, pointing out the decadence and the abandon surrounding him. A metal helmet or a plate is pressing on his flexible skin, deforming his face in a mass of crinkles. Probably for this reason, the Janitor is blind. The most peculiar element of his design are the unnatural long and twisted arms, which he moves around like two horrible and sinuous snakes.

Symbolism: the Janitor is a sort of Boogeyman inside the Maw, an underwater world were the children are kept prisoner inside cages. As the name suggested, he is probably in charge of different tasks, from maintenance to repairs. With his long and thin arms, he can reach any machinery, no matter how high or hidden it is. The creature has however another peculiar function, which he perfectly executes thanks again to his twisted arms. Sometime, a brave child could escape from the cage, wandering freely around the Maw. In these situations, the Janitor’s long arms are the perfect instrument to catch the fugitives, wherever he is hiding. Since the creature is blind, he compensates with an incredible hearing, the sense that he uses for hunting. The Janitor is in fact a Boogeyman, the creature who can catch a child wherever is hiding. His long arms can come out from under the bed, or from the closet, dragging a child in a world of confinement and nightmares. There is no place to hide, no escape, since the Janitor will catch you anyway with his twisted and almost boneless arms. However, the history of the Janitor is hidden in the mystery. How he became in this way? Who is he? A light sense of pity is embracing the Janitor, surrounding his unhealthy figure. Sometime he also looks like a victim of the Maw. Blind, unable to properly talk, and deformed, all the elements of a tormented soul. He was probably tortured, and maybe artificially transformed into this relentless and mindless hunter. A Boogeyman born from pain and sufferance that, maybe long time ago, was also an imprisoned child himself.

Monster of the Week: the Guardian (Evil Within 2)

Origin: Evil Within 2

Appearance: the Guardian is a creature summoned by the crazy artists Stefano to hunt down the protagonist. Stefano is obsessed with transforming human bodies and death in a work of art, creating morbid and grotesque expositions. The Guardian is a towering monstrosity almost completely made by female heads and limbs. The faces show different expressions, with multiple degrees of crazy grins. The Guardian is also able to spontaneously appear in the middle of a mass grave, between the dead bodies, repentantly summoned like a fury. The abomination is also equipped with a giant circular saw instead of a hand, which is able to instantly kill almost everything. Fighting this colossus is not an easy task, since the creature not only shows the strength of a giant, but she is also able to jump and to relentlessly follow her prey. Even if the creature is conceived as a boss or a unique entity, in some occasions multiple Guardians could be hunting through the city in the same moment.

Symbolism: the creature is the embodiment of the crazy and wild male violence against women. While the middle head is twisted in a psychotic grin, the other faces of the victims are shocked for the violence received (Figure at the bottom). The artist murdered them to create a work of art, according to his twisted obsession. This is the most male chauvinist way of murdering, to use women bodies to conceive beauty as mere dead instruments. The Guardian expresses the fury of the women murdered for this nonsense, a rage materialised in the giant circular saw used to brutally and wildly dismember the enemies. The most sad detail about the Guardian is that the poor creature is still forced to follow the orders of her killer. All the rage, all the repressed injustice of the women conjoint into the Guardian are aimless, since they can be used only to damage the enemies of the only person that they want to truly kill. Like a group of ghosts killing whoever except their murderer, but with a rage and a violence that was instead preserved just for him. The Guardian is a grotesque and violent being, but also a tragic character imprisoned in its own suffering. The name is also a connection with “the Keeper” of the first Evil Within, another so generic name representing a complex and symbolic creature (you can also check the Monster of the Week entry of the Keeper HERE).

If the middle face embodies the rage and the violence, the others are just victims, suffering for their brutal fate.