Ranting about REPO

So for the past couple weeks, REPO has been the game for me and my friends to play non-stop. I was the most excited to try it at first, but my first impressions almost made me abandon it. I'm glad I gave it a second try, because REPO's "fun curve" was a little more gradual than I expected it would be, and I'm still loving this game after 30 hours spent!

So I want to talk about it. What makes REPO special, what makes it a legit fun game and not just a fun gimmick as Content Warning was. (No offense intended.) Then I want to talk about where REPO diverges from the design choices I would have made. And finally, I want to talk about REPO's main weaknesses and problems and where it has the most potential for growth.

Why is this game still so fun?

If I had to name the single best thing about REPO on the surface, maybe it is the large items which need to be carried by multiple players, as if you're all in a moving simulator. Sometimes this is hilarious on its own, but it's elevated by the fact that it's a horror game. It is an objective which requires you to strategize with your team and engrosses you in the careful precision of the task. And when something walks through the door, it's like a crazed criminal busting into an operation room where a surgery is ongoing.

With the multiple extraction points spread out across the map, each of which are too small to fit everything, and the limited arsenal of items, there is enough strategic depth to this that each level feels like its own story. The pacing feels just right to build suspense and let the game breathe (at least for the first five or so levels.) There's also just a lot of variety to the 3 area types.

The second best thing about this game is the ability you have to fight back. For us, this side of REPO extended its lifespan by double of what it probably would have been. Stamina and weapons are limited, enemies are punishing, and most of all, the physics are random and unwieldy. But the developers recognized this, so how did they make it work?

There are two types of weapons in REPO: stuns and damage. Stuns are super important, because they give you a serious chance to wail on an enemy. Combat becomes about setting up a trap for a menace, which you then follow up with a beat-down.

At its best, the game properly feels like a coiled up spring of potential chaos, which then unleashes all at once in victory or comedy. I love making a big monster fall on its face, then gathering together and picking it up like a piece of furniture to slam it up and down or drop it down a pit, before it wakes up. The shift in power is very dramatic, and it's about making the most of the moment. It feels like you actually have to improvise a semblance of a plan together if you want to make it work, and that's great. It feels like a natural extension of the game's main objective and mechanics.

Lastly, I want to mention how hysterical the enemy designs are. I mean, some of them are just beautiful to behold. My favorite is Mr. Thunder Thighs--if you know, you know.

What does REPO do that I wouldn't have done?

• One thing that I've noticed is that every enemy in REPO is stealthy--almost completely silent when roaming. This seems crazy, but I've realized it would be a little easy if you could hear where enemies are at all times. REPO is a tightly-packed, slow-paced game. Often, you are carrying a big item down over a railing or staircase, and the suspense is that an enemy could be in the next room over. And I love that a giant brute can just casually open a door, causing us all to duck and roll. I really like that this game's MO is not to oppress you constantly with a predictable, looming presence--instead, anything can be just around the corner.

  Like that giant, floating head. It reminds me of those floating shark images set to quiet, calming forest ambiance. They were supposed to be funny, but the idea is terrifying to me if I'm being honest.

  

• REPO revolves around a rigid stealth system, where if you are crouching under something so that your body is shrunk, then you are completely safe from detection. I've tended to shy away from this type of stealth, since you tend to feel pretty safe when hiding, and this results in a lot of... waiting. This does become an actual problem when hiding is the only option--particularly in the later levels, when enemies come in droves and the economy gets scarce. But I do like the feeling of jumping between hiding places like a mole, and it means that you can feel much more vulnerable out in the open. This is a choice REPO has made, and it works fine.

• Quite a few enemies can hear your voice-chat or even text-to-speech output. And I'm still not sure which ones, because my friend group has opted to just stop talking when any enemies are around.

  In Lethal Company, the only enemy that can hear you speak is the eyeless dogs, which appear outside at night and usually only hear you when the ship's door is open. And I've held back from adding any voice-hearing enemies indoors, period, because I want players to talk.

  Thankfully, it seems like enemies in REPO don't hear you from very far or hear you at all if you aren't in line of sight, so we feel bold enough to speak if we're not actively hiding. And I do like that I'm not supposed to laugh aloud if something funny happens in front of me while I'm hiding, because that does make it funnier.

  I think the whispering TTS should not be heard by enemies unless they're right on you, though. And ideally, enemies would give an indication that they are hearing you speak before it's too late.

• Stamina is very, very scarce, which means you spend a lot of time walking. This was one of my pet peeves that made me almost drop the game after the first day we played it. But I did get used to it, and it becomes less of an issue when you get a hang of all the other mechanics. Once you know what you're doing and when you should use it, the limited stamina isn't as annoying.

Problems

I want to mention some things that are just clearly problems that need to be fixed, in my opinion.

• First of all, the most important thing they can do right now is to improve the game's method of syncing physics. I'm lucky to play the game with a powerful internet with friends who live in the same city. But even then, latency makes melee weapons almost impossible to use if you are not the host. I can only imagine playing with someone across the world. Perhaps they can add an "ownership" system, where your computer always calculates the physics of items that you are carrying (as opposed to the server host calculating everything and then syncing it.) I hope they prioritize this.

• Besides that, I think levels 5 and 6 are when REPO downgrades. This is where the game tries to become more challenging. The problem is that items and upgrades get prohibitively expensive, while making money becomes more difficult as levels begin to fill up with enemies; fighting multiple enemies at a time feels just impossible, and energy crystals become so expensive that it causes a downward spiral. The result is that you spend 10x as much time hiding, because that's the only option left.

  Instead, players should get scaled up as the game gets more difficult, and the shop should upgrade along with them. Like, I want to spend all my money to buy 20 explosive mines!

• It's absolutely possible to softlock yourself within a level by destroying all the valuables. Maybe the devs naively thought this would never happen... but it has happened to us three times, when we were trying our honest best. Sometimes Murphy's law applies. And if the game really is secretly spawning just one or two small items to tide us over, that's not enough.

  (Hey, what if there was a secret objective that involved destroying everything? Like rebelling against the taxman. I'd make this the method of initiating the final boss.)

• Just a few enemy designs are flawed or lacking. This is an area where I personally feel like I have some expertise.

  The invisible guy that picks you up and runs away with you. At first, players just don't know what is happening when someone gets grabbed (because he's invisible), which makes it less funny and more confusing. And though it seems like you should be able to rescue a player by pulling them away from the invisible man, that's actually impossible as he has an iron grip. He's just annoying, but I like that he can't actually hurt you. He should at least become visible the moment he grabs someone.

  The ceiling eyeballs that lock your camera onto them. These almost make perfect sense design-wise. What frustrates me is that they instantly force you to lock onto them if they have line of sight to you, even if you were looking down at the floor. Shouldn't it be that they only lock onto you if you are looking in their direction? Instead, you just cannot avoid triggering them, which just makes them frustrating--especially when there are multiple in the same room. The only option is to wait for them to leave, which is lame.

  The huntsman who hilariously uses his gun as a walking stick. The other enemies are just annoying, but the huntsman is actually problematic. He can hear your voice and shoot you from outside the game's default view distance, where you can't see or hear him. This is an unavoidable death. There is no "wind-up" that allows you to duck for cover, as he seems to fire in the exact same frame that he notices you; even if he's looking the other way, he will instantly snap back and shoot you.

  This single enemy is so oppressive that he totally kills any sense of casual fun or banter. My group will completely stop talking and only crouch.

• The last issue I've noticed is the revive system. The game can be very slow-paced as a result of the hiding mechanic, fragile items, and low stamina. Naturally, it gets slower and slower the less players are alive. That's fine.

  But this means when the game gets to 1 player left, the game slows to a crawl and can really drag out, depending on how much this one player needs to collect--and ESPECIALLY if you're in the later levels, where it seems like most items are big, heavy stuff. Quite often, I will spend over 25 minutes waiting to be revived, watching one or two people do the work of four or five.

  What if there was some kind of mechanic where you get to take upgrades from dead players' heads until they are revived? Or what if the last player alive got to choose ONE player to revive for free. It could require returning to the truck (and maybe spending money or health or something.) Adding a timer would not work, and I really hope they don't try to do that. Something just needs to give players a boost when they are down to one.

  My friend mentioned a mod where dead players can roll their heads back to the truck to revive, which is genius, although it makes it just a little too easy.

Where can REPO improve?

This game has room to grow in every aspect, and I'm really excited. This is dreaming, but what if, instead of a pretty loading screen, you could actually drive the truck as a physics-based car and take it between areas? You could choose between different shops and maybe other types of areas.

What about bosses?

My more reasonable dream is that I would love to be able to take furniture back into the truck to keep. Speaking of that...

I'm accepting the fact that Welcome To The Dark Place is taxing to work on for long amounts of time, and I need time to stew over my ideas. Perhaps playing REPO has also inspired me to switch back to Lethal. So I've begun work on V70. I wrote up a document outlining my basic vision for Lethal Company leading to early access, and my energy level is suddenly very high. Again, I don't know if that's seasonal or if it's because I switched projects.

It will be a little while though.