There’s something about multiplayer indie games where you and your friends go into messed up environments and nightmarish situations that makes for an incredibly fun time, and Lethal Company fits that bill perfectly. Between its simplistic gameplay and surprisingly scary enemies, it's easy to rack up hours in the game without realizing it.
Zeekerss, a game developer who started out making games on Roblox, is the creator of Lethal Company. On Roblox, he created Light Bulb and Silent Dark, which are both horror games. Since then, he has received games such as It Steals and The Upturned onto Steam. Both games have had Overwhelmingly Positive reviews. Lethal Company is also incredibly popular on Steam. It has almost 48,000 reviews (as of the time of writing) and an Overwhelmingly Positive score.
So, what is Lethal Company all about? It’s a game about the horrors of capitalism and space exploration, to sum it up. Players take on the roles of employees of a Company. Your job is to visit abandoned moons and salvage items or scrap to sell for money. There is a quota that you must meet within three days of exploration. If you don’t meet it, bad things happen. Though the moons are abandoned, there’s still native fauna who have no qualms attacking and eating you if they see you, making work a highly hazardous experience.
The fun of Lethal Company is in the chaos that can ensue. As such, it’s much more fun with an established group of friends. I found it easier to communicate using messenger apps like Discord instead of the in-game proximity-based VC. However, proximity-based VC can lead to some really funny moments. It was always kind of hilarious suddenly hearing a scream echo in the distance due to how genuine the fear can get. Because it’s so much better in the long run to split up the party, we sometimes didn’t even immediately realize we lost someone until the person navigating us did. The game doesn’t have much of a learning curve, which means that you can jump in very quickly without needing to reach pages of instructions.
Of course, since it’s still in early access, the game does not feel fully finished yet. I’m not sure if the graphics are intentionally like this or not. But it almost seems like someone fiddled with saturation settings and accidentally left it on max. There was also some wonkiness to the animations, such as someone stretching and flying about when an Eyeless Dog pulled them through the door. Another issue was clipping. I died and my body clipped through the door, making it impossible to retrieve. Flashlights clipped through the storage container and we didn’t notice until we bought more. They don’t necessarily break the game, but they can be inconvenient. The graphics issue, when combined with the first-person perspective, could have also been why some of the people I played with experienced severe motion sickness.
Because you don’t necessarily have to work entirely as a team in Lethal Company, it takes off a bit of the edge that can occur from multiplayer co-op games. I’m sure everyone has experienced a tense session with friends after someone did bad. But in this game, doing good takes a backseat to simply enjoying the adrenaline. Even though it’s only in early access, it feels wonderfully complete as a gaming experience and I look forward to experiencing its final build.
Lethal Company is in early access. It’s available on Windows PC via Steam.
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