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If you want a single-player Lethal Company, don’t miss the developer’s previous It StealsPac-Man meets Slender Man
Pac-Man meets Slender Man
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Zeekerss
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Zeekerss
Great was the consternation of singleplayerhorrorlikers at the popularity ofLethal Company, a landmark creepfest and satire of corporate piecework that is best enjoyed in groups of four. When will developer Zeekerss give us a proper singleplayer campaign mode, the loners of the gaming community wondered, peering from their boltholes and eyries. A Lethal Sole Trader, as it were - or failing that, how about some bot support? Well, this particular monkeypaw finger has curled. It curled about four years ago, actually, when Zeekerss released singleplayer-only horror compilationIt Steals.
I’ve been playing It Steals (available onItchandSteamfor £4 or $5) as part of our latest Lethal Company-dedicatedGame Club, and let me tell you, it makes Lethal Company look positively, er, Nonlethal. There are many points of comparison between games, but while Lethal Company is geared more obviously for laughs, with its whoopie cushions and ReactionTube-friendly co-op mechanics, It Creeps just wants to scare you shitless. It’s also brilliant.
There’s a choice of graphics settings - it doesn’t have to look this pixellated. |Image credit:Zeekerss
Even amid the panic, it’s possible to admire It Steals for its wit and playfulness. Yes, horror games can be playful! They’re more often playful than not, I think, inasmuch as horror lends itself to shortform experiments that boil things down to a mechanic such as Hide And Seek that is at once self-explanatory and suspenseful and open-ended. Hide And Seek is one of the other It Steals modes, as it happens: you get to play both hider and seeker. Best not seek too hard.
It Steals is one ofseveral smaller horror projectsZeekerss worked on before hitting the big time with Lethal Company. Much as I enjoy the latter, I think the former is the developer’s most accomplished creation. It leaves me all the more curious to see what Zeekerss gets up to now they’re raking in the megabucks: hopefully, they’ll treat us to a few more lo-fi experiments like this.
