The times are good. (Patreon)

Hello, sorry it's been a while since I posted on here. I blame the chaos. I spent the entire last week working on the new creature (the baboon hawks which I teased here before) and fixing the game's most pressing issues. I'm going to talk about the baboon hawk and gloat about what has worked for Lethal Company.

There are many... many new supporters here. Welcome! Thanks so much for supporting, and please know it's not necessary at all.

Baboon hawks

I was very pleased with the baboon hawks' design, and I enjoyed creating their animations and sounds. They have the most animation of any enemy. I had difficulty figuring out how their body and legs would look, as you can see by the garbage thrown into the back here. Modelling legs is always difficult, but with this enemy especially, they never seemed to fit just right; it's the one part of the design that I feel like I could improve. But I'm satisfied overall.

Their design is inspired by Rain World scavengers and scissor birds, and I recently realized they're probably also inspired by the bird enemies from Laika: Aged Through Blood.

The idea behind the baboon hawks is that they target players who they see as vulnerable or alone. They are like gangsters. Each creature I make in Lethal Company turns out to have a personality which is a little askew from the one I envisioned them having. (I see this as a good thing usually, because it's a sign that the AI, like a complicated puppet, has "come to life".) And currently the baboon hawks are less like scary apes and more annoying little trolls who will give you a death by a million cuts.

Their AI is the most complex in the game and is like a mix of Flowerman and the hoarding bug's DNA. Something special is that this enemy lays the groundwork for enemies to interact with each other, at least in basic ways. I have seen the baboon hawks pick fights with non-humans and lose, more than once (which they are not technically supposed to do, but it's funny.) With improvements I want to make them more dangerous but less aggressive when they are not provoked.

There are two types of AI in Lethal Company right now: traditional, robotic enemies with clear strengths and weaknesses, and creatures like this which are attempting to simulate actual animals with a general behavior but no one-beats-all solution. The former is nice because it's familiar and understandable (like the coil heads), whereas the latter is exciting and life-like and somewhat timeless when done just right.

I rushed the baboon hawks out because I wanted to release the update to fix some problems quickly, and I wanted the update to include everything. I think they turned out quite well though, and they will get better.

What can we learn from Lethal Company's success?

I think it's fun and useful to note what I think I did right here (hopefully in a clinical sort of way and without patting myself on the back too much.) I won't do this again for a very long time.

Creativity

- I tried very hard to be aware of my inspirations and changed course to follow those inspirations more closely once I felt like I had gone into the weeds and was losing traction. I was not afraid to accept I could have wasted weeks or even months of hard work. Sometimes getting where you want to go means going backwards.

- If The Upturned did not exist, Lethal Company would not exist! The things I learned in The Upturned I took to Lethal Company. The Upturned was a creative explosion, where I realized that 1: I am a fearful person and developing my games is an escape for me as much as it is an exploration of my fears. Then 2: Horror games do not have to take themselves seriously all the time, and they do not have to be scary all the time. And 3 (on an unrelated note): I am capable of doing a lot more than I think, and challenging myself is necessary. Which is why I made an online multiplayer game.

Mechanics

I think these things are what makes Lethal Company extra fun:

• Strong divisions and boundaries

Leaving one space and entering another is great for dramatic effect. I think Phasmophobia did it best. In Lethal Company these are the entrances/exits to the facility as well as the players' ship. They make natural tension-and-release cycles. Additionally sometimes there's a semi-safe area outside the facility, like a high point enemies can't climb; I was originally concerned about Lethal Company's level structure because it felt so segmented to me (like jamming two games together), but it is actually awesome for pacing.

• Terrible Generations / uncapped randomness and cruelty

I took a lot of care in setting the probabilities for what can happen while at the same time not caring at all. For example, the landmines and turrets are spawned using exponential line graphs, meaning that the turrets usually spawn in numbers of 1-5 but very rarely can spawn in numbers up to 50. Lightning can strike the same place twenty times.

I don't want to limit the randomness just to decrease the likeliness of terrible, unlucky map generations, like a single hallway filled with 50 turrets and 50 landmines and Flowerman and steam leaks; actually, I feel like the terrible generations are a part of the fun, and if you make a game with procedurally generated maps and enemies and obstacles and events, that's something you're signing up for. Instead there's as many options as possible to circumvent the terrible generations, like the fire exits, teleporters, extension ladders and lock-pickers, and the ability to disable hazards with the terminal. I think as a result of the randomness, one or two deaths feels almost expected in Lethal Company, and the skill element is more-so about how the remaining players will react to the misfortune.

• Movement

I might be wrong, but I think this is missing from too many indie horror games (including co-op horror games). Jumping feels unnecessary at first but unlocks so many new interactions. I also tried to polish the sprinting so it's not a linear, robotic increase in speed. It's not just for game-feel. Nintendo puts a lot of care into fundamental mechanics like this for a reason. I want to see this in more indie horror games. It feels extra but it's not.

I have loved watching people have fun, and I'm soaking up the game's attention while it lasts. I have felt some imposter syndrome, which is par for the course. It usually manifests in the feeling that the game is fragile and that by touching it I could break it somehow (perhaps by "fixing" something or just adding things in). Nonetheless, I want the next update to have even more content than the first one. But I'm going to start by fixing some glitches once and for all which have been killing me.