The NES version of Maniac Mansion was censored in North America. One of the few Game Over screens you could get required you to microwave a guy’s hamster and then show him the results. The ability to microwave a hamster was taken out. Had I not been told that, I would never have found out. Why? Because I’m not a fucking monster.
Anyway, Creature Packets is a game about microwaving small creatures. Not only that, you also put them in a blender together. It was developed in three days by KenForest as part of the Ludum Dare 56 game jam. The prompt was “tiny creatures,” so I’m not entirely sure how we wound up locked in a dirty room with small appliances and a vending machine.
Creature Packets is available on Itch for the price of “name your own price.” It took me less than 20 minutes to complete. You may wonder what you can do in such a short time, and the answer is not a whole lot.
You play as someone arriving for their first day on a creepy job. You’re given a list of tiny creatures (insects to start out with), and that’s about it in terms of instruction. However, there’s a vending machine in the corner that dispenses packets marked “Microworm,” which sounds delicious. If you look around, you will find various memos telling you that if you combine some of these creatures, you wind up with different creatures. Two worms make a scutigera. Ew! Ew!
Scutigera are house centipedes, and they give me the willies. Weird-ass monsters. Few insects can get such a visceral response from me. Gosh, I feel twitchy just thinking about them. Thankfully, you don’t have to touch them. Creating a new creature magically adds them to the vending machine, so you don’t need to concoct new ones each time. The packets are simply full of some sort of fluid, and they don’t actually come to life until you microwave them. It’s like a digital Creepy Crawlers oven. Those were so cool.
Wait, there is one moment where you need to touch house centipedes. Fulfilling an order requires you to microwave each of the listed creatures, which then dumps the living thing into a terrarium. Once you have them all, you press a button, and the terrarium gets sucked out to be delivered. A new one comes back, and it often has errant creatures still in it, which you need to squash before continuing. Screw the sanctity of life, it comes in packets now.
You might expect that Creature Packets would require a lot of experimentation, but it doesn’t. Each recipe required for the jobs can be found on post-its around the room. This is probably a good thing since there are only so many possible recipes and far more possible combinations.
However, it does make Creature Packets seem rather sparse. It was created in three days, so it’s hard to expect much more. It has a horror vibe but never really tries to scare. It is very literally about the job put in front of you. Once you’ve made every creature and completed every job, it just ends.
I know that is entirely a limitation created by its brief development deadline, but I’m somewhat grateful for it. I generally like working a job while scary stuff happens around me, but it can get predictable. Just once, I’d like to do a creepy job where I clock in and then clock out, and here it is. There are no sudden sounds of doors slamming. No one is staring at me through the window. There aren’t any windows. It’s that kind of establishment.
But while it’s brief and not a whole lot happens, Creature Packets is worth experiencing, if only because the job is really satisfying. The environment is pleasingly cluttered, and the experience of punching a series of two-digit codes into the vending machine and then stuffing the results into the microwave one by one has a great feel to it. It’s not exciting, but it is enjoyable, and there’s nothing to get in the way of that.
More importantly, it’s a unique approach. Tiny creatures coming disassembled in packets? Blending them together to make new ones? It’s an interesting way to wear God’s dress. It could conceivably be extrapolated into a longer experience like Happy’s Humble Burger Farm did, but for now, it’s a nice tactile experience. It’s a lot more sanitary than that sick filth Maniac Mansion.
