While I'm not usually one for viral sensation games, Lethal Company stands out as a gem in the ash as an incredible game that is very worthy of all the praise it gets and more. I cannot begin to recommend it enough - despite being a game largely hinged on proximity chat and the presence of friends, its gameplay loop and immersion lets it remains an incredibly enjoyable experience alone or with strangers, voiced or not. The proximity chat does add a huge aspect to this game's fun, though - I highly recommend a microphone set to voice activity while playing, but you'll have a blast regardless. Despite Lethal Company being a month out of early access at the time of writing this review, I can't recommend this enough for an incredibly thrilling experience unlike any other.
One of the biggest draws to Lethal Company that I've seen is its proximity chat, and for good reason - being able to talk with your teammates has a massive amount of benefits for any experience, and mixing it properly to only work when nearby adds an aspect of realism and immersion into the horror that regular voice chat simply doesn't accomplish. Of course, the game has many enjoyable aspects outside of this. What I believe to be the most important is the game's high replayability & incredibly addicting gameplay loop. Going through the moon's facility, collecting scrap, and selling it to the Company is simple and quick to latch onto, and therefore makes for an easy gameplay loop to adapt to when extra steps are added from the game's nuances and progressive rise in difficulty via the scrap quota. This quota forces you to become more and more adventurous, more and more integrated into the mechanics of the game to further draw you into the game, in to playing and searching and avoiding the monstrosities present in the dark reaches of the abandoned moons. The unpredictability in these aspects from the facility's randomization and the creatures within makes for an amazing horror experience.
The randomization of the average gameplay experience stems from the game's choice system, weather system, and creature selection. You are not forced to go to only one moon in the game; rather, you are given options and can go to any of the moons at any time, given that you have the money to go there of course. Each moon then has a particular weather condition, such as eclipsed, stormy, or flooding. These conditions make gameplay much more difficult, but resulting in higher rewards upon being successful in your gathering. After these initial conditions are chosen and the player picks which moon to go to, there is then a set layout for the main ground of each moon - but each room within the facility is completely randomized. Some rooms are dead ends, some half destroyed hallways and bridges, and some mind-melting mazes, all having a chance to have mines or turrets within them. This forces the player to explore for scrap present in all the rooms, making for a unique gameplay experience for every moon the player travels to.
Aside from the glaring inspiration from SCP-173, Lethal Company has much in common with the game SCP: Secret Laboratory, and as this game has also been a massive interest of mine (I have about 360 hours on it, haha) it is extremely exciting that a similar concept has gone viral. They both work with the concepts of a scientific facility full of monsters, multiplayer proximity chat, and randomized levels of the building to make the game different every playthrough, as well as many monsters having similar premises - a statue that only moves when you don't look at it, a blind pack mammal that's blood red and relies on hearing to find its prey, a theater mask that possesses people*... the list goes on. I have absolutely no qualms with this inspiration whatsoever, though - Lethal Company takes these concepts and puts an entirely new spin on their context, giving players a unique experience to SCP: Secret Laboratory. I don't believe it to be close enough to be attributed to any SCP works, but the inspiration is clear, and I'm very delighted to see these similar monsters in a new light.
* SCP-035, Possessive Mask, is not currently in SCP: Secret Laboratory; however it is in its original singleplayer counterpart SCP: Containment Breach, and I believe this to be the intended inspiration. I drew attention to Secret Laboratory instead due to its multiplayer aspect being more similar to Lethal Company, as well as my personal liking of it.
Each monster made for Lethal Company, much like a real ecosystem, filles a dynamic niche to make navigating the game even more difficult, with a few exceptions for environmental enhancement. Roaming Locusts (Anacridium vega) and Manticoils (Quadrupes manta), for example, are animals that pose no threat to you and merely exist to make the game more lively. They spawn outside and scatter when approached, never attacking the player.
The docility of the moons' outdoor creatures end here, however - Circuit bees (Crabro coruscus) and Baboon Hawks (Papio volturius) will attack when provoked, and should largely be avoided. If you're cautious and know what you're doing, provoking the Circuit bees for their hive will give you a good reward.
From here on out, the game's namesake becomes clear. Forest Keepers (Satyrid proceritas) rely on their incredible sight to lumber towards and eat their prey, and usually spawn on forested moons in the afternoon or night - though you will always be safe from them in the ship. Eyeless dogs (Leo caecus), in contrast, spawn on any planet and rely on their hearing to find players anywhere outside, including the ship, and can be located by their deep growls. These two monsters, as well as the Earth Leviathans (Hemibdella gigantis) that target anything outside on regular ground, make for an extremely dangerous combination when together. All of these creatures can spawn anywhere at any time on eclipsed planets.
Once inside the facility of the moon, the game becomes significantly more dangerous and horrifying. The most well-known monster seems to be the Bracken (Rapax folium), or Flower man; this entity silently stalks its prey to snap their necks, and is discouraged by short eye contact (but enraged by prolonged eye contact). Another monster reliant on sight is the Coil-Head (Vir colligerus), who is a large statue that moves at superhuman speeds when not being stared at (sound familiar? Zeekerss made an SCP: Containment Breach inspired game in 2014 :-) ). The last two aggressively hostile monsters are the Hygroderes and Thumpers (Pistris saevus); Hygroderes are large slime monsters that absorb anyone in their path, but due to their extremely slow speed, mostly just block pathways. Thumpers, however, are highly dangerous predators that can charge down hallways to kill their prey extremely quickly, making a deafening and quick sound as they approach. While they can be killed, it is much safer to run if possible, as the attacking player will likely be left in critical condition, if they even win the fight. These are not the only dangers in the facility - other, more passive predators include the Snare Flea (Dolus scolopendra), an ambush predator that lies on the ceilings of rooms to jump down and suffocate their prey, and Bunker Spiders (Mutinum ficedula), arachnids that lay traps of webs to catch their prey while occasionally hunting down players walking around. Despite the monumental amount of threats, some animals within the facility do not ALWAYS kill the player. Spore Lizards (Lacerta glomerorum), for example, are largely non-confrontational and only attack with weak bites (their spores are harmless) when chased or attacked themselves. Hoarding bugs (Linepithema crassus) are hostile when approached or items near them are taken due to their high territoriality. They can be satiated by dropping an item for them and backing off; if it is taken and they run away, you can leave or grab something they were guarding. The ways in which all of these enemies fill different niches of a gameplay makes for a very unique experience every time you go into a facility, not quite knowing how to play or what to expect from it.
Another group of enemies that generally only present themselves on moons like Rend, Dine, and Titan (the only three that cost money to route to) are extremely dangerous. The Nutcracker detects and promptly shoots anything that moves, and the Jester (informally coined Insaneus thingus by Sigurd) finds any player within the facility, no matter what, and gives them 20-40 seconds to leave the facility before quickly killing anything that remains. One enemy that is largely nonpresent unless provoked, however, is the Masked. Masked are players that are possesed by a comedy or tragedy mask that is found as scrap, and the mask only possesses players if it is worn with left click. Simply DON'T WEAR THE MASK... That's all you need to do.
One enemy I have yet to encounter is the ghost. I know very little about this entity, and I'm not certain of anything about it other than it haunting only one player per map. Of course, there will be more enemies as the game is developed, and this review will eventually be outdated, but at the time of writing this there are already an incredibly diverse and expansive collection of creatures, and they all make for an incredibly enjoyable experience.
One of my favorite parts about this game is, yes, the visuals. They aren't anything fancy or high-end or realistic, but that's what makes it PERFECT. It doesn't try to inflate its quality by upping the visuals and causing more bloat in the files - it accomplishes exactly what it needs to do, and that's it! As a result, the game is only a single gigabyte and only needs a hard disk drive to run, making the game very accessible to people with lower-end computers. Aside from the practical benefits of the graphics, I'm also an extremely big fan of the style itself; Large, blocky models and posterized, pixelated materials are very appealing to me, and the lighting and mie scattering is just high-quality enough to add extra depth to the game and its environment. It really does look amazing. Also, as a result of the models being blocky, it allows the animations to be more expressive, and they certainly are!
Lethal Company is, of course, still in early access, so all of the story is not present yet. However, what is in the game is very promising thus far, and adds a lot of character to the game and how you view it when playing. The main story that's available right now is the story that Sigurd writes, an employee of the year 1968 whose demeanor is agitated and fate is dark. He provides addendums and Danger Levels for most creatures, as well as a series of logs scattered throughout various moons depicting his experience with the Company. These logs progress from the average player experience (with a bit of familial problems sprinkled in, of course) to his seemingly paranoid observations about the Company's mysterious nature, which then takes a dark turn when one of his coworkers is taken by a Bracken. Sigurd and his other coworkers, including his brother Desmond, grow more aware of the situation at hand and start investigating and being more cautious. Their investigation leads them to be solid in the ideas Sigurd had a vague idea about from the start - the Company is alive, and the Company is hungry. The employers hire people around the universe to gather scrap and feed it, lest something devastating happen to life as we know it. The implications given by "Golden Planet" are dire, a log in which Sigurd goes to the Company planet and talks to the screams on the radio, discovering they believe to be in the belly of the beast that swallowed the golden planet. While this log is earlier on and not when the crew gains an awareness for the situation they're in, it's still relevant to interpretation as it gives an idea of what this creature is capable of. The last log we currently have access to is titled "Desmond", and is written from his perspective in a very grave tone, indicating a horrible fate for Sigurd has found him. And thus the logs end, for now. One line that I find very interesting is in "Hiding", that being the following:
"in my dreams it feels like the company isn't trapped in there at all, its just hiding."
This has fascinating implications. What is it hiding from? Why does it need to hide? It's an extremely intriguing idea for a story to imply that a collossal force is not the apex predator, and fears something we know nothing about yet. I'm very excited to see where the story, and the game in general, goes from here.