Lethal Company, released in October of 2023 by independent game developer Zeekerss, is a game that has become so huge in such a short amount of time that to a majority of you, it needs no introduction. It’s garnered a surprisingly massive player base for a pc exclusive indie game, and it’s for a good reason. Its horror comedy based multiplayer gameplay is easy to learn and is fun to fail at, so you don't have to be skilled to have an enjoyable time with it. It's a wonderfully funny game that, without warning, can turn into one of the scariest games I’ve played this year. Lethal Company has caused me to feel in ways I haven't yet experienced from a game, and can only draw comparisons to real life job experiences I’ve had. At first glance, it initially appears to be a social multiplayer game, much like SCP Secret Lab, in fact I’ve seen a lot of comparisons drawn between the two. While I see where the comparisons are coming from, I couldn’t disagree more with them. Not only would I not describe Lethal Company as a social multiplayer game, but what Secret Lab and games like it try to achieve is entirely different from Lethal Company.
On the surface it's easy to see the similarities, both games appear to be about exploring abandoned facilities, running from monsters instead of fighting, and trying to escape with your life intact. Both games also utilize proximity voice chat both to work together with teammates and to derive a lot of their comedic value. However once we step away from that surface their differences couldn’t be clearer. For one, it's hard to care about any given round in Secret Lab, there are no rewards for winning nor a consequence for losing.The objective feels like it doesn’t actually matter to the people playing it. The objective in Lethal Company by contrast is much more emphasized, with failing to complete it resetting your save file. The stakes of the gameplay make it so you actually care about the outcome of the expeditions you take.
When you get down to it, what makes each of these games entertaining and engaging is entirely different. The fun of Secret Lab isn’t derived from trying to win, it comes from the players interacting with its systems. The reason people play it is to see what happens when you put twenty to thirty different players into a huge bunker, all aligned with different goals and objectives, and seeing what funny or cool things happen over the course of a round. The fun of Lethal Company is more complicated than that though. You and your crew are all aligned to the same goal, and that goal is what makes the gameplay so engaging. And while yes, I'm playing it because of the silly and scary situations me and my crew can get into, I wouldn’t have gotten into those situations if I didn’t find the gameplay itself so compelling.
The goal of Lethal Company is to go to different planets, venture into abandoned facilities and extract enough scrap to meet your company assigned quota. When you meet quota your scrap is sold to your bosses for company credits which you can use to buy equipment and upgrades to help you meet the next quota. The catch here is that absolutely nothing is given to you in Lethal Company. Want to be able to communicate with your friend monitoring you and your crew from your ship? That's gonna cost you. Want some kind of weapon, no matter how basic it may be? That's gonna cost you. Want to be able to see anything inside the dark facilities? Even that has a price tag on it, and it’ll cost you extra for a flashlight that you can actually see anything with that’ll last for more than a minute. The process of cashing in on your collected loot has risk and reward to it as well. You need to make enough company credits to meet your quota, however your company doesn't always buy your scrap for its full price. Unless you sell the day before your quota is due they’ll only buy it for a percent of what it's actually worth, so you may not want to sell until then. However that means you won't be given any more credits to buy more equipment until then, and if all of your crew dies on an expedition, you lose all of the scrap that was not yet turned in. So do you live having less equipment for a while and risk potentially losing all of your valuables should you all perish? Or do you turn your scrap in early, earning less credits for selling more items then if you had just waited. Every action you take in Lethal Company always has upsides and downsides, there’s never an objectively right answer.
Your resources, if you even have any, being so expensive and easily lost makes the game much more tense then if these basic things were simply given to you. You’re trying to extract as much scrap as you can, navigating these randomized facilities, trying not to die to these monsters you know nothing about, and you’re almost never properly equipped to deal with any of it. Even if you are prepped with gear, one or two deaths can result in a major loss of funds and supplies, and very quickly leave you up creek without a paddle. In any other game, a flashlight, even if it's limited in use like in Amnesia or Outlast, is a standard item your character is always equipped with. But in Lethal Company? That flashlight is a privilege, not a right. I've had many times where my team is completely out of funds with no equipment in sight, and we just had to deal with that and meet our quota regardless. The odds are ALWAYS so stacked against you, which is part of what makes the game so scary. That Idea of “how the hell are we gonna meet quota now, we couldn't even survive with equipment, and now we have nothing” was a frequent thought that went through my head, and it made me nervous picking out our next destination. What’s so interesting to me, is the specific KIND of horror Lethal Company often evokes, because it's a kind I’ve really only ever experienced in the real world. The fear of meeting a quota.