Top 10 Cryptids Stickers from the Steam Workshop: Interactive Designs, Lenticulars, and a Theme Almost Nobody Touched
We promised a separate piece on Cryptids, so here it is. But we have to start with the numbers rather than the artwork.
It’s been almost a month since the second Call to Arms-ory was announced, and the Cryptids tag on the Workshop has pulled in roughly twenty pages of submissions. A good chunk of those are variations on the same three ideas: a silhouette in the woods, a saucer in the sky, a blurry “photo” of something or other. Skins and Pop Art, by comparison, brought in several times more. So when we say we picked the best of the bunch, that’s barely an exaggeration — there isn’t much of a bunch to pick from.
Why it played out this way is anyone’s guess. The brief is about as open as it gets: cryptids are creatures whose existence has never been proven, everything from Bigfoot to the chupacabra. Plenty of room, in theory. But CS2 has no monster lore of its own, and tying a cryptid to the game’s agents, maps and weapons turned out to be harder than it looked.
For designers, though, this is genuinely good news, and it’s worth dwelling on. Valve has to fill out a proper sticker capsule for this theme one way or another, which means the picks will come from whatever is on the table. The competition here is a fraction of what it is in Pop Art, and your odds of landing in the game go up accordingly. If you’ve been wondering which category to enter, there’s your answer. Now, the submissions.
Sticker | Attention (paper)
- by justin bobr
Stylistically this one sits outside the theme entirely — a red arrow in a circle reads as a UI element, not a cryptid. Conceptually, though, it’s one of the sharpest entries in the whole contest. The logic is simple: the sticker doesn’t depict anything, it points. Aim the arrow at a charm, at another sticker, at a character or a detail from the finish itself, and whatever it lands on becomes the unexplained thing. The cryptid isn’t drawn here, it’s assigned.
Interactive stickers like this are their own genre of sticker crafting, where the artist’s job ends halfway and the owner of the gun finishes the rest. There’s shockingly little of this in the game, and anything that expands the category earns a look by default.
Sticker | Nessie Strip [Lenticular]
- by 🍀toxic342
Probably the best piece in the theme. Instead of the cryptid itself, the artist went after the way we learned about it: those grainy black-and-white “photographs” of the Loch Ness monster that the entire legend is built on. Then comes the smart part. The shots are laid out as frames of film, sprocket holes and all, and the lenticular effect flips through them as you change the angle. The result isn’t a picture, it’s a little machine — tilt the gun and the reel advances, the monster moves.
This is the rare case where form and content line up completely. Cryptid myths live on bad film stock, and the sticker is made of exactly the same material as the myth. The black-and-white palette is a bonus: it’ll sit on any weapon without fighting the finish.
Yeti Footprint [ LENTICULAR ]
- by fM
Another lenticular, and the polar opposite of the last one. There’s almost nothing on this sticker — a field of white snow, that’s it. Until you shift the angle, and a set of Bigfoot tracks surfaces in the powder. It’s a bold call, because sitting still it looks like an unfinished sketch. But that’s the whole point: nobody has ever seen Bigfoot, only the tracks he left, and the sticker reproduces that exact experience. Nothing, then proof, then nothing again.
UFO Disconnect | Holo
- by 🍀Mei 💜
The most immediately readable joke in the lineup. A flying saucer is hauling a CT up in its tractor beam, arms flailing, with DISCONNECTED spelled out underneath. The pun lands instantly: a player who vanishes mid-match has technically been abducted. Anyone who’s ever been left four-versus-five gets it without explanation.
The execution is pure cartoon graffiti — heavy outlines, an acid-green beam, big shapes that read from across the map. The holo works on the beam, which shimmers as you turn the weapon. Of everything in this theme, this is the piece most likely to simply be liked. It doesn’t ask you to know any lore or to squint at it in inspect.
Sticker | Close Encounter (FOIL)
- by H4Zi
A road sign with a saucer, a chicken inside the warning triangle, and a scatter of red marks scrawled over the top — like somebody added to an official notice by hand, trying to warn everyone else.
The presentation is more interesting than the subject, though. The artist called out the zones that survive scraping directly on the preview, with pull-outs showing which elements hold up at each stage of wear. That matters enormously for sticker crafting, because scraping is the only tool an owner has to alter a finished sticker, and normally you’re guessing blind at the result. Here the artist has effectively designed the sticker for several states at once. That kind of thinking deserves to show up far more often, whatever the theme.
Who's in the Forest? | Lenticular
- by XimiK
A night-vision frame: green noise, a red REC dot, and a silhouette deep in the trees that the camera is struggling to focus on. The lenticular isn’t used to swap the image here, it’s used to move the camera — turn the weapon and the frame physically drifts after the figure, trying to keep it in shot. And still fails. The creature stays a smear.
Tonally this is the most accurate sticker of the ten. All cryptid mythology rests on bad footage; if the camera ever focused, the legend would be over. The artist built the sticker around that moment rather than around the monster. Found footage barely exists as a look in CS2, and this fills the gap.
Cache'd (Holo) | Cryo Corrosion
- by bluete fiesta
A radioactive drum rendered in an acidic blue-yellow-orange wash, with a human figure climbing out of it. The reasoning is airtight: we still never got a Cache skin collection even though the map came back. So at least give us a sticker that nods to it. There’s no shortage of precedent — CS2 is full of map-referencing stickers, and Valve reaches for that trick regularly.
The theme fits perfectly too. Cache is built on exclusion-zone atmosphere, and radiation has generated as many urban legends about mutants as Loch Ness has about its lake. A cryptid crawling out of a barrel on Cache isn’t a stretch, it’s a direct extension of the Chernobyl mood the map already carries.
Sticker | Scratch (Glitter)
- by SHAFT 🎫
Four tears in the metal with claws coming through them. No creature is shown at all, only the mark it left. Same trick as Yeti Footprint, handled far more aggressively: there it was tracks in the snow, here it’s holes in your gun. The glitter layer does its work along the tears, adding shine exactly where the surface has been ripped open.
The practical value here is a separate argument. This is a ready-made customization tool: a couple of these on a body and the weapon looks like something very large got hold of it.
Tiny Carrying Gnome
- by Lehmann – Holo
A gnome in a blue jacket and red cap, hauling a Molotov bottle on his back that’s noticeably bigger than he is. Interactive mechanics again, and executed more cleverly than most. The bottle is drawn so that it scrapes off first — after which the gnome can carry anything you like: another sticker, a charm, a piece of the paint job, an element from the sticker next to it. One submission turns into a construction kit.
The cryptid credentials are solid, by the way. Gnomes, wood spirits and the rest of the small fry from European folklore fit the brief far more honestly than half the UFOs on the Workshop. And the sense of humor is exactly the kind Valve likes in its stickers.
Sticker | The Subject - Holo
- by Lucaleton
We’ll close with the creepiest of the lot. A T-side agent is crawling out of a static-filled TV set — grey bloated face, bared teeth, one hand already reaching through the screen. The TV scene is one of the most quoted images in horror, full stop. The holographic treatment is fully earned here: the interference on the screen shimmers as you turn the gun, so the picture literally can’t settle into place. It’s a rare case of holo doing part of the compositional work instead of just adding sparkle.
And the CS2 joke writes itself. Smashing screens at the start of the round is a habit nobody can really account for. Now it has at least one rational explanation.
Alex
Alex is an author and esports observer with more than seven years of experience. He specializes in analyzing new releases in the world of computer games, gaming services, and in-game economies. Alex shares practical experience and an expert perspective on the development of gaming, helping readers understand complex mechanics and stay up to date with the latest news.
