The misery, stress, and tedium of Sisphyus given form in video game mechanics. A true evolution of using the medium of video games to elevate storytelling and thematic arcs to greater heights. The beauty of Lobotomy Corporation lies in how the suffering, perseverance, and the eventual release of the characters is viscerally felt within the very experience of playing the game. The catharsis found in the summit that is day 50 after the long, grueling trek through lobcorp's many unfair trials makes it worth the struggle.

I'm aware that Lobotomy Corporation's hostile and abrasive approach to game design will filter a lot of people, and the jank and intentional tedium will filter even more, but I think the experience here is at least worth trying. Don't skip this game or only read the cutscenes for library of ruina. Give it a real shot and only give up when you feel too frustrated to continue. It's really something special. The gameplay isn't pure misery either. Learning how to control abnormalities and the core suppressions are genuinely fun and memorable gameplay experiences. The twists and subversions on the management sim foundation are honestly brilliant. Of course, your mileage may vary, but there's a lot to love here. If you can gel with it, it's one of the most unique and impactful games out there.

Dont take this abandoned status to entirely mean that the game is bad. It isnt, far from it in fact, and those who perhaps have more stamina than I to see the game through to its completion could have a genuinely great time with it. Let me explain.

Lobotomy corp is the dream game of any SCP aficionado of the mid 2000's. Anyone who frequented that site and enjoyed its variable levels of clinical intrigue, horror, and occasionally simple humor, usually ask themselves what it would be like to really be the manager of such a corporation.

The game does this quite well, having a slick well thought out system of managing abnormalities (as they are called in-game). Each day, you choose an abnormality from 3 presented to you, which are randomly selected from a list. In the beginning, you will lack any and all knowledge on them, and have to shoot from the hip from a vague quotation from their story description. After obtaining your horror, you send your agents to perform work on it. The work produces energy, which is your end goal to end any given day of the game.

The game revolves around a system of 4 colors. Red, White, Black, and Pale. Each corresponding to each of the 4 agent's stats, each of the 4 damage types, and each of the 4 abnormality work types. Abnormalities deal one of the 4 damage types, have differing resistances to them, and have differing success rates with each of the work types.

The most interesting part though are the unique effects of the abnormalities, which delightfully vary wildly. Each categorized by its effective threat level. Zayin, Teth, He, Waw, and Aleph. Zayin are basically harmless and Aleph... Well, I'll just let you find out about Aleph's yourself.

Abnormalities want to break out, and usually their effects revolve around how they attempt to do so, whether theyre just a brick shit house and will rip your employees to shreds, or they slowly infect your employees and turn them into soldiers for its ever growing army if managed improperly. Information is the most important currency in the game, and its what you keep with you between each run.

The game is a rogue-lite, where in you do a run, get as far as you can, learn as much as you can, and then start over and try to play more efficiently. Its a fun loop, and it uses this to tell an intruiging and emotionally sympathetic tale of loss and forgiveness.

Youre told the story by completing certain objectives in addition to meeting your energy quota, as well as just continuing further into the game. Sadly, this is where my main problem arises. Lobotomy corp, while having a great premise, good characterization, and good story, drags itself too thin with what it has. I personally found after 126 hours of play time that I simply lacked the motivation to continue, Starting over and going through the motions of the earlier days, especially when I had gotten all the info on all the abnormalities the game had in store for me, became tedious. Its a loop of grinding up agent's stats and filling the energy quota as quickly as possible, so that in a few hours you can get back to where you were and hopefully eek out completing the next objective, which will more than likely require you to sacrifice agents and valuable equipment to succeeds, making you very incentivized to start over again to attempt the next objective. This is where I have to admit that this may simply be a lack of stamina for the kind of game lobotomy corp is, but I know that I would have enjoyed it far more if it had allowed me to skip those early days after a certain point.

I love the game, and think it has very solid mechanics, premise, and writing, especially for Project Moon's first game, but I feel like it stretches too little, too far.

Let it be said before I start this review, that I enjoyed the game.
But god, was it hell to play through. Like I honestly think this is one of the ways they torture souls in hell. Harsh and unfair and mean and it knows it. It’s a game made to be hard to play. And it excels at that.

Management is pretty easy the first few days because you only have pretty easy to handle abnormalities. The game does try to ease you into it and it does a good job, you end up feeling like you know what you’re doing but you’re wrong. You’re wrong because the second you get an anomaly that breaches it’s over for you. Everyone’s dying and it’s your fault. And you will restart the day over and over because you don’t want your best employees dead but yin and yang who are breaching at the same time don’t care and clouded monk who will breach as soon as 10 employees are dead also doesn’t care (and you’re not aware that he’s going to do that yet) and do NOT forget that you have to check on the train from hell every 2 minutes or chaos will ensue. (This is just a very personal situation that happened, you will not go through the same one, hopefully, but you understand the stress that I’ve been under)
You will realize that you picked probably the worst abnormalities to have all in the same place but there’s nothing you can do about it because you don’t really know what you’re picking.
Let’s not even talk about the fact that you need to gear up your employees with the proper gear for dealing with abnormalities which I am pretty sure I did a horrible job at.
At least the ost is really good!

If you love horror or at least SCP this will be entertaining for you. Despite how hard it was and how frustrating it was to play and have to replay over and over because the game is not clear enough on PURPOSE on what’s the best way to deal with an anomaly, its very entertaining to find it all by yourself. You end up building some kind of system that you will use over and over to deal with all your abnormalities and if it all goes well at some point you’ll breeze through days. And that’s the ideal because to me the main point of this game is its story.

I wanted to know the lore so bad. I wanted to know about the sephirah, about why is it that we’re using literal horrors to get energy. About Angela and why she’s so shady. And I wanted to know what happened and what will happen. I kept playing despite almost ripping my hair out some days because I was really invested in knowing More. All the abnormalities have their own story, all the sephirah are like that for a reason. You are part of this whole machine and you will want to find out what’s going on and the game will reward you with it if you keep playing it and it will be worth it. Its themes of life and death and grief were so well written all packed up in this very fucked up world that I could not get enough of it.
Despite it all, I ended up not being strong enough and, after making a horrible decision at some point and refusing to reset the entire playthrough after reaching so far, checking out the rest of the story somewhere else.

Even so I’d recommend you give the game a try by yourself first. I think it’s honestly worth playing even if it’s just a few days and then you decide that it’s too hard for you. And it’s honestly ok if it is cos it’s hard. I don’t think I’m ever touching it again myself
I am looking forward to playing library of ruina.

I started playing this on a whim after I decided to take a lengthy break from anything regarding games and stories, which spanned over many months due to being overly busy in day to day life activities, but it's safe to say that Lobotomy Corporation was surely a surprising game to return to. That being said, it was also quite a difficult game to proceed through gameplay wise. The gameplay itself which is the management system it works around is pretty simple for the first few days due to the income of simple abnormalities at first. It does a good job of guiding you through the basics of how the gameplay works and which ability works best for the abnormalities you are constantly trying to contain, but that also ties into why the gameplay can be reaaally frustrating at times. You're basically always having to keep track of which employee is best to deal with the abnormality you're working on, with the consequences being that your employees are always at risk of panicking/dying, or the abnormality in question breaches which can easily end in a game over in the later days of the game.

Despite that, I really enjoyed the little intricacies each and every abnormality had to offer, plus it has a lot of ways to motivate you to push through the game despite it's insufferable difficulty. What's really unique about the gameplay though, is how it ties into it's story. You're faced constantly with grueling tasks within the many days of tying together specific protocols in order to deal with the many threats that plague the company you're in charge of, almost being repetitive in way. But despite it's unforgiving cruelties it brings, the satisfaction it gives you during the last few days makes the hardships, stress, and overall struggles totally worth it. Through the many colleagues that you encounter throughout the game, you begin to learn more and more about the bigger picture that LoboCorp paints on the narrative, and in face of everything the game throws at you, you slowly begin to understand that you must always keep marching onward without looking back. But yeah, that's all I wanted to say about this game. Very glad I decided to play it after a long time of promising myself to play it sooner or later, and I'm pretty amped to see how this ties into it's sequel. Not sure if I'd recommend it to everyone, but it has so much to offer if you do give it a shot.

"sick and twisted game for sickos" said my wife after i bought them this game, strapped them into their chair, chained to the desk and hit play
favourite game of all time. impossible to explain the uh dubious ins & outs of how this thing works or what makes it so enjoyable when it is constantly trying (and succeeding) to pull one over on you and burn itself down but
you either die a clerk or live long enough to see yourself become The Manager... face the fear, build the future... what, like it's hard?

Lobotomy Corporation is the most missable unmissable game on my list.

It’s an absolutely incredible SCP management sim that you approach like a freeform puzzle game, while the game is absolutely trying to ruin your day at every single turn. As such, I would hardly recommend it for someone looking for a casual or even fun experience, but if you’re looking to dive deep into a game that’s equal parts inscrutable and compelling, then Lobotomy Corp is the game for you.

Full disclaimer, I modded my game to heck and back again to make it more playable, so your experiences will vary heavily from mine without a similar modpack.

So, What Makes Lobotomy Coproration Unmissable?

A Game About Suffering
Lobotomy Corporation is a game about suffering, both in its narrative and its design- and Project Moon was masterful at implementing that theme at every turn. Normally in a game like this, you’re meant to cobble together a team of scrappy heroes who can tackle every challenge, either on their own or together as a team.

In Lobotomy Corporation, you throw them in the meat grinder, both on their own and as a team- because somethings simply cannot be handled any other way. And the narrative both acknowledge and encourages it too- telling you that you generate more power when your employees die! It’s like if the leadership in Star Trek actually recognized the staggering casualty rate amongst redshirts by gleefully admitting that problems get solved faster the more bodies they throw at the problem. It’s so cruelly callous, but it’s such a fantastic detail that carries through the whole game.

And you truly have to accept sacrifices to progress through the game. Every new abnormality is a black box at first, and you have to take an entirely uninformed guess at which of the four types of work to use before you can even get started, and half the time it’ll blow up in your face. The consequences for guessing wrong or sustained mismanagement usually either involve an employee instantly dying, the abnormality escaping, or a cascade of failures that can cause one or multiple departments to fall apart entirely- forcing a reset. And even when you know exactly how to manage an abnormality, especially the higher ranked ones, a moment’s distraction or a mere mistake is all the opportunity they need to cause untold havok when you’re usually least prepared to deal with them.

Or heck, some don’t even need an opportunity. They just break out constantly because properly managing them is nearly or outright impossible. Or they’re [Redacted], who gets mad at you and escapes on a schedule unless you dedicate a chunk of your time and attention to specifically appease it.

Sure, the game gives you the ability to reset to the start of the day to redo things with fewer consequences, or to a prior checkpoint to wipe away any undesired abnormalities- but more often than not it’s better to just accept your losses if it means progressing further in your run. A pyrrhic victory is still a victory after all.

Freeform Puzzle Game
Like I said earlier, Lobotomy Corporation is a freeform puzzle game - and it’s one of the game’s best features. Most management sims let you simply outscale your challenges, and while that’s possible here with the right equipment and stats- you’ll get bodied by almost everything if you’re unprepared. And I don’t mean with gear and stats (though they certainly help), I mean with knowledge & understanding, as well as the implementation of both.

It can be as simple as knowing which management styles work best with each of the ~100 or so anomalies, to the finer complexities of wrangling the slime girl without her turning your whole facility to ooze, to when is the best time to throw in the towel because a magical girl keeps breaching and lazering half your facility to death when you’re not looking, to how to keep a mutant baby from causing every anomaly in your facility to escape while dealing with a whole new set of rules brought on by the boss you’re suppressing.

Oh yeah, there are boss fights too- sort of. They rarely exist as something you can outright kill, and more often than not simply take the preset rules you’ve been working with for hours and turning them on their head with some devious twist or reversal. Or simply by taking away your pause button- which is way more challenging than you’d expect. Even the ones you can kill directly are usually accompanied by rules and mechanics that cannot simply be ignored or overcome with sheer might.

The beauty part is that there’s always a workaround though. Either by starting fresh with a facility tailor-made to make a challenge easier, or by exploiting an obscure mechanic to nullify a foe just long enough to snag a win, or by throwing one nugget into a box and letting things descend into absolute chaos until you somehow win. A pyrrhic victory is still a victory after all.

It Only Scratches The Surface
I won’t delve too deep into the story & worldbuilding of Lobotomy Corporation, as they ultimately should be experienced either firsthand, or with a fully detailed retelling. But I cannot make this video without gushing about them all the same.

Lobotomy Corporation is about a brutalistic corporation that’s somehow figured out how to generate power by appeasing a menagerie of horrifying abominations. And rather than leave it there, Project Moon absolutely ran with the concept, fleshing it out both ingame and with multiple sequels and spinoff comics. They could have simply leaned on the novelty of being a SCP management game with the serial numbers filed off, but by fleshing out their own universe with a seemingly endless amount of lore they’ve created something deeply compelling and truly special. It’s the kind of extended universe that big-budget games and movie executives keep trying (and largely failing) to make, without any of the soulless corporate drawbacks… which is amusingly ironic considering Lobotomy Corporation’s subject matter.

The ingame storytelling is primarily told through fairly brief moments of character dialogue between every day, but despite their short nature they’re also deeply compelling portrayals of what it’s like to be stuck in a manmade hell. Each one represents a different perspective and coping mechanism when dealing with the horrors that they experience in the facility. Every cutscene also squeezes in trace amounts of lore, worldbuilding, character details, and vague references that take hours to be fully realized- and it had me absolutely hooked for the duration.

This was all enhanced yet further by countless bits of lore and worldbuilding hidden away in the abnormalities’ stories. Most were simple accounts of how nightmarish each abnormality was, but quite a few would talk at length about the places and people outside the facility. Especially the folklore, which combines elements of Japanese mythology and Grimm fairytales to create something unique but terribly familiar all the same.

If you’re a fan of the Souls series, this kind of storytelling will feel pretty familiar to you. I know the From Software style of lore and worldbuilding has been overused as of late, but I think Lobotomy Corporation and its successors are quite possibly the best implementation of the format I’ve ever seen. It’s imagination fodder, breadcrumb lore, and then fully substantiated storytelling used in equal measure so that no part of the story or world feel lacking.

And the best part is that I’m not done yet! Lobotomy Corporation is a very self-contained story that only barely touches upon what it’s like in the terrifying megacity outside as well as the other equally horrifying megacorporations and quasi-diefic leadership structure that keeps things running, and by most accounts it sounds like Project Moon explores both somewhat thoroughly.

Final Thoughts
Ultimately, I’m not sure I’d ever casually recommend Lobotomy Corporation to most players. It’s not the kind of game you go into half-heartedly, and it’s also not the kind of game you can pick up and put down at your leisure. I took a year and a half hiatus and had to start over from the first day just to have a fighting chance, and then after another two month hiatus had to spend an hour reacquainting myself with the games mechanics & abnormality details before I could even attempt to finish day 49. I’m sure other players will have different experiences with their own playthroughs- but as a whole I’d truly recommend fully committing yourself to playing through this game if you do choose to play it.

Also: only use external knowledge bases as an absolute last resort. Lobotomy Corporation’s primary draw is venturing forth into the unknown and making the best of a myriad of bad situations, and spoiling the mechanics is a surefire way to make the game feel like a giant pain that isn’t really worth playing anymore.

There’s a lot more than I could say about Lobotomy Corporation, but ultimately: I didn’t really enjoy playing the game, but I’m paradoxically glad that I did. There’s nothing else even remotely like it on the market, and despite all the suffering, it was an immensely satisfying experience the whole way through.

You. Yes you, the person reading this. Look into my eyes, because I'm speaking directly to you. If you've already beaten LC, congrats! You can skip this paragraph. If you haven't started, consider this a formal warning: don't try to beat this game. If you are anything like me, you will have read what other people have posted, and said "I bet I can handle it". That hubris will destroy you. By all means you should play this, as there really isn't another experience like it. But please take my advice if ever at any point you're starting to have doubts - cheat, watch a playthrough, anything. When the grind sets in, Lobotomy Corp is an agonizing, repetitive experience that I somehow still recommend.

Let's start with the basics - I'm going to split the (non-VN) game into three stages: experimentation, management, and combat. Only one of these stages, experimentation, is interesting. Probing the Anomalies for the best output while making them not slaughter an entire department is fun and rewarding as you can then work with them in safety once you have the knowledge you need.
This lead us to the management stage in which you send an employee to do the work you already know will turn out alright. And then you do it again, and again, ad nauseam until the end of the day. Unless you forget the specific trigger for a given Anomaly, the majority of your days are just going to be repeating the same steps over and over. If you do mess up, the results are usually catastrophic enough to justify restarting the entire day.
When things do get shaken up, we get the combat stage, which is also incredibly tedious. It functions like a 2D RTS, with you selecting individuals or dragging a box for multiple guys before sending them off to fight. There are no control groups, no ways to split your guys between melee and range, and often times health bars will cover each other up. Unless an enemy is weak enough to just throw guys at, the best course of action usually involves some sort of cheese. Combat comes out as a sloppy mess that is unfortunately mandatory to master for completing sidequests for the true ending.

Okay, so the game's not good, but how's the story? The part everyone says the whole is worth it for? Yeah, it's great. I'd even say it's pretty fantastic. Every character and story beat was on point, and it left me wanting more. The Lore, while not expansive, gives you the perfect amount of info that you know what's going on but are still curiously in the dark about the nitty gritty specifics. If Lobotomy Corp was just a visual novel I'd probably give it a 4/5, but I can't do that in good conscience - I'm rating the whole package here. And at the end of the day, I can't even say what the best way to experience Lobotomy Corp even is. I can only hope that, if you are reading this, you don't do what I did. Don't fly too close to the sun.