Lethal Company has a lot interesting ideas. It's a game where you repeatedly enter and explore maze-like environments to retrieve items, all while avoiding various hazards. The game is designed to be played with friends, and builds a "horror movie" sensation by forcing players to split up and coordinate over walkie-talkies.
Above all else, it suffers from an extremely weak foundation. Strip away all the monsters, traps, and deadlines, and you're left with a fundamentally boring gameplay loop: "walk into building, pick up item, carry item back to ship."
Therefore the hazards become the core method of player engagement, and here we see another flaw: the most engaging part of the game is encountering monsters, but the game's primary objective encourages players to minimize monster encounters. The game actively incentivizes players to optimize the fun out of the experience.
In the game's current state, the only way to prevent this problem is to continually introduce new hazards, so players are constantly being forced to learn and adapt without ever hitting a plateau where the game is understood well enough to begin that optimization process. Yet even with infinite resources to continually crank out new threats, there are only so many variations of "thing that kills you."
The only way I could see Lethal Company maintaining relevance long-term is if the devs focus on how all the various hazards/tools interact with one another to create unique problems/solutions that demand teamwork and critical thought. Akin almost to a cooperative puzzle game.
For this to work, however, the core mechanics would need to be broadened to give players more ways to interact with the world and with one another. In its current state, the solutions to Lethal Company's dangers far too often boil down to "avoid" or "flee."
All this said, there currently IS one bright spot of complex, cooperative problem solving found in Lethal Company; the ability for one player to hang back in the ship and act as a sort of "Mission Control" for the players who go out to collect things. The MC can use a map to guide players, use emergency teleporters to pull them from danger, and lock doors or disable traps.
To keep things balanced, the MC's map is extremely barebones, with hazards and items appearing only as coloured dots. This means MC must rely on players to provide clarification, creating an engaging back-and-forth to interactions.
This mechanic is unique, engaging, and provides a much-needed layer of complexity to the whole experience. While still relatively barebones, it definitely holds the potential for long-term engagement.
Secret!
〰️
Secret! 〰️
Lethal Company: Design Notes
Lethal Company has a lot interesting ideas. It's a game where you repeatedly enter and explore maze-like environments to retrieve items, all while avoiding various hazards. The game is designed to be played with friends, and builds a "horror movie" sensation by forcing players to split up and coordinate over walkie-talkies.
Above all else, it suffers from an extremely weak foundation. Strip away all the monsters, traps, and deadlines, and you're left with a fundamentally boring gameplay loop: "walk into building, pick up item, carry item back to ship."
Therefore the hazards become the core method of player engagement, and here we see another flaw: the most engaging part of the game is encountering monsters, but the game's primary objective encourages players to minimize monster encounters. The game actively incentivizes players to optimize the fun out of the experience.
In the game's current state, the only way to prevent this problem is to continually introduce new hazards, so players are constantly being forced to learn and adapt without ever hitting a plateau where the game is understood well enough to begin that optimization process. Yet even with infinite resources to continually crank out new threats, there are only so many variations of "thing that kills you."
The only way I could see Lethal Company maintaining relevance long-term is if the devs focus on how all the various hazards/tools interact with one another to create unique problems/solutions that demand teamwork and critical thought. Akin almost to a cooperative puzzle game.
For this to work, however, the core mechanics would need to be broadened to give players more ways to interact with the world and with one another. In its current state, the solutions to Lethal Company's dangers far too often boil down to "avoid" or "flee."
All this said, there currently IS one bright spot of complex, cooperative problem solving found in Lethal Company; the ability for one player to hang back in the ship and act as a sort of "Mission Control" for the players who go out to collect things. The MC can use a map to guide players, use emergency teleporters to pull them from danger, and lock doors or disable traps.
To keep things balanced, the MC's map is extremely barebones, with hazards and items appearing only as coloured dots. This means MC must rely on players to provide clarification, creating an engaging back-and-forth to interactions.
This mechanic is unique, engaging, and provides a much-needed layer of complexity to the whole experience. While still relatively barebones, it definitely holds the potential for long-term engagement.
