Steam’s surprise hit Lethal Company has a lot going for it in terms of scare factor. There are the creepy exomoons, the claustrophobic corridors, and even the possibility that even your teammates will turn on you just to make the quick buck needed to meet a quota.
Those do a great job of raising players’ chances of peeing their pants, but let’s not kid ourselves — the true star of the show is the game’s gallery of alien monsters. So, perhaps for fun, perhaps in an attempt to make them less scary by fitting them in tight imaginary containers, let’s rank them!
8. Ghost Girl
Don’t let the low-ranking fool you, as the ghost girl is one of the most dangerous enemies in the game. This is a creature that is only visible to one of the members of the team — but is deadly to them all.
Still, she just isn’t all that scary-looking. The only really scary thing about her is that she’s an alien entity that somehow still looks quasi-human.
7. Forest Keeper
If their name is of any indication, these things are just doing their job, but they could look less weird when doing so.
This is one of the few monsters that you’ll face outside of the game’s facilities, which means that they don’t have to be small enough to fit in any corridor. These are hulking monstrosities who’ll see you from afar and hunt you down relentlessly. Don’t trust your parents. It’s not nice outside.
6. Eyeless dog
Why name something bad after the best friend one can have? Because the devs are evil, that’s why.
The eyeless dog is the evil version of a dog, but don’t go ahead thinking “it’s just a cat, then” either. It’s a huge mouth with teeth and legs. Dogs are known for their great sense of smell, but that’s not his thing, probably because implementing smell mechanics in games would be wack. He’s blind, so his thing is his acute sense of hearing. Be quiet — both in-game and in the intercom, as it’s very hard to sneak away from this thing.
5. Jester
On the one hand, the Jester spares players from having to stare at yet another killer clown face. On the other, it’s still pretty weird because it presents itself as a pair of legs with a jack-in-the-box for a torso.
Who knows what evils lie inside? Just kidding, we know exactly what lies inside it. It’s a huge skull ready to eat your own.
4. Earth Leviathan
Lethal Company lulls you into thinking that most monsters would fit into the game’s tight corridors, but then you head out of a facility, see a goddamn Earth Leviathan — and then you’re dead.
Forget horror movie-style horror; the Earth Leviathan is blockbuster sci-fi stuff. This is like the sandworm from Dune — if that thing also could fly. Stay indoors, scrappers.
3. Bracken
Do you like Solid Snake? Cool. But what if he were evil? And also like, an evil shadow thing?
That pretty much sums up the Bracken. He’s a master of stealth that you’ll see snapping the necks of your teammates one by one — unless you’re unlucky enough to be the first one to get their neck snapped. The scariest thing about this enemy is that he puts players in a spot we never would’ve imagined, that of a dumb and useless guard in Metal Gear Solid.
2. Snare Flea
This critter is far from the most troublesome in the game, hence not landing on the top spot, but it’s easily the one I’d like to be stuck in a room the least.
Maybe I watched too many movies where alien parasites got attached to our heads to murder us or, worse, lay, eggs inside our bodies. Anyway, this one is just too much for me.
1. Coil Head
The coil head looks like it could make a guest appearance in a Silent Hill game, which is good enough to earn it a high spot on this list.
On top of having my favorite design in the game, the coil heads also feature some really neat mechanics. They seem like a twist on Zelda’s ReDeads, those enemies that paralyze players with their gaze.
The coil heads are perfectly fine as long as we’re staring at them. They seemingly like our attention, and it’s only when we stop staring at them that they will murder us. I think it’s equal parts awesome and messed up that the devs are forcing players to stare at their object of fear. Congrats on inevitably inspiring so many nightmares to come.
