Ever since Lethal Company burst onto the scene more than a year ago, several studios have tried grabbing a piece of the extraction co-op pie. But after living through a few “wanna-be” derivatives, we may have something that can take the lion’s share of eyeballs. Welcome to the weird and wacky world of R.E.P.O.
R.E.P.O. is an online co-op extraction game with up to 6 players. Similar to said Lethal Company, our objective is to find and extract valuables across a handful of locations. The twist is that the game is fully physics-based, with every bit of hilarity associated with swinging objects around mid-air.
There’s not much of a story in R.E.P.O. All we know so far is that we are a team of robots created to fulfill the wishes of our creator, and it so happens that our creator wants valuables left behind in monster-infested locations. So, it is our raison d’être, aka our purpose, to retrieve these valuables and hopefully make our creator happy.
What sets our little robots apart from Lethal Company employees is that the bots are designed to work as a team. What I mean by this is that employees carry valuables in their pockets and have to make runs back and forth to the job site. On the other hand, the robots place valuables on carts to “secure” the goods for their inevitable transport.
The bots also have the ability to share health with other members of the team. This increases the life expectancy of the team by several seconds after encountering the monsters that roam the dark, empty corridors of the abandoned sites.
Finally, bots have a built-in self-destruct function. Why? I don’t quite know. I’ll leave this bit of information up for your discretion.
Upon arriving on site, the team goes room to room in search of anything of value. This can range from small trinkets to huge analysis computers. Your singular at that moment is to bring enough items back to the extraction point to exceed the minimum required amount. Additionally, bringing fallen comrades’ heads back to an active extraction point will reactivate them, albeit with a sliver of health.
In later levels, the number of extraction points increases as the locations simultaneously grow in size. What initially started as a simple apartment-sized location quickly turns into a maze of corridors and dead ends. The fun part then is looking inside every nook and cranny to locate the most elusive of valuables.
As part of a team that’s come up short numerous times, I say every bit counts. But you can’t cry over every lost item. That stuff happens all the time to the best of us.
After every successful repo mission, you return to a gas station of sorts where you can buy upgrades and tools that will come in handy in a range of situations. This is where we find another aspect that sets it apart from other games in the genre: you can actively purchase weapons that allow you to fight back against the monsters. I know it’s kind of strange as it removes much of the horror aspect, but hear me out – the potential for a botched counterattack is more hilarious than you think. At least that’s what I say to myself after failing to stop the hunter dead in its tracks.
For my initial impressions this early in Early Access, I feel like the monsters act more like security guards than actual threats. Most of the dangerous monsters patrol the halls and will react if a bot enters their line of sight. The exception is one I call the Hunter, a blind humanoid entity that reacts to sound. As of the writing of this article, there isn’t much variety in monster types. You can probably discover all of them within the first hour of a run. With that being said, I expect more intriguing monsters to be added down the line.
The Poltergeist is the most interesting monster I’ve come across so far. It is essentially an invisible entity that picks us robots up and drops us off deep into the map. Under the right circumstances, that could actually be useful, but I often find it a hassle to get back to the team while avoiding greater threats.
There seems to be a nice balance between monster encounters. It doesn’t happen so often that the team’s progress is at a snail’s pace, and it’s not too infrequent that I no longer need to look over my shoulder. Of course, this opinion can completely change once we’ve reached level 10 or something. (Something we’ve failed to do after more than 6 hours of play).
The physics is the thing the game has going for it. You don’t really know what you’re picking up until you set it down, and it does… something. The toy frogs are some of the most distressing items ever to come my way. If you drop it at any point in time, it will start moving and making noise. It’s a waste but I can see a use for it as an impromptu decoy device that draws away monsters.
Teamwork makes the dream work in this game. Some objects require the full squad to transport them smoothly to the extraction point. Large vases and the aforementioned analysis computers come to mind. These objects are worth a lot of money and are the easiest to transport. Huge objects like harps and fragile boxes are more difficult to deal with, but the rewards are undeniable.
R.E.P.O. is a simple yet highly enjoyable co-op game. I was expecting to have a bit of fun with this one for a couple of days. I did not count on return runs along with the crew. Aside from a couple of annoying glitches involving item placement on extraction, the game is surprisingly bug-free. I don’t know how long that will last as more stuff gets added to the game, but I’m willing to continue my work repossessing valuables for my creator as long as the updates keep coming.
I’ll probably reflect on everything written in this Early Access review when the game fully launches on Steam. With any luck, I might look back on a fun and eventful year full of laughs and surprise horror moments.
