How Mods Can Enhance the Player Experience of Lethal Company

Lethal Company is an upcoming cooperative survival horror video game developed and published by a solo developer going by the name Zeekerss. It was released in early access in October 2023, and has gained a great amount of popularity since then, as estimates say that it has sold more than 10 million copies as of January 2024.

In Lethal Company, you play as an employee of a company, and your mission is to explore abandoned moons to collect scrap which you then sell to the company. Once you have set a destination to a moon, you find yourself entering a facility containing procedurally-generated rooms.

When exploring a facility, you realize you are never more than a few steps away from danger: there are hazardous traps and monsters which lurk in the dark. You may be tempted to stay in the facility to look for more and more scrap, but beware, your spaceship will leave at midnight with, or without you. The outside of the facility also becomes increasingly more dangerous as the sun sets in the evening.

In Lethal Company, death is not uncommon. However, if you play with your friends, it is enough that one of you makes it to the ship before midnight. But even when you play with your friends, the feeling of safety is not certain. Lethal Company uses proximity voice chat, which means that you can only talk with your friends when they’re close-by or if both of you are holding a walkie-talkie.

A screenshot of a first-person video game, where the player is holding a walkie-talkie.

You can reach your faraway-friends with a walkie-talkie

The game works in 3-day cycles, which means you have three days to go explore a moon or moons. After three days, you have to return to your company’s planet to sell your scrap. If you sell enough scrap to reach quota, the next cycle’s quota will be even higher. If not, you will disappoint your company, and you don’t want that to happen!

Lethal Company, despite its simple graphical look, is a game which has captivated players by its exciting gameplay, creepy atmosphere and intriguing alien worlds. Lethal Company feels simultaneously nostalgic and like a breath of fresh air in the game industry. However, Lethal Company is not without its faults. As the game was created by one person, it is lacking polishment we are used to seeing in games with bigger productions. It is not uncommon to encounter bugs, though they are rarely game-breaking. However, as the title is still on early access as of October 2024, it is possible that the game will still get more polished before the full release.

Lethal Company has been out for over a year. During this time, the developer Zeekerss has updated the game with new content frequently. However, if players crave even more content, there is an active modding community for the game. In fact, for me personally, Lethal Company has become one of those games which feels essential to play with mods.

Lethal Company can be played with up to four players. However, a mod called MoreCompany by Notnotnotwipez increases this limit greatly. MoreCompany has been downloaded nearly 20 million times, as it makes sense that many players would want to experience this game with more than a few of their friends. Playing Lethal Company with a big group of friends is a certain kind of fun and chaotic experience which is only possible with mods.

There are a bunch of other mods that could be used to enhance the p#layer experience, such as mods which add new moons or monsters. Some mods increase player expression, by adding new emotes or cosmetics to player characters. There are also mods which increase the quality of life, by fixing bugs or trying to improve existing game mechanics. There are mods that might seem silly, such as replacing one of the common monster’s voices with a “yippee”-sound or replacing a scrap items model with Ikea’s Blåhaj-plush which have become such essential mods which I could not imagine playing without. They’re small changes which make the game a bit more whimsical, but not so big they change the overall atmosphere of the game.