What is Repo?
R.E.P.O. is a co-operative comedy, horror experience for you and up to 7 of your companions to requisition resources from haunted houses. The haunted houses contain a menagerie of monsters; these range from floating heads, to gnomes, to small ducklings that really love being pet.
The company casts you off with a quota that must be reached before they allow exfiltration. They equip you with a single floating shopping cart and a gun that lifts, pulls, and manipulates objects to your will.
The targets of requisition are fragile and lose value if dropped on the floor, hit against a wall, or stepped on by a monster.
Once your team transfers enough goods to the requisition site the company allows you to leave; assuming there’s anyone left alive to leave.
What Separates R.E.P.O from Lethal Company?
We live in a post Lethal Company world. While a wave of mediocre clones wash ashore the digital beaches, surfing the internet is still worth while.
What makes a worthy successor in the world of electronic entertainment?
Surely a quandary quoted by countless creative directors seeking to invest in intellectual property.
The results repeatedly reveal themselves as:
Refine
Reference
Remix
The three R’s of success that echo through any entertainment industry.
Starting with Star Wars, the progenitor of the process.
Nothing original originated from the genius of George Lucas and yet… the triathlon of tropes he produced continues to define popular culture past-and-present.
Star Wars got its effects from Battle from Outer Space.
It’s space fights are shot-for-shot from Dam Busters.
It’s creatures are from E.T.
It’s iconic opening crawl is from Flash Gordon.
The titular Tatooine is inspired by classic westerns, and Luke’s relationship with master Obi-Wan is nearly identical to Lord of the Rings’s Frodo and Gandalf.
Not to mention the abundance of references to Akira Kurosawa who Lucas worked with personally.
All this is to say: “Everything is a Remix.”
So too is R.E.P.O. and in the best possible permutation.
Lethal Company contained a magical mixture of horror, comedy, and corporate despotism that audiences in a late stage capitalist world resonated with.
I argue that R.E.P.O. referenced and remixed each element elegantly enough to expunge interpretations of imitation.
Its Object collection stems from Half-Life plus Operation.
We have Bugsnax to thank for its muppetification.
The game retains the corporate desperation,
but this time through a text conversation.
All this wrapped up in a relatively refined package that succeeds in seceding it from its inspiration.
…
R.E.P.O. is an extremely well-put-together package to boot.
It’s fool-proof physics contain even me, the author of The Art of Breaking Games.
It pulls its imaginative enemies from extensive sources including Minecraft, Ghibli, and Death Stranding.
My favorite change from Lethal Company is the Muppet characters.
The expressive characters provide contrast from the claustrophobic setting, and transform the most mundane of utterances into pure comedy gold.
In my opinion R.E.P.O.’s explosion in the market happened explicitly thanks to the teams willingness to exercise restraint in exiting Lethal Company’s winning formula while exploiting exterior enhancements and refining the overall experience.
So… Should you play R.E.P.O.?
I dunno. Sure.
Thank you for reading
Let me know what your favorite indie horror game is in the comments below:
Sources:
Star Wars: 16 Art and Myth Influences That Inspired the Movies
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