A Horrifying Fun Corporate Job? Picture this:
You’re a nameless schlep to the corporation you’re working for. For your job, you’re given a financial quota that you need to meet within a certain amount of days. If you succeed, you’re paid handsomely for your work and given a new, higher quota. If you fail after your days are up, you’re thrown into space to die.
Welcome to Lethal Company, my friends.
Lethal Company was developed by Zeekerss. While Zeekerss may sound like a development studio, Zeekerss is actually just one person. That’s right, this game was created by one single person and it is currently taking content creation over! As of this writing, there are currently 75,775 players playing it on Steam.
So what is Lethal Company?
Welcome to Company’s Orientation
As I mentioned earlier, you’re just some nameless Joe Schmo. Your job is to go to abandoned buildings on industrialized but now forgotten different moons and collect trash.
When you’ve collected your quota, head back to HQ and hand deliver your trash. Once the quota is met, you’ll be given a new quota and its time to do it all over again. This basically sounds like every corporate job right? Well that’s because it is! You’re essentially working for some nameless capitalist that will demand more and more from you until you’re dead.
Sorry, that got bleak.
Much like your real world corporate overlords, the Company only outfits you with exactly what you need: a suit. Anything else you need to complete your mission, you’ll have to pay for. To do that, you’ll hop on your ship’s computer and order your supplies. There are multiple items you can buy: flashlights (both a normal and upgraded version), a shovel for smacking monsters, stun grenades, zap (stun) guns and walkie-talkies to talk to your team when you’re far away from them.
Once purchased, these items will fly in from a drop pod (that can land on you and will kill you if that happens, by the way) that pumps out some of the dopest music I’ve heard in awhile. While the beats are fat, you and your team are in a race against time as a clock will continue to tick down from day to night.
Occupational Hazards
Hopefully you did a double back when I said “smacking monsters” because these buildings are full of them. Lethal Company lets you know the hazard level of each planet, which runs from “Safe” to S+. The only place marked as safe is headquarters, although if you ring the bell too many times you may irritate the trash monster.
Hazard levels indicate how many monsters and the frequency in which they move throughout the building. The highest hazard level I’ve played in is hazard level A and it was nightmarish for my team and I.
The monsters on a planet are random, both based on your hazard level and randomized. Some monsters have patterns, like the kissing pickle (named appropriately because they look like a pickle and make kissing noises when it walks), while some monsters will stalk the players while they’re inside the building.
Some monsters, like the Hoarding Bug, are non-lethal until you try to steal their horde while some will attack on sight, like the Thumper.
Going outside and touching grass also has its own hazards. Once the clock ticks down to 5pm, monsters begin to roam outside. Wooded areas have Forest Giants, who will attack players and swallow them whole if they catch them out in the open. Desert planets have a giant Beetlejuice-like sandworm or eyeless dogs that will attack if you’re making too much noise.
Good communication and knowledge of these beasts will most certainly make your plundering experience more favorable.
Team Work Makes The Dream Work
While this game can be played by yourself, it shines when you have a full crew of friends bopping around the planet. The game institutes a proximity chat where you can hear your teammates within a certain range or you purchase a walkie-talkie so you can talk to them over longer distances. Once your teammate dies, however, communication ceases to exist.
This creates some deliciously tense situations where your teammate is talking to you over the walkie-talkie and the last thing you hear is their voice cut out before silence takes over. Or maybe you’re walking through the main entrance of the building and you are greeted by your teammate screaming down a hallway. The scenarios are truly endless and can provide some incredibly tense moments before bursting out into laughter.
Coordination and communication is incredibly important. In your ship is a console that allows them to watch over other players and guide them through these buildings. Your over-watch, so to speak, can see both scrap (showed by green dots) and enemies (shown on the console by red dots). Good comms will keep you alive.
Result
Truthfully, Lethal Company was never on my radar until a great friend of mine, ABouncyFerret, turned me onto the game. While you wouldn’t think it, Lethal Company has provided some of the best jump scares in co-op gaming this year while allowing your crew to laugh so hard they start crying.
It is a game best played with friends and the loop of collecting scrap to beat quotas never truly gets old. If you have a group and $10 kicking around, I would definitely recommend this game for some truly spooky and quirky evenings.
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