We are in the depths of the spooky season, and Minecraft has just unveiled its new mob the Creaking. The mob will attack you if you stand completely still or if you look at it. Curiously, it is completely invulnerable to all damage – the only way of killing it is to find its heart deep in the branches of the forest. However, this isn’t Minecraft’s first scary mob, The Warden was added to the game a few years ago. So let’s take a look at their similarities and differences, and what we can learn about game design from this.

The Warden and the Creaking are both horror mobs, for one. They are tied to specific areas, Ancient Cities and Pale Gardens respectively. They are also incredibly hard to kill, making fighting them head-on pointless. Avoiding them both requires vigilance to not trigger them, meaning the player must stay on guard. Still, they have their differences. There will be at least a few Creaking in each Pale Garden, meaning the player must always deal with multiple. However, there is usually only one Warden.

Also, the Creaking will always be present unless their heart is destroyed, whereas the Warden only spawns if the player makes too much noise. In general, the Creaking will spawn and need to be managed to avoid an untimely death, meanwhile, players need to take care not to spawn the Warden at all.

So what can we learn from this? Mainly, players should not easily get rid of a horror monster but should be given tools to keep them at bay instead. However, pressure should be added to these countermeasures – it’s hard to not make noise, especially while looting chests, and there are multiple Creaking to keep track of. This keeps the player in that little state of anxiety that forms the thrill of horror. Especially important in a sandbox game like Minecraft is to make sure the player cannot ‘cheese’ the monster and render it powerless.