The Dumbest Video Game Treasure Chests

Another hot take on one of my favorite franchises

This is exactly what treasure chests should look like, and how they should sit, and where they should be. PS5 screenshot taken by the author.

The treasure chest is a well-established core component of video games. Discover a shiny box, open it up, get a cool animation and a fun new thing to use, repeat. This simple cycle is in hundreds if not thousands of video games, going all the way back to when games first had graphics — and even earlier.

A good treasure chest mechanic can make a game hopelessly addictive and enjoyable, pushing you to get that next cool item or take a little peek around every corner of a game world. The game industry knows this, and even pushed things too far a while back by selling them for real money under the guise of “loot boxes,” until several world governments clamped down on the practice and it fell out of favor. I honestly didn’t expect such a favorable turn on that issue, and I’m kind of relieved that treasure chests are more or less once again fun random piles of loot instead of a weird gambling mechanic.

It’s fair to say then, that good treasure chest design is an important part of game design for most action games, RPGs, and any other item-based game. They need to be interesting to look at, fun to find, and maybe even have an exciting theme tune or animation that plays when they open for some true Pavlovian goodness. From the wind-whip noises of loot…