If you ever dreamed of being the villain in your own horror novel, Creature Lab is the game that finally lets you make it so test tubes, lightning bolts, and all. From Image Power, Creature Lab is one of those games where you get to be present-day Dr. Frankenstein, but with a twist: not only creating monsters, but also everyday life as a crazy scientist, with all the craziness and plotting that involves.
1. Mad Scientist Fantasy
Creature Lab doesn’t borrow from the old mad scientist stereotype—it revels in it. Image Power developers used characters such as Dr. Frankenstein and Herbert West, the H. P. Lovecraft’s, who created a hero whose brilliance was minimized by society that pushed him to insanity and on the path of rebellion. The game is first person, and the player gets to see the death of the scientist up close. But what makes Creature Lab really stand out is just how much autonomy it gives to plan your own course of vengeance, forcing you along your own personal and random path.
2. Daily Life in the Lab
Forget the flash of wickedness Creature Lab’s all about getting dirty. Your lair is a black, gore-soaked playground full of potions, technology, and an overabundance of body parts so disgusting even the most experienced horror fan will find them inexcusable. The gameplay itself consists of hurling ingredients at mutants in a big vat, sewing monsters together, and attaching gross new limbs to your creations. Each day, there are new secrets to untangle, from unraveling the correct potions to make do on resources to keeping your hideout out of sight from military patrols working their way up the hill.
Players can revive the dead as faithful (well, sort of faithful) minions, harvest their DNA, and try out various combinations of limbs to craft the ultimate mutant army. Randomized chemical names and characteristics for chemicals make each other play different, giving the game new life and replayability.
3. Strategy and Simulation
Creature Lab is backed by more than its simulation bragging rights. It has strategic elements that force you to plan ahead a few steps. Your city map is your operational theater of chaos where you can accept missions, plunder resources, and terrorize the populace so as to drive the investigators away from knocking at your door. At higher levels, the strategic aspect requires extra attention, with close planning needed to beat the military and optimize your monster creations.
Each mutant can be made to be unique for unique missions, and you can give them temporary special powers or assist them with new upgrades. Resource usage management, creature modification, and strategy deployment balance are the formulas behind Creature Lab’s success.
4. The Reverse Horror Experience
What sets Creature Lab apart from anything else is its “reverse horror” feature. Rather than fleeing from monsters, you are the monsters’ braintrust. The horror is turned on its head—sustaining fear, collecting new corpses, and fighting against those closing in on you. It’s a genre flip, an investigation into what it means to be the monster creator instead of the monster mate.
5. Future Potential
Image Power does have some highly intriguing ideas for Creature Lab, such as the possibility of a smartphone companion app and improved combat system if some of the stretch goals are met. The studio would also have more turn-based interactive combat that would actually have the players directly control their mutant soldiers in combat, further depth of complexity in already complex gameplay. Even more limb enhancements and fresh abilities are on the horizon, along with even more ways of customizing your creations and laying waste to the unaware city.
Creature Lab is a delightful paean to the mad scientist genre, blending simulation, puzzling, and strategy into an unapologetically darkly addictive whole. For anyone who ever dreamed of maniacal laughter over unleashing an army of monsters, this is the game that finally allows you to live the dream.