Lethal Company is a viral hit in no small part thanks to all the intense shouting

Work for the Company, die for the Company. Rinse, repeat. Lethal Company is a game all about collecting scrap metal and trying not to die on the job. Sound fun? Sure it does, you just have to watch the gajillion clips on TikTok and other social media platforms to know that it’s the best set-up for co-op shenanigans this year.

Lethal Company is one of those surprise hit games that’s taken streaming and social media by storm. There’s been practically no escaping the slew of clips across my feeds over past weeks, which reminds me of similar moments in gaming when Among Us or Phasmophobia took over Twitch. You’ll find key similarities between those games and Lethal Company, not the least bit how often they all invoke their players to scream and shout—the key ingredient to some sort of viral success?

Lethal Company is a simple game at its core: You land your spaceship on one of a handful of moons, dip into various biomes, scurry like rats around (mostly) abandoned buildings, find scrap, and fly off with your treasures. The goal: Hit the quota set by the mysterious ‘Company’ that employs you or risk getting sucked into space.

The jeopardy comes from the cavalcade of frightening extra-terrestrial/paranormal creatures you’ll bump into with extreme regularity.

At first, you’ll meet a few pesky bugs. They’re almost cute until you touch their stash, at which point they flip out. Maybe you’ll bump into a classic dungeon slime archetype, too. Nothing generally to worry about, as you’ll mostly be killing yourselves doing amateur acrobatics across ravines for the first few goes around—until you meet the real creepy lads.

There’s the metalhead-looking guy that sneaks up on you unless you can win a staring contest. And the spring man, the nope kid, the big chomper, that thing from Dune. These aren’t the official names, of course, though I do feel that in some ways coming up with your own nomenclature as you discover these otherworldly nightmares is part of the co-op entertainment, rather than knowing all the ‘proper’ lingo.

What makes this game so absurdly entertaining is 1) the proximity-based chat and 2) the lack of polish and 3) the social mechanics. The game is scary, and it’s going to make you jump at times, but it’s fun for the massively overblown reactions it generates and way it always keeps you either talking to one another or talking about one another (when you’re dead).

You’ll find yourself giggling as your pal creeps deeper into a dark room. Then laughing as a far-off scream turns to a sudden silence. Then as quickening footsteps approach the room you felt oh so safe inside, the laughing quickly subsides and you’re the one screaming as you sprint towards the door.

All the while those teammates that have perished already chuckle to themselves in spectator mode and are waiting for you to join them after the next respawn to erupt into rapturous laughter at the absolute state of it all.

It’s a hugely social game built around bountiful mishaps. It should probably come as no surprise it’s a mega-hit on social media for it. Lethal Company swept its way onto my TikTok feed like a contagion. My feed is chocked full of clips of perfectly cut screams and well-timed teleports. 

It’s better to show rather than tell when it comes to Lethal Company, and if you haven’t seen any clips of this game yet (though I’m not sure how you could have avoided it), you’re in for a treat. You’ll also find two clips of me and my crack squad of scrap scroungers opening a door to a very large dog… twice. Lethal Company is a hilarious clip generating machine.

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