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Lobotomy Corporation aka Cabin in the Woods: The game

BrotherFrank

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So this just came out of EA, management game where you're in charge of a facility that studies "abnormalities" and basically try not to let various nightmarish entities (such as the dreaded "magic girl") and other eldritch horrors get released from their captivity.
Failure to do so will result in the reason you bought the game in the first place: monsters running away gruesomely killing your beloved employees and generally having a grand old time running amok.

Initially this seemed so up my alley i almost insta-bought, but years of wisdom and a lot of bad life decisions has tempered my zeal and indeed it seems the game's devs made the mistake of relying on some third party company to translate their game, who did a horrible job and just relied on google translate, resulting in a game that's not only full of typos, but also fails to properly explain a lot of the games concepts (made worst by its use of in game terminology and lingo that won't make sense to a new player).

This combined with not being able to get a sense of how the game actually plays when you're not managing crisis situations means i've held off trying it for now and decided to make a thread on the codex instead.

But damnit, take a look at the list of abnormalities:
http://lobotomycorp.wikia.com/wiki/Abnormalities
Or actually, don't if you'd rather not get spoiled.
But there's quite a lot of monsters of all kinds, some with genuinely cool concepts and whose interactions with staff and environment sounds quite awesome in that its more then just "monster has % chance of killing or corrupting your staff".

TLDR Love the ideas and concepts of the game, not sure if game play is actually any fun though.
 
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Enrymion

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It wasn't that hard to learn, I knew nothing about the game before starting and after a careful read of the in-game help menu and some experimentation I mostly got the gist of it, but at least at the start there is a bit too much just waiting around with nothing to do for my liking, eventually you unlock speed controls(why you don't start with them beats me) which do help. But anyway I think the game was too scary for me, figuring out how one of my first tool abnormalities(they seem to be not listed on the wiki page?) worked was too traumatizing that I haven't really wanted to play since.
 

Snorkack

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But anyway I think the game was too scary for me, figuring out how one of my first tool abnormalities(they seem to be not listed on the wiki page?) worked was too traumatizing that I haven't really wanted to play since.
Now that sounds interesting. Care to explain further?
 

Enrymion

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But anyway I think the game was too scary for me, figuring out how one of my first tool abnormalities(they seem to be not listed on the wiki page?) worked was too traumatizing that I haven't really wanted to play since.
Now that sounds interesting. Care to explain further?
It's a bit silly but something about the animation, the process of figuring it out and the lore of We Can Change Anything was kind of unsettling. Basically it's this happy looking machine that you can put your units inside that produces energy in exchange for health and thinking that my units were dying just because they didn't have enough health(or I just hadn't found the turn off button) I kept sending stronger and stronger employees to it while getting these lore bits based on how long they lasted
  • "After the popularity of "Little Helper" took off, "We Can Change Anything" was released as the second installment of the home robot series."
  • "As to be expected of a product of the xx corporation, it sports various functions."
  • "Does your child cause trouble and cry all the time? We can change that! Don't like your body? Too fat, too skinny? We can change that! Are you not able to get the energy required due to your lack of home or money? We can change that!"
  • "It's simple. Just open the machine, go inside and press the close button. Now everything will be just fine."
  • "The machine will produce energy after employee enters. Seeing as once inside, employees never come out, the inside of the machine must be comfortable."
Also yeah it is listed in the wiki I was just blind.
 

Enrymion

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I would be surprised if it even runs, from the screenshots it looks like it's hacked together with RPGmaker or something like that.
Are you sure you are talking about the same game? None of the screenshots even remotely look like RPGmaker.
 

Snorkack

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But anyway I think the game was too scary for me, figuring out how one of my first tool abnormalities(they seem to be not listed on the wiki page?) worked was too traumatizing that I haven't really wanted to play since.
Now that sounds interesting. Care to explain further?
It's a bit silly but something about the animation, the process of figuring it out and the lore of We Can Change Anything was kind of unsettling. Basically it's this happy looking machine that you can put your units inside that produces energy in exchange for health and thinking that my units were dying just because they didn't have enough health(or I just hadn't found the turn off button) I kept sending stronger and stronger employees to it while getting these lore bits based on how long they lasted
  • "After the popularity of "Little Helper" took off, "We Can Change Anything" was released as the second installment of the home robot series."
  • "As to be expected of a product of the xx corporation, it sports various functions."
  • "Does your child cause trouble and cry all the time? We can change that! Don't like your body? Too fat, too skinny? We can change that! Are you not able to get the energy required due to your lack of home or money? We can change that!"
  • "It's simple. Just open the machine, go inside and press the close button. Now everything will be just fine."
  • "The machine will produce energy after employee enters. Seeing as once inside, employees never come out, the inside of the machine must be comfortable."
Also yeah it is listed in the wiki I was just blind.
Ok, your post really got me hooked. And as I was about to hit 'buy', I saw the system recommendations. What the hell?!
Fucking spoiled indie devs, man.
 

Enrymion

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I saw the system recommendations. What the hell?!
Was there something weird there? They seem more like recommendations than requirements outside of resolution and needing directx9(for one I don't have win 8 and it ran fine).
 
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thesheeep

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Ok, your post really got me hooked. And as I was about to hit 'buy', I saw the system recommendations. What the hell?!
Fucking spoiled indie devs, man.
Eh?
  • OS: Windows 8.1 or later
  • Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: 1280x768 minimum resolution, DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card
  • DirectX: Version 9.0c
  • Storage: 6 GB available space
  • Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible
I mean, yes, the game certainly doesn't look like it would need 8GB RAM or that it should need 6GB of disk space.
But I don't see where any of those numbers are even remotely high.
I have about double the amount/power of the numbers written there (where applicable) and my PC is more than two years old.
 

Snorkack

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Well my pc is 7 years old and i can run most current AAA games. If I can't, it's the gpu that's the bottleneck.
If my i5 2500k is too weak for that kind of game, thats just plain bad optimization on their side. Also, the 8gb requirement stems from a memory leak they are apparently not able to locate. Also, the need for Win 8.1 triggered me.
Anyways, I asked on steam forum and people think it'll run on my machine anyways because devs don't seem to know the difference between requirements and recommendations.
 

BrotherFrank

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All right decided to "try" it, I felt i'll probably end up getting it down the line in a steam sale but unless it's super amazing wouldn't be buying it any time soon.

And eh... My first impressions were kinda on point for my tastes, I love some of the ideas and messing around with the abnormalities, but I kinda hate actually playing the game.
Incoming TLDR.

The "management" aspect is just boring imo, feels like a facebook clicker. Click on dude/click on monster, tell dude where to go/choose employee to do x type of work.
After an employee does his work, abnormality gets a cooldown of 12 seconds or so before can be interacted with again.
My immediate thought was: can i just set a schedule instead? Why i gotta keep telling folks to go back in? It isn't a problem initially when you only have 1-2 abnormalties and you'll be wanting to read the flavor text but later levels you start having quite a bestiary, you'll often be repeating many tasks over and over and it'll distract you from paying attention to what you actually wanna pay attention to. Maybe that's working as intended, but not what I'm looking for in a management sim.
And room placement is fixed. I only have myself to blame for expecting this but when I saw the xcom base style layout I assumed you chose where to place rooms and buildings, maybe even have a form of staff management where gotta keep them sane and fed, maybe give them housing quarters and amenities... 0 of that. Ok not the game's fault but it did end up somewhat annoying me later on when an abnormality I acquired late game would be a zillion miles from my starting department and I just wished in general I could reorganize the layout of my base for a host of reasons. Felt like a massive missed opportunity and ffs this means fallout shelter is more of a management game then Lobotomy Corporation.
:negative:

Oh and Enrymion was right and the steam reviews i read were exaggerating: you can easily figure things out even without the tutorial and stats being things like justice or prudence. But to give an example, justice: it increases attack speed and movement speed stats and makes the agent more effective at "repression" type work (basically making the abnormality feel bad about itself and tell it to stay in a corner and behave, horror monsters have feelings too after all) . Tooltips and trial and error are enough, the first few abnormalities are chilled and don't actually kill anyone, make people crazy at worst but nothing a baseball bat to the head can't fix. So yeah had to correct that bs I repeated previously.

Honestly once I got into it, the stats and how they related made a certain kind of sense.
So let's say you have an abnormality that is some nightmare fuel creature whose disgust for humanity is only matched by its sheer hatred and hunger for flesh...
Maybe it's not a good idea to try and cuddle it or shout at it to stop being so mean? Even if you pick someone with a high "temperance" (the charisma stat) the abnormality will probably still rip their skin off.
So choose "instinct" work instead which is basically your employee nervously trying to stay alive at all costs and jump away at any sudden movement from the abnormality, and make sure that employee has a high "fortitude" (basically the physical/hp stat). Conversely, adopting this approach with an abnormality with a tragic background who just wants a hug will probably only depress it further and push it to flip out. Stuff like this is the game at its best and really makes you want to experiment and get your next new creature asap so you can repeat this process of discovery.

Since was in a rush and wasn't enjoying game enough to deal with the core game play (what i described above is at best 5-10% of what you'll actually be doing most of the time) and didn't like how game design encourages you to grind and play levels to perfection rather then move on with your losses, used cheat engine to basically make employee deaths meaningless (id max out the stats on the department leaders, give decent stats to a second command, everyone else is a redshirt with whom i played normally, and finally fully refresh this lineup at end of each day).
It didn't prevent the game from throwing me curve balls every now and then even with that : I got one abnormality who always broke out and went on a rampage ripping off people's faces no matter what steps you as a player could do. It was highly resistant to any damage type I had access to and its own damage type went through every armor i could field. RNG had simply screwed me over here and was forced to reload from a previous checkpoint.
In another example I thought a new abnormality was safe enough that I sent one of my department leaders to work on it.. It triggered one of the abnormalities conditions and she died a horrible, gruesome death. If i was playing legit i'd have restarted because losing your best employees is a game ender, but being a cheater I just loled and played on.

Final note regarding the save system. You get a checkpoint every 5 days, by time i had enough i was 2 days off the next checkpoint. Felt I "had" to stay and play because had restarted the previous levels a lot and didn't want to throw away 30-45 mins of gameplay (restarting levels a lot due to losses isn't a scrub thing, also don't forget the end of day extra grinding for equipment which is just boring but necessary time waster), or would if i was a legit customer, as it stands it felt like an appropriate end to the "demo". Uninstalled and added to wishlist.

In conclusion had most fun with the game when I didn't actually have to play it the way it was intended and had freedom to larp. Abnormality design and interaction are cool and kept me playing despite my numerous annoyances with the game.

Regarding those silly system specs, my pc doesn't meet them and I had 0 problems so yeah don't know what's going on there.

As a side note, I could see this game being quite lulzy in an lp....
 
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Haba

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The piratez0r version you are playing is like a different game really.

See some LP's on the "legacy" version as comparison:



Current version is WAY easier. You get tons of easy abnormalities, the game straight up tells you everything (via simple unlocks) and you can buy better employees.

It is really radical and I am not sure I like.
 

Haba

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Out of morbid curiosity, I managed to push myself to play up to day 30 or so.

The balance in the game is... "interesting" to say the least.

hraFUfn.jpg


This is the result of one fail. Pretty princess breaches, teleports and shoots a death ray that kills everything on it's path. You absolutely have to have decent meta knowledge or you will get shafted hard.

Certain abnormalities are basically game over condition. And one of them being particularly funny since it happens like 10+ days later, is irreversible (even save scumming doesn't help) and even effects FUTURE games.

It is sort of amusing to have multiple nuclear bombs on a short fuse that you have to juggle. Well, at least until one bad thing leads into another bad thing and you have several of them "tick off" at the same time. You can have such cascading fuckups that it isn't even funny. Relatively benign abnormalities can combo up to genocide your entire workforce. Like one guy who triggers when certain number of employees die.

Not so funny part is when you have some abnormalities that are so annoying that they are broken. One has 1/5 chance of instakilling even on success, one breaks out frequently no matter what you do etc. You need to have the meta knowledge to avoid them.

Late game disasters are absolutely unfair. Like having monsters instantly teleport into every main room, instakilling all employees below level 5. You have limited number of top tier gear that you need to deal with high danger level abnormalities, so it is a literal roll of dice when they breach. Your A-team might be able to salvage the situation IF the abnormality teleports into a favourable location...

The game is at it's best when you are trying to figure out what a new abnormality does, especially when it isn't apparently dangerous right away. But even if you don't wiki-scum, the game kind of ruins it itself. You can simply farm the "clues" in game instead of figuring it out yourself.

And it is a little bit boring that there are so few abnormalities whose danger or true nature doesn't get revealed during the first day. Most of the time it is a simple pattern of "do the wrong thing and someone dies".

Late game is already starting to feel like a major pain. 30+ employees and new abnormalities mainly coming with the game-over condition. Qliphoth Meltdown scales with number of abnormalities, so late game the dice roll for a game over is worse and worse. Fun fun.
 

Tigranes

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Interesting, it was made by a bunch of Korean university students. I think this is their first full game. Crowdfunded, Unity.

Like every startup indie project they faced a struggle as development time went on (e.g. graduating university and needing income) and ultimately released, which might explain some shortcomings on UI/translation/balancing. But they seem to have sold enough after the launch to support with patches/DLC and perhaps a sequel.

Essentially, the translation company that they licensed for the English fucked it up badly (which is basically 80% of all translation jobs anywhere, really), and so they had to scramble to find an alternative who could shore it up.

They mention that This War of Mine devs contacted them early on for publishing the game but it didn't get far.
 

lightbane

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I tried this, expecting something like Dungeon Keeper-lite, but it's closer to Fallout Shelter while being fun and demanding intelligence superior to a game journo (that is, you have to think). As mentioned here before, the game has no balance at all and you can find yourself in a deadly situation in no-time. Thankfully, using common sense and logic works most of the time (ie: Don't use aggressive behaviour against angry beasties that tower over you), but sometimes you stumble upon a being that is considered an end-game boss disguised as a harmless Abnormality, one that remembers its "doomsday clock" even if you start over the game.


Things would be easier if your staff was more expendable: The game certainly makes a point about your guys dying being a normal occurrence, but paradoxically enough having your guys die is a BAD thing: You only have access to up to 5 agents per department/floor, losing an agent also includes all of their gear which is destroyed, can scare off other agents and trigger a mass-wipe, and you're penalized for every dead, giving you less points to buy more staff for later levels. Then there are Abnormalities that require constant human sacrifice, in one way or another, if that wasn't enough. It would have been way easier if you had a way to "summon" people you had in reserve, but that's not possible at the moment.

So, to sum it up the game lacks polish, but it certainly has potential. It's worth a try IMO, for not to mention it's discounted right now.
 

Haba

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It is a best summarized as "interesting". I wouldn't call it a good game, but it has many things to study.

Even the story is something surprisingly deep. Too bad you have to grind a lot to get there.

The whole thing is pretty explicitly about meta knowledge (even plot wise). You are expected to restart your game and try again. Clearing the boss fights makes a new game much easier (reroll abnormality choice? fresh recruits at high level?) but the late game bosses are such major buttpains that I really doubt most people can get past them.
 

Dayyālu

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This game is weird. I mean, weird. All the other posters made good points, but the weirdest thing is this absurd mix of "Facebook-tier clicker game" and a frankly escalating difficulty curve that quickly runs beyond Terror from the Deep levels. All in the same package of "death is common but you can't afford losses if not for disposable scrubs" (Battle Brothers says hello) "high tier equipment is worth more than gold" "fucking up is common and punishing".

And let's not even talk about Meltdowns, that give you unavoidable enemies that become bullshit tier incredibly quickly.

It's almost fascinating. The guys behind this built something novel, at least, despite taking inspiration from a shitton of media. One Abnormality has often more thought in it that the entirety of some legit AAA games. If this was thrown around before the era of Indie saturation, I could have seen it becoming fairly more succesful.

I do wonder if I'll manage to truck on until the end, reaching day 30 means having to endure so much bullshit. SouthKors truly like their corporate distopias, though...
 
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Thinking about buying this in the sale. $15 seems a little extravagant but hearing that it's so unique and weird does make it a bit more tempting. SCP's not my bag at all, "Internet horror" usually just makes me pissy, but the concept for the game sounds neat. A bit annoying because I'm trying to avoid spoilers but there's not a ton of non-niche info floating around out there (That I've seen), so most of what I find is from diehards which I mostly avoid since they may be casually spoiling shit. And it sounds like a good part of the fun is learning the game as you go.
 

Phase

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Thinking about buying this in the sale. $15 seems a little extravagant but hearing that it's so unique and weird does make it a bit more tempting. SCP's not my bag at all, "Internet horror" usually just makes me pissy, but the concept for the game sounds neat. A bit annoying because I'm trying to avoid spoilers but there's not a ton of non-niche info floating around out there (That I've seen), so most of what I find is from diehards which I mostly avoid since they may be casually spoiling shit. And it sounds like a good part of the fun is learning the game as you go.
If the game appeals to you, I don't think it's overpriced. I was reluctant when I bought it since it could turn out to be some shallow style over substance game -- ended up playing 72 hours to get the true ending. Is it good? I think so, but even if it isn't it certainly is not a bad game.

re: horror
Dayyālu said:
corporate distopias
is much closer to what the game is than horror. The art style renders the shock value of what's happening nil. You have to stop and think about what's going on to realize that well, this is rather fucked up.

The only disclaimer I would give is that later on the game becomes very cutthroat, and if you don't find beating the game after it gives you the middle finger cathartic, you might not finish it.
 

lightbane

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I suggest using Cheat Engine and editing some values to make it less grindy and more enjoyable. The game tells you can freely replace lost agents, but then you're actively penalized harshly for losing them. and the option to buy agents for free at decent stats can only be unlocked later on.
 

Dayyālu

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I suggest using Cheat Engine and editing some values to make it less grindy and more enjoyable. The game tells you can freely replace lost agents, but then you're actively penalized harshly for losing them. and the option to buy agents for free at decent stats can only be unlocked later on.

More info on this

I'll freely admit

I've never finished this one, it simply grinds me into dust
 

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