You have probably seen a clip on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube that shows a group of friends from a video game all screaming for their lives as they die in increasingly comedic ways at the hands of monsters called Coil-Heads, Thumpers, or Forest Giants. The game is called Lethal Company, and yes, it’s just as fun as it looks. Very few games can strike fear into your heart one moment only to leave you gasping for air from laughter a few seconds later, but that is the line that Lethal Company walks perfectly.
The premise of Lethal Company is quite simple: Land on a moon, enter a facility, collect random scrap, avoid the monsters, bring the scrap back to the ship, and sell it for money. If you manage to meet quota then you get to do it all over again. If you fail? Well, capitalism doesn’t take too kindly to a lack of profits.
Thankfully, death in Lethal Company is a fairly minor penalty in the grand scheme of a playthrough. If your crew survives, then you manage to get back on the ship with the only consequence being that you don’t get as much experience and you lose any items you were carrying at the time. If your entire party dies, then you have to start over from the beginning with less funds for buying supplies like walkie-talkies, but restarting a session takes almost no time at all. This quick, seamless style of play helps players not feel discouraged when a run fails and instead encourages them to give it one more go.
At that point, it’s up to the players to make their own fun and set their own goals. Do you want to simply meet quota and move on to a higher bar? You can do that, or you can try to go above and beyond to earn larger potential rewards. The more money you earn, the better equipment you can buy for your excursions to make them easier and more entertaining. Items such as jetpacks, shovels for beating back monsters, and a teleporter to bring back a friend in danger all go from luxuries to a necessity in longer runs. If players want, they can even download mods to enhance their experience even further.
Since Lethal Company is still in early access, the base game — while fun — is missing a few features that can make the experience even better, such as alternative costumes or the ability to play with more than four players. While not a requirement, mods can change Lethal Company from a fun game to one of the best games of the year.
One of the best mods out there right now is one called Skinwalkers. When players load into a session, the game begins listening to your voice and then monsters will be able to talk back to you using the voice of other people in the session. There is nothing quite as terrifying as walking through a hallway only to hear “hey come here” out of nowhere in your friend’s voice. It can make you feel like you’re going crazy, only to burst out into laughter when you realize you’ve been duped, and it’s those moments of laughter that make Lethal Company as fun as it is.
Despite being a horror game, it is not a traditionally scary one. It can be anxiety-inducing and monsters will sneak up on you in scary ways, but nothing ever reaches truly horrifying levels of fear. At most, you’ll get a little nervous turning the corner because you’re worried a coil-head is waiting there, or you weren’t paying attention so a Bracken comes up and snaps your neck, which is obviously startling. None of this ever crosses over into too scary territory, though, making it a great game for people who aren’t a big fan of horror games.
If anything, Lethal Company is more like a campy horror movie than anything else. Can it spook you out occasionally? Sure, but it is best experienced with a group of good friends who are there with you to get scared, laugh, and make it more fun. It’s only $10 on Steam right now and modding it is extremely easy. Grab a group of friends, pick a Saturday night, and just give it a try for a few hours.