Hello hello! Fashionably late is my thing around here (not laziness I swear), and I bring to you today a look into an indie game that absolutely EXPLODED in popularity like no other.
Lethal Company is a survival horror co-op game where you find yourself working for an enigmatic company that sends you on likely not OSHA compliant missions down to very hostile moons to collect scrap metal and other such pieces of junk. You and your team are working towards a quota, which increases every successful cycle. At the end of each, you take your scrap to the company’s home world where you sell it to a writhing mass of tentacles (who has a remarkably short temper). What happens if you don’t meet the quota, you ask? Well, they fire you. Into deep space.
When Lethal Company came out, I was a bit wary, as I have seen other indie games become massively popular and go absolutely nowhere very fast. When my friends wouldn’t stop pestering me, though, I bit the bullet and picked it up. It was only ten dollars, why not? Upon loading in, I was met with a game with so much atmosphere and charm to it inside of such a simple concept that I was baffled. The game’s main draw (in my opinion) is the use of proximity voice chat to add to the feelings you get while inside of the dark and dreary dungeons you’re raiding. The sound physics are phenomenal, which helps a lot. One second, you’ll be trying to follow your friend’s voice through the dark, the next you’ll hear them cry out in surprise and there’s no response after.
Aside from adding to the horror, the proximity voice chat adds a lot of humor to the game… especially when one of your friends has a sound board installed. I will say that one of the funniest things ever was hearing my friend slowly get closer to me while he serenaded me with the sweet sounds of intense yodeling music with the added reverb from echoing off of the facility’s metal walls.
As it stands, I think Lethal Company is in a great place. Even after outselling a literal triple A title within WEEKS of its launch and topping Steam’s popularity charts, the creator didn’t let that instant success get to their head and still continues to add content. Said content surprised me in managing to fit perfectly within the game’s vision, too, something that might be a problem for some larger game studios if you recall from my previous post. There is one major problem with the game’s meteoric rise, though…
Modders. While modding a game is usually very good for the game’s lifespan and player base, sometimes it can be a hinderance in my eyes… especially when it takes off so quickly in the beginning. Lethal Company has a VERY strong modding scene and the game isn’t even half a year old yet. The reason I see this as a bad thing is because it causes artificial content saturation which can potentially lead to burnout and distaste for the unmodded game. I know that I almost always strive to play the game with a few quality of life mods enabled. One could argue that this vast pool of mods gives the creator plenty to draw from, but that comes at the cost of potentially sacrificing their own vision for the sake of people-pleasing.
That said, though, I can’t say I’m worried about the state of the game. The game’s creator, @ZeekerssRBLX (they started as a developer on Roblox, isn’t that neat?), seems to genuinely enjoy developing this game. That combined with the absolute stranglehold the game has on Internet culture right now makes me think that it’ll be a mainstay for some time. Reminds me of how Team Fortress 2 became an almost permanent part of the Internet’s collective brain rot from the moment it was born into this world.
To wrap things up, I’m feeling good about Lethal Company’s future, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s cooking up next for the game. If you haven’t played it and you like a good scare, shenanigans with friends, and goofy little astronauts, go give it a shot on Steam! You can always refund a game if you play it for less than two hours and don’t like it.
See you next time!