Picture this. You’re in SOAR with nothing good to do. All your work is already done or you plan on doing it later. You hop on your phone and scroll through your FYP until you come across a strange video. You watch two people in orange jumpsuits with weird masks exploring some derelict building. When suddenly and without warning a void black humanoid creature with leaves on its back and eyes as white as snow snaps the neck of one of the players. The other player, distressed by this, starts chasing after the creature after it snaps his friend’s neck, screaming to give him back. You’re probably wondering what you just saw. I’ll tell you about that, and why it’s one of the best multiplayer games on the market.
Hitting the market on October twenty-third, 2023, Lethal Company would quickly skyrocket in popularity. The setting is simple. You and up to three other people are working for the company. Your goal is to travel to different moons with your dinky company-provided ship and collect scrap from abandoned facilities. However, the horror of the game comes from the other less friendly creatures you’ll be running into inside and outside of the facilities. These buildings might be abandoned but they aren’t empty.
Monsters of all types and sizes roam the buildings. Each of them with their own types of issues they bring to the table. They can work off hearing you, seeing you, you see them, you not seeing them, and even a time limit. That’s not where it ends of course. There are personnel mines, masks that can take you over and turn you into a monster, monsters that roam outside of the buildings after night or during one of the world events. Speaking of world events, it can flood giving you less time, it can have rain making quicksand, it can be foggy and impossible to see, or god forbid, it can be an eclipse spawning more monsters and monsters outside in the day. With all these terrifying prospects running around, you might be wondering what’s fun about this game. Well, the fun comes from a group of 3 other people you’re good friends with.
Lethal company is at its best when you and your friends are messing around on your way to collect enough scrap for quota, lest the company void you into the vacuum of space. The fun of cracking jokes, and grabbing scrap until very quickly and very suddenly the light-hearted fun turns to an adrenaline rush as your friends or you get killed in silly ways. One moment you’ll grab an air horn and start blasting it to mess with your friends, the next you’ll be running from the creature it attracted trying your best to make it through a maze of hallways and find an exit.
That is lethal company at its greatest. When lighthearted fun turns terrifying fast. It creates a light-hearted atmosphere because of the people you play with, turns terrifying part way through, and at the end when you’re leaving the moon and your dead friends respawn you all laugh and poke fun at each other from how you died, giving you time to take a breath of fresh air before going back down to get more scrap. There’s tons more to the game, however, I recommend you check it out. It’s $9.99 on the Steam game store and it’s one of if not the best multiplayer experiences out right now.
