Badger who?
In 1991, the Castlevania-esque horror game Night Creatures came out on the TurboGrafx-16. It was developed by Manley & Associates and published by NEC Technologies.
The unnamed protagonist is walking alone through the moors one night when he is marked by Hecate to become one of her night creatures. After a little chitchat with a helpful vampire, the protagonist's equally unnamed girlfriend, and the wise woman, it is learned that he has until dawn to destroy Hecate and avert the curse. One perk the curse has left him with is the ability to take on animal forms if Hecate's more powerful servants are defeated. The four forms available are the owl, which can fly, the bear, which is strong, the badger, which is small, and the wolf, which is the only form Hecate can be defeated with. These animal forms, various weapons found along the way, and the guidance of the wise woman are all the protagonist has in his Race Against the Clock.
The game was judged poorly in its day and the decades following haven't offered it more grace. Night Creatures is too short to make the most of its Metroidvania content, being completable in well under half an hour. Combat is key-oriented, meaning there's one particular weapon that's effective for each enemy type or category. The result is that either you don't have the right weapon and winning may very well be literally impossible or you have the right weapon and you may very well need to land only one hit. If the hitboxes cooperate, at least. The animal forms drain vitality and are needed once at most, making for limited gameplay experimentation. On the upside, the game is commended for its original take on the Monster Mash, such as having Hecate as the Big Bad and featuring a Headless Lady who has a few more parts loose than just her head.
Not to be confused with the other horror game called Nightmare Creatures or the film Captain Clegg, which was released as Night Creatures in some markets.
Night Creatures exhibits the following tropes:
- All There in the Manual: Plenty of things about the story, such as what the enemies or locations are called, can only be found in the manual.
- Animorphism: One of the key gameplay features is the ability to take the shape of any of four animals after defeating various bosses. That are the owl, which can fly, the bear, which is strong, the badger, which is small, and the wolf, which is the only form that can see through Hecate's disguise and harm her.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The bear form is huge and powerful and solely for combat purposes. But it becomes available only late into the game, when there's little left to do and enemies barely drop vitality points. There are no healing potions in the game and having an animal form active drains vitality. Using the bear form is more of a guarantee of death than dealing with the remaining enemies with the weapons you've got.
- Boss Bonanza: The final area, Hecate's Den, is one long hallway in which seven (mini)bosses are fought in succession: Cerberus, Harpy, Medusa, Fury, Hydra, and lastle Hecate herself. None of these bosses are seen before reaching the den.
- Bottomless Magazines: Averted hard. You find the rifle, you get six bullets with it. You find the crossbow, you get six arrows with it. You find the spears, there's five in total. And you'll never get more ammunition than that, so do save up for bosses.
- Cats Are Mean: Black cats are enemies lying in wait for victims upon the boulders in the moors. They're described as a cross between a housecat and a panther in manual. They jump around and claw at the protagonist. Whether it's significant or not, the moors are also where the witches can be found.
- Cold Iron: Presumably the magic of the iron sword comes from the fact it's cold iron. It and the rifle, which is also iron, are the only weapons that can defeat the Headless Lady.
- Cthulhumanoid: The treants in the darkwood are of humanoid form and have several green tentacles where their mouth is.
- Damsel in Distress: Downplayed due to missing story content in the game. The protagonist's girlfriend gets abducted shortly after the start of the game. However, unless you read the manual, you won't know this until the very end of the game and even then her abduction can only be inferred from the fact the girlfriend says you saved her.
- Decoy Damsel: Downplayed due to missing story content in the game. The manual mentions that ghouls abducted the protagonist's girlfriend to the crypt. This suggests that the crypt-residing Headless Lady, who looks a little like the girlfriend and makes a beckoning gesture before revealing her monstrous form, is supposed to be a decoy damsel. In-game you don't hear about the girlfriend's abduction until the very end, so this falls flat.
- Dressed Like a Dominatrix: The Fury wears a backless leotard, fishnets, knee-high boots, and she's armed with a cat o' nine tails consisting of snakes. There's no reason given as to why she dresses as such.
- Dungeon Town: The town is overrun with large and hostile bats and rats. It looks devoid of townfolk, but it's contextually suggested everyone is still around and either sleeping or wisely staying indoors. After the first encounters with the girlfriend and the wise woman, who live there, they don't show up there a second time, but the shop keeper comes out every time the protagonist visits to gift him an oil lamp or one of the three lures.
- Elemental Powers: Downplayed but present. The elements to invoke against the night creatures are silver (axe, crossbow), iron (sword, rifle), wood (club, spear), fire (oil lamp), and water (holy water).
- Emergency Weapon: Without weapons, you can still punch night creatures to death. It's always effective in that punching does more damage than a not-advantageous weapon, but the cost of getting within range to the night creatures makes it an inadvisable emergency weapon.
- Empty Room Psych: There is nothing to gain from visiting the mire. Aside from the village, it is the only surface area that does not host a boss.
- Flying Broomstick: Witches fly around on broomsticks in the moors.
- Flying Face: Both the winged skulls and the killer mists are regular enemies that classify as special monsters and consist of flying faces. In the case of winged skulls, they're flying skulls. In the case of killer mists, these are whirlwinds generated by four skulls. All four skulls need to be destroyed to end a killer mist. As for bosses, the Headless Lady's head comes off and floats around while her body disappears.
- Frog Men: The bog monsters look like monstrous humanoid frogs. They're green, have webbed hands, and large mouths, but no eyes. Their means of attack are their tongues.
- Garlic Is Abhorrent: One of the three talismans of the game is garlic, which is a random find. It repels dire wolves.
- Grimy Water: The mire has a lot of grimy water that can't always be avoided, but shouldn't be stood in for longer than necessary for it drains one's vitality.
- Harping on About Harpies: There's one harpy in the game and she's part of the end game Boss Bonanza. Her look is fairly true to mythology, being a bird's body topped by a human head.
- Hellhound: There's the regular enemies actually called hellhounds and there's the miniboss Cerberus. Cerberus is a green dog with three heads (the third is barely visible on the sprite) and a snake tail that seems to be inspired by the Classical Chimera. It is the first miniboss fought in Hecate's Den. Hellhounds are dogs with a green glow that spit fireballs and only show up in the moors. The manual claims they also inhabit Hecate's Den and, as per mythology, are the goddess's favored pets, but in the game they cannot be found in Hecate's Den.
- Holy Water: Holy water is one of the two "grenades" of the game. It generates a lightning bolt that moves across the screen and is the only means to defeat the Witch.
- Human Shield: Played with in regards to the Headless Lady. Her body is irrelevant — all there needs to be for her to be is her head. And to protect it, she uses her own heart, lungs, stomach, and intestines as meat shields. The protagonist has to destroy these first before the head can be harmed.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: By the end of the adventure, the protagonist has (likely) acquired three hand held weapons (club, iron sword, silver axe), three projectile weapons (wood spear, crossbow, rifle), two explosive weapons (oil lamp, holy water), three talismans (cross, garlic, wolfsbane), and three lures (fish skeleton, piece of meat, cheese). He has nothing to physically carry it all, but somehow he manages to.
- Kill It with Fire: The oil lamp is one of the two "grenades" of the game. It is the only means to defeat Pumpkinhead and mummies.
- Magic Cauldron: The Witch floats into battle with one. Its vapors take the shape of bats to fight for her.
- Michael Jackson's Thriller Parody: Hecate's death pose sees her raise up her clawed hands sideways and slightly lift one leg.
- Monster Lord: Hecate, the Queen of Darkness, is the ruler and occasional creator of the night creatures.
- Navel-Deep Neckline: Hecate wears a dress that leaves her torso vertically exposed from her cleavage down to her navel.
- Nested Mouths: Bog monsters are blobular, green, eyeless creatures with huge mouths. To attack, they open these mouths and lash out their long tongues, at the end of which are green, skull-like heads that aim to bite their victims.
- Non-Indicative Name: The boss known as the Headless Lady is named inaccurately and incompletely. She starts off human-looking, but then her head comes floating off to attack the protagonist and her body disappears, so she's a bodiless lady rather than a headless one. On top of that, when her head comes off, four of her organs burst out of her torso to protect the head. These are her heart, her lungs, her stomach, and her intestines. All in all, she comes across more as an unusual penanggalan than a headless anything.
- Not Quite Saved Enough: The protagonist defeats Hecate, seemingly killing her, thereby ending his change into a night creature and freeing his girlfriend that had been abducted some time prior. Or did he? When the protagonist and his girlfriend go home, her face changes into Hecate's, suggesting either the girlfriend is possessed or that she isn't the girlfriend but a shapeshifted Hecate. In the latter scenario, where is the girlfriend, and in either scenario, did the protagonist actually undo the curse?
- Ominous Owl: The white demon owls of the darkwood and the graveyard are hostile and fast.
- Our Banshees Are Louder: Banshees are undead monsters that look like withered elderly women complete with walking canes. Because there are no creature sounds in Night Creatures, the banshees' screams are purely visual. The soundwaves bounce around the room until they hit something.
- Our Gargoyles Rock: The gargoyles are classified as enchanted objects and exclusive to the graveyard. They don't move from their spot because they're statues, but they're also indestructible. They can only snap at the protagonist, so they just have to be avoided.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: There's both the ghosts and the wraiths to look out for among the undead forces. Both are found in the catacombs, but wraiths also hang out at the graveyard. Ghosts are invisible except for their red outline, they can rise up through the floor to attack the protagonist but cannot descend the same way, and they do a lot of damage. Wraiths are black-cloaked figures that attack with chains.
- Our Ghouls Are Creepier: The ghouls of Night Creatures appear to be of the Lovecraftian variety, although they are classified as undeads. They're reptillian-looking with a huge mouth and glowing eyes, are a head taller than the protagonist, are dressed in tatters, and have long, spindly arms.
- Our Hydras Are Different: There's one hydra in the game and it's part of the end game Boss Bonanza. It has five heads the all can spit fireballs, but the creature has nor regenerative capabilities.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: The werewolves are only found in the darkwood. They are reasonably fast and capable of jumping far, but they keep a distance mostly to anyone carrying wolfsbane with them. Upon being hit with silver, even if that silver is incorporated in an axe, they do not die but return to human form and cease being hostile.
- Our Zombies Are Different: There's the full zombies that shamble around in the catacombs and there's the partial zombies known as grasping limbs. Grasping limbs are hands reaching out of the ground in the graveyard and the catacombs. They don't do damage, but hold up their victim for other night creatures to attack them.
- Protective Charm: There are three talismans in the game: a cross, garlic, and wolfsbane. They are to be found randomly. The cross protects against vampires (the manual erronously lists mummies as also being repelled), garlic against dire wolves, and wolfsbane against werewolves.
- Pumpkin Person: One of the bosses is a scarecrow with the telling name Pumpkinhead. He starts off as a pumpkin that rolls towards the protagonist and then grows an immobile body on the spot. His pumpkin head, which regenerates, is used as ammo and can spawn several tiny jack o'lanterns.
- Race Against the Clock: The entire game is on a timer, presented by the metamorphosis cameo. At the start of the game, it displays a normal human face. As the in-game time moves to dawn, the cameo becomes more monstrous-looking. The final minutes are accentuated by the cameo flashing in warning. The protagonist's sprite also undergoes a change in skin color, becoming green (while the cameo displays him with sheet white skin).
- Respawning Enemies: All regular enemies respawn constantly and on either side of the screen.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: Among the earliest enemies encountered are giant rats. They ought to not pose a real threat other than what numbers do for them.
- Scary Scarecrow: One of the bosses, Pumpkinhead, rolls into the scene as just a pumpkin and then grows an immobile body on the spot. His strategy is to regenerate his head over and over and roll it towards the protagonist. It's possible for the head to break and spawn several tiny jack o'lanterns that jump around. Pumpkinhead is invulnerable to all attacks but getting hit by the oil lamp, which is an insta-kill. Defeating Pumpkinhead unlocks the owl form.
- Second-Hand Storytelling: Likely the result of missing content. The girlfriend's abduction is neither shown nor mentioned in the game. What happens is you meet her at the start of the game where she refers you to the wise woman. Then she's unremarkably absent until she suddenly approaches you in Hecate's Den, but this turns out to be a shapeshifted Hecate. After defeating Hecate, the (supposedly) true girlfriend meets you in the moors and thanks you for saving her. From this, one has to infer she'd been abducted. The manual, at least, is explicit about the situation and mentions that ghouls abducted her to the crypt.
- Shout-Out: Elm the Impaler is a treant adaptation of Vlad the Impaler.
- Silver Has Mystic Powers: The go-to weapon for the creatures of the darkwood is the silver axe. It's great for chopping the many plant monsters and, somehow, turning werewolves back into humans.
- Snake People: This is a theme shared by Medusa, the Fury, and Hecate. It is true to mythology, but the meaning in Night Creatures is unclear. Medusa has both the traditional snake hair and the modern snake body. The Fury isn't part snake herself (although the manual claims she has snake hair) but carries a snake multi-whip. And Hecate has no snake body, but does have snake hair. Curiously, the attributes of the Fury — the held snakes, the whip, and the torch — are attributes mythologically associated with Hecate, while in mythology Hecate never has snake hair but the Furies often do.
- Stock Animal Diet: The three lures are pieces of food the protagonist can lay down so that any animal that wants a bite is distracted by it. These are cheese for the rats, piece of meat for dire wolves, and fish skeletons for black cats.
- Time Keeps On Ticking: The wise woman shows up with advice any time an animal form is unlocked or you've used a continue. Everything stops while she talks to you, except for the protagonist's vitality being drained from being in animal form. Because you have to walk a bit for her to come after beating a boss, there's plenty of time and incentive to try out the new fancy animal form and her message likely distracts from the fact the vitality bar down in the corner is decreasing.
- Token Heroic Orc: Downplayed. A vampire approaches the protagonist when Hecate has left to explain what just happened. While not necessarily heroic, the vampire is the first to warn the protagonist of the doom that has befallen him and in that regard is the only night creature that doesn't try to kill the protagonist. (At least for a time — he might be any of the vampires encountered later that do try to kill the protagonist.
- Treants: Foremost, there's Elm the Impaler, one of the bosses. It attacks by summoning root spikes from the ground, hence its title. Defeating Elm unlocks the wolf form. Secondly, there's regular tree enemies, which aren't mentioned in the manual. Unlike Elm they have a hunched humanoid form and a tentacle mouth.
- The Trees Have Faces: All the hostile treants and the seemingly normal trees in the background of the darkwood have faces.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: All of the combat in Night Creatures depends on knowing the (elemental) weaknesses of the night creatures and having the items to put that knowledge to use. Some of it is intuitive or predictable, such as that having the cross keeps the vampires away or that the axe is useful against treants. Some of it is not, like that the creatures in the mire are vulnerable to wooden weapons or that the treant Elm the Impaler can't be harmed by fire. One mercy is that whenever you die, continue, and reach the area you died in again, the wise woman will appear to inform you what kind of weapon you'll want to equip.
- Underground Monkey: The dire wolves, hellhounds, and Cerberus all are based on the same sprite and have similar attack patterns. The dire wolf can only bite, the hellhound can spit fireballs at a save distance, and Cerberus is a miniboss. Muck geysers are elemental hands that rise up from the mire much like grasping limbs do in the graveyard. Muck geysers are more dangerous because they drag their victims into Grimy Water.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: There's a hole in the darkwood that leads into the cave. Unless you've already obtained the owl form, you cannot reach the hole to get back to the surface once you've fallen through it and you have to restart the game because you can't proceed without the badger form (which can only be unlocked after the owl form is). On top of that, it is very easy to accidentally or curiously jump into the hole before you're ready, because the darkwood is the most likely place to visit first as it is located on the right of the village and the hole seems like any regular path to take. It is not Unwinnable by Design because then you'd expect a warning from the wise woman like she gives in other situations.
- Vampire Refugee: The protagonist gets cursed to become a night creature at the start of the game and his goal from then on is to destroy Hecate before dawn so he won't lose his humanity. Incidentally, it's implied the protagonist is specifically on his way to becoming a vampire.
- When Trees Attack: If it's not human, it will attack the protagonist. The tree monsters, among which the boss Elm the Impaler, are exclusive to the darkwood. Non-tree plant monsters can be found in both the moors and the mire: haunted cattails will try to shank their victim, strangling vines will try for strangulation, and carnivorous ferns snap at bypassers.
- Wicked Witch: Foremost, there's the Witch of the Cave, one of the bosses. She dresses in a face-obscuring cloak, flies unassisted, and attacks by conjuring bats from her Magic Cauldron. Defeating the Witch unlocks the bear form. Secondly, there's regular witches that have all the classic witch traits: pointy hats, Flying Broomsticks, and Sinister Schnozs. They shoot magic down at the protagonist.
- Will-o'-the-Wisp: Will o'wisps appear as slow-moving green lights exclusive to the mire. They explode upon contact and are classified as special monsters.
- Wrap Around: The surface area wraps around, suggesting that the four areas all neighbor the village. Going right from the village, there's the darkwood, the mire, the moors, and the graveyard before one's back at the village. Going left gets one across the same areas in reversed order.
- You ALL Look Familiar: The sprites for the wolf form and the owl form are also in use as the dire wolf and demon owl enemies.
