Lethal Company

You work for the Company. The Company sets a profit quota every three days. You fly to abandoned industrial moons, walk into facilities full of things that kill you, carry scrap back to the ship, and sell it. Meet the quota and it goes up. Miss it and you are fired, which means ejected into space.

There is no ending and no winning. The game is a treadmill designed to eventually kill you, and the entertainment is entirely in how your crew behaves on the way. Proximity voice chat and walkie-talkies mean you hear your friends panic in real time, at the correct volume, from the correct direction.

• Three days per quota cycle, then a trip to the Company building to sell.
• Each moon has a difficulty and a weather condition, and both change what the run costs you.
• Death is permanent for that run. Your body, and the scrap you were carrying, stay where you fell.
• The ship terminal is a second job: someone has to read the map, open doors and call out monsters.

1. 1

   Take a flashlight and a walkie

   Buy the basics before the first landing. A crew with no radios is a crew that dies separately.

2. 2

   One person stays on the terminal

   The terminal operator sees the radar, opens security doors, disables turrets and warns people. It is the most important job and new crews always skip it.

3. 3

   Go in pairs

   Two people with one light is safer than two people alone. Solo scrap runs are how the crew shrinks.

4. 4

   Watch the clock

   The ship leaves at a fixed time. Being underground at nightfall is the single most common way a full crew dies.

5. 5

   Carry scrap out in trips

   Two-handed items slow you down and stop you using tools. Stage loot by the entrance and ferry it.

6. 6

   Sell at the Company

   Hit the quota, take the surplus, buy upgrades. Then it gets harder.

• Communicate location before panic: "third floor, east stairs" beats screaming.
• Do not all crowd one corridor. Split coverage, share light.
• Announce when you are leaving the facility so nobody waits for you.
• Nobody is obliged to save you, and the funniest outcomes come from that being true.
• The terminal operator should narrate: door timers, radar blips, and who is about to walk into something.

The setting is bleak corporate comedy. Humanity has strip-mined and abandoned these moons, and the Company sends disposable contractors to scrape value off the corpses of its own operations. You are told almost nothing and you are worth almost nothing.

• The facilities are industrial ruins with the lights still on, which is far more unsettling than any haunted house.
• The Company communicates in cheerful bulletins that never once acknowledge the death toll.
• The bestiary reads like a field manual written by someone who never had to go outside.
• There is no rescue, no arc and no promotion. The horror is the employment contract.

• Buy a pro-flashlight and a shovel early. Light and a swing solve a surprising amount.
• The ship is safety. Anything on the ship is banked, anything in your hands is not.
• Learn the door and turret controls on the terminal. They save lives.
• Fire exits are shortcuts. Find them on the way in, use them on the way out.
• Do not sprint everywhere. Stamina is what you need for the actual emergency.
• Play with mods once you know the base game, not before. The vanilla learning curve is the good part.

• The Steam page and patch notes for what the latest update changed.
• The community wiki, once you have died to something and want to know what it was.
• Ask in our Discord. This is the easiest game here to fill a lobby for on a weeknight.