Lethal Company Is A Workplace Horror-Comedy That Speaks To The Moment

We make our way into the bowels of another industrial complex. The weather is good, and we’re early enough in our tenure at The Company that we expect things to go relatively smoothly. Of course, they don’t. As we’re about to turn in our haul, a Snare Flea drops from the ceiling, latching at our companion’s head like a Facehugger from Alien.

Anot🌺her team member tries to pry it off with our only shovel, but in the scramble, they both go over the rail of the narrow walkway, falling into the impossibly deep dark below. As the sole survivor, I pick up what I can and try to escape, weaving back through the labyrinth in a desperate attempt to find the exit. Somewhere in the mad dash, I missed a turn. As I bumble down corridors, I hear a roar. I look back, and a massiv🌊e eyeless beast leaps out of the shadows, ending my life with a single strike.

In almost any other game, this grisly demise would produce some combination of frustration and disappointment as our resources, efforts, and time were wasted. But instead, the chorus of laughter that greets me as I rejoin my buddies in the next world embodies the heart of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lethal Company, a cooperative horror-💞comedy that turns OSHA violations into an unforgettable farce.

Another Day, Another Eldritch Nightmare In The Workplace

You and up to three f🍒riends are new employees at The Company, a shady organization that hires unfortunate souls to explore alien moons in search of scrap. You have three days to collect enough materials to meet quota, and if you don’t, well, let’s just say the “Lethal” in the game’s title is earned.

Getting better gear is essential because when you visit these far-off worlds, you’ll quickly find that you’re very much not alone. A cadre of creepy creatures lurk in the bowels of rusting infrastructure, waiting to pounce on the next hapless goon who wanders into their territory. Thankfully, if you or a crew member dies (which happens a lot), they respawn at the end of the day at t꧑he cost of a revival fee.

But, if you all wipe, you’ll lose whatever scrap was stored on your ship, frequently meaning your chances of meeting your commission are shot. Due to this heavy penalty, your team is forced to constantly balance risk and reward as you decide whether to call it early and collect a ☂lighter load or risk plundering until dark.

Lethal Company - standing outside your ship

Although its procedurally generated worlds and run-based loops grant the game a roguelike structure, a more useful point of comparison is a different style of experience that has become popular in recent years. At its core, it loosely resembles other co-op “disastercore” games where you and your buddies face seemingly insurmountable odds that frequently culminate in comedic meltdown❀s.

Another breakout indie release that meets these criteria is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Phasmophobia, where your crew investigates haunted houses to identify poltergeists. Armed with only tools for spectral detective work, the lack of weapons means that, especially on harder difficulties, you’ll run into hot-mess scenarios where an angry spirit starts meting out supernatural pain. Another example is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Helldivers 2, which, while very different m๊echanically (it’s an isometric shooter riffing on Starship Troopers), is similar because it also heavily stacks the deck against your grou🐠p, creating hilarious co-op screw-ups.

Meeting Your Quota? I Hardly Know 'Er

If there is a unifying thread across these experiences, it’s collective disempowerment. While Lethal Company lets you at least moderately arm yourselves, you are so woefully weak that conflict is always a last reso🐎rt. With the starting allowance, the only weapon you can purchase is a shovel, and even the more expensive self-defense tools you can buy later are based around stunning foes instead of outright killing them.

Your character is relatively slow and runs out of stamina almost immediately, especially when car📖rying the heavy items you’re trying to flip. They can’t ta♒ke many hits, which is made worse due to the absence of healing items during missions. Voice chat is entirely proximity-based, and while a walkie-talkie can extend your communication range, wandering off alone can be incredibly risky.

These detriments matter because the alien creatures you face don’t have these same shortcomings. Most of them can easily out-run you or end your life in a single blow, and some are entirely unkillable. Compared to the gun-toting playable characters that headline most video games, your crew are a bunch of cannon fodder red-shirts much more likely to be on the receiving end of bloodletting. Altogether, it makes for an experience that revels in these hopeless circumstances, forcing you and your companions to journey through dark, hostile corridors where nasty surp🌊rises await at every turn. At a glance, this is a horror game to the bone, and its imposing difficulty and run-based structure ratchet up the tensions even further.

But if the game is so scary, difficult, and player-hostile, what makes it so paradoxically entertaining and funny? The long and short of it is that it’s so oppressive that things loop back around and become a comedy of errors. I can’t count the number of times when my buddies and I felt confident in our haul, reveling in a♑ pile of newfound riches, until some small mistake snowballed into a complete dumpster fire failure where all of us were in awe at our misfortune.

Whether it was a sandworm gobbling me up when my arms were full of valuable tech as I was literally steps away from the ship, turning a corner to be met with a Coil Head, or any of the many times one of us slightly missed a jump between walkways, even the most seasoned spelunkers are constantly on the razor’s edge of disaster. The aesthetic, which hovers between stylized and realistic, embodies these dueling tones and includes adorably ugly guys such as the Hoarding Bug alongside upsetting monstrosities like the Bracken. Your fragile little playable characters are caricatures of the disposable dudes who bite it ear𝐆ly in pulp sci-fi stories. There’s also a button to dance, which somehow feels very appropriate despite the circumstances.

Perhaps the single best inclusion, both for scares and hilarity, is proximity chat. Hearing a friend’s voice echo in a nearby hallway is comforting until the sudden silence sets in, leading to heightened horror movie-esque moments where your calls suddenly aren’t answered, and you realize you’re truly alo🔥ne. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are also plenty of dark comedy moments, as jump scares are met with genuinely terrified screams or a massive screw-up leads to a belt of curses punctuated by laughter.

There Is No Such Thing As Retirement In Lethal Company

However, there’s another element that’s resonated with me as I’ve repeatedly dived back into these journeys that I know are doomed to fail. As alluded to by the game’s title, the entire framing of this experience and its particular brand of disempowerment ties into what it’s often like to work in a late-capitalist hell nightmare. Employment for The Company only ever ends one way🔥, with getting shot out of an airlock after failing to🌞 reach unrealistic quotas.

Between the dour home planets of your employer, their soulless corporate jargon, and the constant exposure to brutal, life-threatening conditions in pursuit of someone else’s bottom line, these details culminate in a satirization of how callous and uncaring the gig economy can be. In many ways, this ties in perfectly with the horror elements, as this genre has often been used to safely work through latent phobias, whether those be otherworldly or more grounded. Here, the central fear is one that’s v⭕ery real to many people: being treated poorly by an employer who has all the leverage. Underneath the frights and gags, there’s a prickling honesty.

Lethal Company - Shining a light on a door

As a journalist witnessing the hollowing out of the media sphere, where countless talented people have been forced out of their jobs by venture capitalist vultures chasing the fable of endless exponential profit growth, watching my little guy get blasted into the vacuum of space for failing to accomplish a similarly impossible task for their ꧑corporate overlord has a weird catharsis to it.

Watching a horror movie that embodies your greatest fear may not make that phobia go away, but it can, in a small way, lessen the blow and validate those concerns. And this game, which heightens these workplace anxieties to such extremes that they boil over into hilarity as you share memorable moments with your friends, creates camaraderie out of these otherwise isolating emotions. Things may be bad right now and feel like they’re only getting worse, but Lethal Company understands it’s important to find time to laug🤪h with the people you⛎ care about when you can.