I’m a multiplayer gamer at heart. I just can’t fathom sitting in front of my computer and playing a single-player game for hours on end without anyone to hang out with on the other line. It’s why, by the grace of God, I somehow poured hundreds of hours into Valorant over the past 14 months of my life.
But my favorite game of the year actually isn’t my most played game of the year. No, that honor goes to a game that just came out a few months ago: Lethal Company.
I wrote about indie developer Zeekerss’ hit horror game back in November, where I called it “the hottest game of Thanksgiving.” Which is true, according to the data. The game has since remained one of the most popular titles on Steam, having essentially solidified its status as one of the best co-op multiplayer games available to play on PC.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with Lethal Company yet, the game casts up to four players as space-traveling scavengers searching abandoned planets’ bunkers and mansions for scrap. Unfortunately, each planet is infested with horrific, deadly monsters. Also, you have a company quota to reach in order to feed a giant tentacle monster living in the company’s tower, and if you don’t meet the quota, you get ejected into space. To quote Rick & Morty, it’s a metaphor for capitalism.
“What’s this jack-in-the-box doing here?”
I already went into detail last month about Lethal Company’s gameplay, why it immediately left me hooked, and how its game design loop is so simple yet so utterly sophisticated. It’s the perfect horror game, the kind that relies on truly terrifying experiences instead of shocking players with cheap jumpscares.
It’s also the kind of multiplayer game that leads to incredible stories, like sacrificing your screaming friend to a Bunker Spider so you can quietly crawl back to the ship with an axle in hand.
That isn’t the only reason why Lethal Company is my Game of the Year, however. It’s also my GOTY choice because of what it represents. Zeekerss is a young indie developer who took a core concept—explore an abandoned place as a team, collect material, and get out with your life—and fleshed it out to its most sophisticated conclusion. The game is so simple in theory, to the point where non-survival horror players are picking up Lethal Company in droves.
And yet, underneath the surface, the game’s developer has clearly created an incredibly fine-tuned infrastructure to support the atmosphere and intensity this game offers. This dawned on me when I was watching a difficulty guide where YouTuber Aquath broke down the (guestimated) individual monster spawn rates across the game’s various moons. Before I even heard of the terms “Jester” or “Coil-Head,” Zeekerss was hard at work at home, making sure I would shit myself when I saw one in Rend’s mansion.
Right now, the AAA gaming industry is defined by eye-catching features with no real substance. Venture into an endless sea of incredibly forgettable planets and meet lifeless NPCs! Buy a brand new skin that makes you look like Skeletor! Explore Hogwarts as a young rapscallion and use the awful, evil curses you’re never supposed to use! In the face of all that, Lethal Company represents a different philosophy: It’s better to put a lot of quality and care into your core product, instead of attracting players with bells and whistles. And I’ll always love Lethal Company for that, and not just because I accidentally put on the mask in the new update that turned me into a zombie, and I never could have guessed that would happen.
(featured image: Zeekerss)
