SteemGC Game Review - Lobotomy Corporation

in #gaming6 years ago

Hello Gamers! this is @tsukuyomi and today I'm back with another (lenghty) review for you guys!


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Lobotomy Corporation



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Face the fear, build the Future.


When humanity has expanded so much that the normal means of generating power are not enough to satisfy every need, the solution is to start considering the paranormal means.

Lobotomy Corporation is doing just that, and that's it's motto.

Now, as the new manager of this corporation you'll have to manage and watch almost everything inside it, you'll have to decide what's more important, your employees lives or the progress and success of the corporation.

Something obscure and mysterious awaits.


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The Corporation.


"Lobotomy Corporation | Monster Management Simulator" is the full name of this game, already including its genre in it. In this game you'll have a number of monsters, called "abnormalities", that you'll have to care, study and secure in order to generate the maximun amount of energy from this being and doing it while maintaining your employees safe, ending the day without casualties.


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If you're a fan of SCP readings this theme will probably sound familiar to you, and personally it was what attracted me to it in the first place.
It's noticeable how this game bases its theme upon SCP Foundation, which, if you haven't heard about it, is a more than a decade old collaborative online storytelling project, based around a clandestine and ultra-secret group that seeks to capture and study anomalous beings, but the difference here is that meanwhile SCP Foundation captures the creatures to maintain the population safe and make scientific advances, Lobotomy Corp uses them to create an efficient way to generate power and help humanity thrive.

You take the role of the new manager of Lobotomy Corp, now you need to learn how to manage your employees, ordering them to perform one of four kinds of activities on the abnormalities to see how they will react, and with the energy they create based on their reaction you'll learn more about them, making it easier for you to know what to do next to generate the maximun amount of power posible from this being and how to maintain it calm in its cell while doing it, avoiding breaches and posible casualties.


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Lobotomy Corporation is a complex game masked as something simple. There are a lot of things to be aware of but the progress of the game is slow enough for you to make yourself comfortable with every mechanic.

Let's get into the details!

Sephiras and their teams.


Lobotomy Corporation divides its structure in several departments, each one with their own teams and "Sephiras", from the plural "Sephirot". Sephiras are AI that take the role of bosses inside this departments. They care and manage the employees inside them and also serve as adviser for you, the manager.


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In the game, the departments are like stages, you need to complete [survive] a set of days managing a department to unlock it completely and then proceed to another one.

In each department you visit and take care of you'll find and meet the Sephira that's in charge there, they'll inform you of ocurrences while you're in the managing phase, so you'll be seen them a lot. Every one of them has a different personality, they'll talk to you constantly, so if you do your work well you'll be respected by them!


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"If I’m the cerebrum, they are the cerebellums."
-Angela

Angela is the superior AI, the overall boss of the other departments. She'll be your main company in all the game and she does like to talk. From the beginning you'll notice how she is pretentious and arrogant over her status and power over the other AI... It's a little annoying after a while but it's understandable.

Lobotomy Corporation shares elements of Visual Novel, giving you the choice to talk to other Sephiras and to Angela and having choices between their dialogs. Nevertheless, this choices only have dialog consequences, no gameplay changes or any particular event-trigger in the actual game.
Although is just that it's quite a cool little feature and it's interesting to get to know and talk to this beings.


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You'll not only learn about the AI but about the story of the company, its goal, of who do you work for, and stories about other employees... Some of them can get pretty dark by the way, but it's exciting to end the day and talk to this characters to see what else you can uncover about this strange place.

Employees.


Employees are your most valuable asset, you must do your best to manage them wisely.

Employees can be hired at the beginning of every day with a currency you'll earn by surviving each day. Of course, if all of your employees survive the day, the more points you'll earn.


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This points can be used to hire and modify the stats of the employee you're about to hire, or you can also spend them by improving your actual employees.


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Each employee has a set of stats and it's important that you keep track of them. This stats are:

  • Fortitude: This affects the maximum HP of the employee.
  • Prudence: This affects the maximum amount of Sanity of the employee.
  • Temperance: This improves the work success rate and work speed with every abnormality.
  • Justice: This affects their attack and movement speed.

You read well, they have a Sanity bar which mean they can end up being insane. Having constant contact with a being that's not natural to human eyes can be dangerous to your employee's mind and you really don't want to see them afflicted. When an employee's sanity bar is depleted they'll get afflicted, attacking anything that cross their path. The only way to supress them is death, so insanity is quite the punishment in this game... You really don't want to lose your favorite employee, or maybe the must useful.

... And they aren't pretty when they get afflicted and start killing your other employees... This wasn't so gentle.


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Anyway, as I said before, it's important that you keep track of their stats now that they improve at the end of the day depending on which kind work they performed during the managing phase and some Abnormalities can only be interacted by employees with a certain amount of a certain stat, if there's not an ellegible employees then that abnormality will probably escape and cause a breach.

Your employees will also be promoted depending on their success rate in their works and how much experience they have with the others abnormalities. For example, this is my second employee in this playthrough, she had to interact with every abnormality in her department and had quite the success while doing it, thanks to that she was promoted to Captain. It's a small but cool detail!


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Employees can also be equipped with special weapons and armors that are harvested from this abnormalities. They are called E.G.O. equipment. The more powerful the abnormality is, more probable is for you to harvest powerful equipment.


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It's also important that you manage well this equipments now that they're limited. Also, each weapon has an attribute damage and each armor can be weak or strong against certain types of damage. These are:

  • White Damage: Also known as "Holy" Damage. This kind of damage only affects the sanity bar.
  • Dark Damage: This type of damage affects both, HP and Sanity bar.
  • Red Damage: Also Known as "Physical Damage". This is raw damage and affects only the HP bar.
  • Pale Damage: This is unknown damage and it's dealt by a porcentage of the employee's maximum HP.

Pale Damage is really dangerous, specially because almost all E.G.O Suits are weak against it. Take great caution with Abnormalities that deal this kind of damage.

Monsters, anomalies... Abnormalities.


"Every Abnormality may not have [a] reason to exist, but have [has an] intention to exist."

That's the sentence I read when I accepted my first real challenge into the Corp, it was called "The Singing Machine".


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Lobotomy Corporation has a roster of more than 100 monsters to discover, study and supress. As a fan of SCP Foundation it was pretty exciting for me to have all this monsters to see and study.

Each of them has a code name and a rank that will describe it's theme and how dangerous it is.

At the end of every day during the first 4 or 8 days managing a department you'll get to choose over 3 random cages that contain an abnormality. When you hover over them you'll get a sentence that will give you a hint about the abnormality that's inside, then you'll need to choose only one.


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Every abnormality it's a completely unknown thing for you so you'll have to refer to it by its code name. The interesting thing is that this code name already reveals what its theme is, so if you pay attention, you can decide over the cages having a little more context about the abnormality that's inside.

The first letter classifies its origin, Fairy Tale, Trauma, Original, the second number classifies its type: 1 for humanoid, 2 for animal, 3 for religious, 4 for inanimate object, 5 for machine or artifact, 6 for abstraction or amalgamation, 9 for tool.


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Abnormalities can come as inanimate objects which need to be used to study them. These are known as Tool Abnormalities. The employees you order to study this kind of abnormalities will use them and depending on the time they do, you'll gain more information about it. But be careful, some of them require sacrifices and some others won't let your employees go out of the unit alive. This kind abnormalities usually can't escape but they can activate their special ability, which can vary from decreasing all employees sanity to causing an abnormality at random to escape.


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But of course, the abnormalities that aren't considered "Tools" can escape and cause breaches. Each unit in which the abnormality is contained will have something called a "Qliphoth Counter" which will determine when the abnormality is planning to escape. The lower the number, the more probable is for it to cause a breach. When an Qliphoth Meltdown is announced on an abnormality you'll have to send a Employee to perform a study to it ASAP so the Qliphoth Counter resets.


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When an abnormality succeeds on its escape, you'll have to send one or more employees to supress it depending on how strong it is. Each abnormality has damage weaknesses so it's important you study them completely so you can learn how to supress it efficiently, fast and without any casualties.


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As I said, every abnormality has a rank describing its risk level, this ranks are: ZAYIN, TETH, HE, WAW and ALEPH, from least dangerous to "End World Scenario".

This ranks don't only describe how strong they will be in a breach scenario, but they also indicates how difficult it is to study and interact successfully. I'll put the Singing Machine as an example. That abnormality is delicate and only employees with Fortitude with 3 or less and Temperance of 2 or more can interact with it, if not, it would mean an instant death for the employee at the end of the work performed. And as I already explained, it's difficult to maintain an employee stats now that they improve over the days, so the solution is to keep hiring and wasting your points or mantain alternate employees that only work with ZAYIN abnormalities so they don't level so quickly.


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Studying abnormalities will grant you with PE-boxes, which is like the power currency you need to accumulate to an extend to reach the end of the day. This PE-Boxes are also used as currency to unlock additional information of the abnomality and to harvest their equipment, the thing is that you can only use the boxes generated by that specific abnormality to unlock its information and harvest it.


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Ordeals.


Ordeals are abnormalities that can't be contained, they take the form of random events that occur when you mess to much with your abnormalities and they have ranks too, from least risky to "You'll surely lose a couple of employees" they are: DAWN, NOON, DUSK and MIDNIGHT.


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Take notice that in a "NOON" scenario you'll probably lose a employee, there are abnormalities that appear during these kind of event that deal and inta-death blow to the first employee they see. You like this little boy that drops from the ceiling at random and kills everything on its way down. Imagine how crazy the "MIDNIGHT" events are...


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During this events abnormalities will spawn at random locations in the Corp and you'll have to supress them quickly before they mess with your other abnormalities.

The developers created this kind of events to avoid players to win the game by only paying attention to Qliphoth Meltdowns announces and taking care of them, preventing the abnormality to escape.


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This Ordeals also have themes and they have colors to describe them:

  • Amber: Food-related theme with worm-like creatures. Weak individually and strong in swarms, they try to overwhelm lone employees while dealing more damage. A loud noise, presumably them digging through, can be heard when the Ordeal starts.
  • Crimson: Carnival theme. Their main entities are twisted clowns of different aspects. Their main feature is triggering damage or abilities after their deaths (i.e., exploding when being killed). A carnival tune is played when the Ordeal starts.
  • Green: Ancient mechanical theme. Enemies focused solely on killing targets, with a variety of weapons at their disposal. Foghorns can be heard when the Ordeal starts.
  • Indigo: Modern industrial/war theme. The sound of steam being vented can be heard when the Ordeal starts.
  • Violet: Religious theme with ancestral entities, part of them being limbs or appendages like arms. They take advantage of rooms in the facility, usually becoming static threats and limiting locations. An eerie sound can be heard when the Ordeal starts.
  • White: Each entity has its' own different theme, and all entities except for one spawning during the Midnight Ordeal are normal sized humanoids. They focus on specific types of damage and use them to wreak havoc on entire facility. A strange sound is heard when the Ordeal starts.

-Wiki Source


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Art-style & Soundtrack.


Lobotomy Corporation has a beautiful Art-Style combining manga-cartoonish elements with comedy and gore. Everything is well designed and it's pretty to the eye.


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The soundtracks is my favorite part, is really well done and it's even noticeable how the sounds effects were created with love. There's this small but so beautiful detail of when you get the camera close to an abnormality, you can hear its own sound effects and every abnormality has one... And be careful if you have the Scorched Girl or the Forsaken Murderer in your Corporation and you're playing alone at night, things can get pretty scary by only listening the their whispers.


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I'll leave my favorite soundtrack for you to hear! This is specially for when a Meltdown or an Ordeal is happening:

The Cons.


Lobotomy Corporation is developed by a Korean Team, Project Moon, and it's seems like they contacted a translation service that ended up being a scam so they had to translate all the dialoge themselves.

To be honest, the translation is not that bad but it has noticeable flaws. Everything is understandable but sometimes it can get funny in dialoges that are far from being comedy. That can be a problem when it comes to immersion but I could get past it and be focus on the ambiance.

This game really deserves more attention than it already has.

You can visit its steam page HERE. Please support the developers if you're interested in the game!


Follow @SteemGC for more articles like this and leave a comment with your opinions, upvote and resteem if you liked the article and see you on my next post! ??

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This is reflecting really unique, mysterious and unusual game stuff and it's reflecting as this game have lot of stuff and possibly many would like it. I personally like to play games and my favourites are the Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and Max Payne 3. Thanks for sharing this gaming review post with us and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂

I like it!!!

Looks a bit like Fallout Shelter

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