Lethal Company is exactly what it needs to be. It's a silly low-poly horror skinner box with lightweight, approachable systems. You jump in with your buddies, scream and laugh, and jump to another game when your group gets bored.
Lethal Company's secret sauce is some really intuitive design choices that generate predictable, unavoidable friction that meshes well with the horror gameplay. It's textbook survival horror but in a bite-sized package. You got your limited inventory, flashlights with pretty limited battery, carry weight restrictions, and time limit. It's a game of finding yourself not having enough of the things you need - creating those "oh shit" moments very consistently.
The X-Factor here is multiplayer, and more specifically, proximity chat. Lethal Company gets so much milage from this feature: friend's voices echoing through a dark scary hallway, traces of screams as you run away from a horrible creature, someone's voice trailing off into a bottomless pit, marco polo-ing your way back to the ship. It's the perfect fit in this genre and I've love to see more games give it a try.
The comedy of it all can't be overstated either. The aesthetics of the world are serious enough that you feel emersed but also silly enough that you aren't quaking in your boots too much. A great example is the way the player characters move around and interact with things. The walk cycle is janky in the best way, carrying objects looks cumbersome like a dog trying to carry around a stick that's far too big, there's even a dedicated dance button. It feels like the developer really focused in on the "wouldn't it be funny if..." ideas during brainstorming. There's a ton of what I can only describe as slapstick game design: rickety bridges that shatter like glass, pools of nasty quicksand, a vendor that can accidentally eat players alive. There are so many examples of this philosophy and it all adds up to create this iconic moment generator. The downside of these setpieces is they become a lot less interesting as you experience them over and over again but IMO this game really isn't something meant to be played for dozens of hours.
Lethal Company really is one of the peaks of the "it's great with friends" genre. It's an inspiring instance of a tiny solo-dev game blowing up for all the right reasons. I don't think it has the content nor the depth to be a long-lasting phenomenon but it absolutely delivers more than enough laughs and screams to make it worth your time.
Lethal Company's secret sauce is some really intuitive design choices that generate predictable, unavoidable friction that meshes well with the horror gameplay. It's textbook survival horror but in a bite-sized package. You got your limited inventory, flashlights with pretty limited battery, carry weight restrictions, and time limit. It's a game of finding yourself not having enough of the things you need - creating those "oh shit" moments very consistently.
The X-Factor here is multiplayer, and more specifically, proximity chat. Lethal Company gets so much milage from this feature: friend's voices echoing through a dark scary hallway, traces of screams as you run away from a horrible creature, someone's voice trailing off into a bottomless pit, marco polo-ing your way back to the ship. It's the perfect fit in this genre and I've love to see more games give it a try.
The comedy of it all can't be overstated either. The aesthetics of the world are serious enough that you feel emersed but also silly enough that you aren't quaking in your boots too much. A great example is the way the player characters move around and interact with things. The walk cycle is janky in the best way, carrying objects looks cumbersome like a dog trying to carry around a stick that's far too big, there's even a dedicated dance button. It feels like the developer really focused in on the "wouldn't it be funny if..." ideas during brainstorming. There's a ton of what I can only describe as slapstick game design: rickety bridges that shatter like glass, pools of nasty quicksand, a vendor that can accidentally eat players alive. There are so many examples of this philosophy and it all adds up to create this iconic moment generator. The downside of these setpieces is they become a lot less interesting as you experience them over and over again but IMO this game really isn't something meant to be played for dozens of hours.
Lethal Company really is one of the peaks of the "it's great with friends" genre. It's an inspiring instance of a tiny solo-dev game blowing up for all the right reasons. I don't think it has the content nor the depth to be a long-lasting phenomenon but it absolutely delivers more than enough laughs and screams to make it worth your time.