Lobotomy Corporation
Developer(s)Project Moon
Engine
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows
ReleaseApril 9, 2018
Genre(s)Management simulation

Lobotomy Corporation is an indie horror rogue-lite strategy management simulation video game for Microsoft Windows developed and published by South Korean studio Project Moon in April 2018. Initially a standalone game, it has become the basis for a connected series of video games, webcomics and web novels. A sequel, deck-building game Library of Ruina, was released for Windows and Xbox One in August 2021.[1] A third installment, dungeon role-playing game Limbus Company was released in February 2023.[2] A companion manhwa, Wonderlab, was serialized from March 2020 to April 2021.

Gameplay

Lobotomy Corporation spans a period of fifty in-game days, with the overarching goal of fully expanding Facility X-394. The facility consists of ten departments, corresponding to the Sephirot in an inverted representation of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, each led by an AI named after the corresponding Sephirah. Each day, the player must expand one of these departments by completing a full workday.

The workday is divided into two different phases: preparation and management, the latter of which is the real focus of the game. In the preparation phase, the player can hire and train employees by spending LOB points, before equipping and assigning them to a department. Each employee has four stats - Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance, and Justice, which respectively affect their physical and mental health, work speed and success rate, and movement and attack speed. Employees are equipped with suits and weaponry called E.G.O, extracted from Abnormalities during gameplay, which provide both offensive and defensive capabilities, as well as occasionally having special quirks.

The management phase begins after selecting a department to expand and consists of sending these employees to extract energy from Abnormalities to meet the day's quota. Abnormalities can be worked through four separate processes: Instinct, Insight, Attachment, and Repression. Each Abnormality responds differently to these work types, and the player must determine the most efficient method through trial and error. Preferred work types have a higher chance of generating more energy, which will affect the work result, which can be Positive, Neutral or Negative.

Most Abnormalities have a value called a Qliphoth Counter which starts as a positive integer and must be maintained above zero to prevent negative effects from occurring - usually the Abnormality breaching containment or causing another undesirable effect. The counter changes according to unique conditions for each Abnormality. Each Abnormality has uniques quirks, which are unavailable initially, and the player must discover them through trial and error by earning information points through the aforementioned work process. Information points can then be used to learn specific traits of the Abnormality, or E.G.O equipment based on the Abnormalities.

Abnormalities deal damage to the employees in the process of working them whenever a Negative Enkephalin box is generated during the work process, or by attacking whilst breaching. This damage can take four types: RED damage is dealt to an employee's health (HP), killing them when it reaches zero. WHITE damage is dealt to an employee's sanity (SP), causing them to enter a state of panic at zero. Panicked employees will attempt to run away, kill themselves, kill other employees, or release Abnormalities from containment, depending on their stats. BLACK damage is split between HP and SP, and PALE damage is dealt as a percentage of the employee's maximum HP rather than a numerical value.

There are several different Abnormalities ranging in danger levels. The danger levels are based on letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

  • ZAYIN: The least dangerous Abnormalities are categorized here. These Abnormalities can produce positive effects for the player and will not breach.
  • TETH: The second least dangerous Abnormalities, and the first danger level that can breach containment. These are usually not dangerous but may catch players off-guard.
  • HE: Here, Abnormalities may become difficult for players to overcome if unprepared. They are of average danger.
  • WAW: At this level, Abnormalities are more gimmick-based, which must be followed to keep them contained. These are capable of wiping out employees fairly easily.
  • ALEPH: The highest danger level, but also the most rewarding to work on. Abnormalities featured here in this category are capable of single-handedly destroying facilities.

Once enough energy is collected, the player can end the day and have their performance rated from S (the best) to F (the worst). This rating determines how many LOB points the player will receive as a reward. The performance rating is influenced by how many employees survived the day, while a penalty is applied based on the danger levels of the Abnormalities that breached during the day. Employees' stats will increase corresponding to the type of work they performed during that day - Fortitude for Instinct work, Prudence for Insight work, Temperance for Attachment work and Justice for Repression work.

The player will always start out with a ZAYIN-class Abnormality named "One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds", who is based on both Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot. His name refers to Judas' "one sin" of betraying Jesus, and his "hundreds of good deeds" he must do as payment for committing the sin. After this, the Abnormalities will be drawn randomly from a selection of three for the player to manage, which will be placed in a new containment room at the beginning of the next day. Initially, the only information given about the selectable Abnormalities is their classification numbers and a small amount of flavor text. Abnormalities that have had their information unlocked in previous playthroughs will instead have their name displayed. As each day passes, the game will select more difficult Abnormalities for the player to choose from.

The player will also be tasked with completing missions for each Sephirot which involve challenges such as completing a workday in a certain amount of real time, preventing employee deaths, or suppressing breached Abnormalities. Completing these missions will reward the player with gameplay perks, such as stronger healing capabilities for the facility, shields which can apply defensive buffs to employees, or even the ability to call in an elite private military unit to lock down a department and suppress enemies within.

When all of a Sephirah's missions are completed and a prerequisite point in the game is reached, they will undergo a "Sephirah Meltdown", which must be resolved through a process known as "Core Suppression". These Core Suppressions consist of completing normal gameplay days with additional challenges, such as work types being randomized, healing systems disabled, a reduction in the stats of employees, or even the normal gameplay objectives being replaced with a boss battle against one of the Sephirot. Completing the Core Suppression of each of the Sephirot is required to complete the game's true ending.

The story of the game is told through visual novel-esque cutscenes prior to each workday and as the Sephirot's missions are completed.

At any point during the workday, the player is able to reset to the beginning of the day, revert to a checkpoint (reached every 5 days starting with day 6, 11, 16, etc.) or reset their entire playthrough. Doing so will not retain the facility expansion, employee training or Abnormality selection, but mission progress and rewards, extracted E.G.O equipment and unlocked Abnormality information will be retained. The player is expected to reset frequently to progress more efficiently with newly unlocked information and equipment from the available Abnormalities, and the story cannot be completed in a single run without resetting.

Story

Setting

The Player, who is referred as "X", is the manager of an underground power company called "Lobotomy Corporation" that harvests energy from strange beings and objects known as "Abnormalities". They are tasked with overseeing the process and must command their employees to "work" on these Abnormalities in order to fill the daily "quota" of energy, but must also suppress them in order to place them back in their containment if they breach.[3][4]

The premise is inspired by the SCP Foundation, a collaborative web fiction project about a secret organization that contains and studies supernatural "anomalies" in research facilities. Other inspirations include television series Warehouse 13 and horror-comedy film The Cabin in the Woods.[5][6]

Characters

Lobotomy Corporation

  • X is the manager of facility X-394 and the player character. While initially depicted as a new hire of the company, X is revealed to be an alias of an amnesiac Ayin (아인 Ain),also known as A, one of the original founders and the supposed leader of Lobotomy Corporation. A orchestrated the creation of the cyclical time loop the company is currently trapped in, in an attempt to bring the Seed of Light project to fruition, a process which involves him repeatedly losing his memory and rebuilding his own company. A became cruel and withdrawn after Carmen's death, and many of the Sephirot are at odds with him for his treatment of them in the past.
  • Carmen (카르멘 Kaleumen), also known as C, was one of the founding figures of Lobotomy Corporation, an idealistic and charismatic woman who managed to sway many people into following her with her optimism and hope for humanity, establishing the Seed of Light project. Carmen would later fall into a deep depression after the death of Enoch and attempt suicide, only to have her living nervous system preserved by Ayin and used as Lobotomy Corporation's source of Cogito, presumably still alive and conscious to some degree.
  • Angela (앤젤라 Aenjella) is an artificial intelligence created using Carmen's personality and appearance as a basis, and serves as X's guide during the story. Throughout the majority of the story, Angela is depicted as a polite, amicable and knowledgeable individual, albeit with her trustworthiness brought into question. It is not until the very end of the game that her personality is revealed to be a fabrication - her every word recited from a script written by A. The true Angela has experienced one million years (10,000 years of cyclical time perceived a hundred times faster than the human mind) as nothing more than a machine built to carry out A's goal, and with the conclusion of her directive, immediately expresses her disgust for the task she was forced to perform and an overwhelming desire to be her own person, live her own life, and collect information to satisfy her insatiable curiosity.

The Sephirot

  • Malkuth (말쿠트 Malkuteu) is the Sephirah of the Control Team. She is a diligent and energetic worker, and expresses a strong desire to make herself appear competent and capable to the Manager. She was formerly a researcher named Elijah who felt rejected and ignored by A, and died attempting to prove herself useful in a Cogito experiment which backfired, after which she was turned into a Sephirah.
  • Yesod (예소드 Yesodeu) is the Sephirah of the Information Team. He is a tidy and organized individual who is seen as strict and fierce by those under his management, being given the nickname 'Viper'. His cold attitude is the result of an intentional effort to prevent himself from forming emotional attachments to employees doomed to die. He was formerly a researcher named Gabriel who became psychologically unstable after the deaths of Carmen and several other employees, developing a compulsion to scratch his skin to the point of injury before eventually being found dead and turned into a Sephirah.
  • Hod (호드 Hodeu) is the Sephirah of the Training Team, responsible for ensuring that Employees are properly equipped to handle the job of managing Abnormalities. Hod initially appears as a nervous but kindhearted and earnest Sephirah running a counselling program for the employees of Lobotomy Corporation. However, she is revealed to be ignoring obvious signs that the counselling is not working and that her employees are merely using her for access to Enkephalin for its potent narcotic properties. She clings to her counselling program as an attempt to convince herself that she is a good person due to a guilt complex persisting from her previous life as Michelle, a researcher who sold out the original Seed of Light project to the Head, which resulted in the deaths of herself and most of her colleagues.
  • Netzach (네짜흐 Nejjaheu) is the Sephirah of the Safety Team, a role he has all but entirely given up on due to the comical disregard for safety at Lobotomy Corporation. Netzach is addicted to Enkephalin and suffers from depression and severe lethargy, and laments his inability to die as a Sephirah, forced to carry out the futile existence of trying to prevent the deaths of employees who are doomed to die regardless. He was formerly a researcher known as Giovanni, who joined the Seed of Light project due to a strong conviction in Carmen's beliefs as well as an infatuation with her, and died after being convinced by A that performing Cogito experiments would somehow be able to save her, subsequently being turned into a Sephirah.
  • Tiphereth (티페리트 Tipeliteu) is a name given to two separate individuals, a girl and a boy, who collectively form the Sephirah of the Central Command Team. The two have opposing personalities - female Tiphereth is bossy, childish, arrogant and commanding; male Tiphereth is calm, aloof and introspective. Male Tiphereth has a habit of repeatedly having existential crises and needing to be replaced, a quality which makes female Tiphereth increasingly concerned for his sake. The two were formerly the orphan children Lisa and Enoch, adopted by Carmen during her time working on the Seed of Light project. Enoch's death during Cogito experiments drove Lisa to blame Carmen for his death, which ultimately led to her suicide.
  • Gebura (게부라 Gebura) is the Sephirah of the Disciplinary Team, responsible for the suppression of dangerous Abnormalities. Gebura is a confident and practical fighter and has no qualms with solving problems via overwhelming force. She was originally a Fixer named Kali, better known by her title of the Red Mist. She died defending the Seed of Light project from the Head's attack, and was subsequently made into a Sephirah.
  • Chesed (헤세드 Hesedeu) is the Sephirah of the Welfare Team, a calm and well-mannered individual with a taste for coffee. Despite maintaining an outwardly pleasant attitude, he has grown apathetic towards the company and his work due to the futility of trying to ensure the welfare of employees that are most likely going to die, and many failed attempts to convince Angela to allow more humane work methods. Chesed is a frequent critic of Lobotomy Corporation's uncaring treatment of its employees and harsh methods. Previously, he was a social elite known as Daniel who was swayed by Carmen's idealism and chose to help her over a life of luxury.
  • Binah (비나 Bina) is the Sephirah of the Extraction Team, responsible for the procurement of Abnormalities and the creation of E.G.O Equipment. She is a deeply cryptic, philosophical, apathetic and morally neutral individual who considers herself a bystander and observer to the events of the world around her. Previously, she was Garion, an Arbiter of the Head who was tasked with dismantling the Seed of Light Project. She was defeated by Kali and had her remains placed into a robotic body rather than being allowed to die so that she could be tortured for information, and later became the Sephirah of Extraction.
  • Hokma (호크마 Hokeuma) is the Sephirah of the Records Team, and unique among the Sephirot in that he displays an understanding of the cyclical nature of time within the company, also appearing noticeably older than the others. Hokma makes no attempt to hide the fact that he was previously Benjamin, and the individual known as B that supposedly previously contacted X prior to their first meeting (though this may have been a fabrication of the script). B always had a strong conviction in A's ideology and goals, and expresses this even in the present day as Hokma.

Other

  • Myo (묘 Myo) is the leader of the Rabbit Team, a private military force of the company R Corp, contracted to provide defense services to Lobotomy Corporation. Myo briefly appears during the story to renew R Corp's contract with L Corp in a conversation with Angela, and also provides dialogue when the Rabbit Team is called to assault a department.

Plot

Initially, Lobotomy Corporation opens in a manner similar to other management simulation games - the player, named X, is the manager of Facility X-394, the headquarters of the energy company Lobotomy Corporation - a 'Wing of the World' with exceptional significance and importance. Guiding the player from the beginning of the game is Angela, an advanced AI created by the company. Angela will speak to the manager in a cutscene before each in-game workday, easing them into their role while occasionally providing thought-provoking questions the player can answer for marginally different dialogue responses. X never directly interacts with any of the company's employees, instead viewing the entire facility via a monitor system in their office.

The first time the player unlocks each department, they will be introduced to one of the Sephirot, and each Sephirah's story will progress by completing their missions during gameplay. The first Sephirot the player meets is Malkuth, head of the Control Team, who possesses a cheerful and diligent demeanor. However, the pleasant facade of the corporation shatters shortly after being introduced to Malkuth - a panicked employee approaches the manager and demands permission to quit their job due to psychological distress, and can either be dealt with personally or referred to Malkuth. If Malkuth is allowed to handle the situation, the employee will be executed offscreen. The next day, Angela will reveal that contracts with the company can only be terminated by the death of the employee, implying the death of the employee regardless of the player's choice.

As the gameplay and missions progress, the dismal nature of the setting becomes readily apparent - Malkuth and the other Sephirot are struggling with psychological conditions, with some being more apathetic or even hostile to the player. Employees of the company are treated as expendable, die frequently as part of their work, and have a multitude of mental health issues. Abnormality story entries, employee chatter and story dialogue imply that the world on the surface is an authoritarian dystopia. X is revealed to be viewing all work through a perception filter that prevents them from seeing the full extent of the carnage that the Abnormalities wreak upon the facility - implied to have driven previous managers insane. The player receives a letter from the company's CEO, an individual known as A, which appears to have been composed years ago on paper that is now aging and tattered. Additionally, the player receives cryptic messages from an individual known only as B, who warns them not to trust Angela, before being implied to have been murdered by Angela offscreen.

As the Core Suppressions of the Sephirot are completed, the context for the origin of Lobotomy Corporation and the player's role in the company begin to become apparent. The manager known as X increasingly implied to actually be an amnesiac A, the founder and CEO of Lobotomy Corporation, and all 'previous' managers of the facility have in fact been A throughout the duration of its existence, expanding the facility, losing his memories, and starting from a blank slate through thousands of cycles in a repeating time loop. The Sephirot are revealed to not be AI, but rather former employees of Lobotomy Corporation whose human brains have been placed into mechanical bodies. The Sephirot remember X as A, and their treatment of the manager is colored by their past opinions and interactions with A.

Past this point, Angela's conversations with the player become increasingly cryptic and ominous, often being replaced by flashbacks. The Sephirot of the lower layers do not treat X with the pretense of a new hire as the upper ones do, instead speaking directly to him as A. Because of this, alongside the revelations from the Core Suppressions, the origin of Lobotomy Corporation, and the nature of the world outside the company, gradually become clear.

Lobotomy Corporation is located in a megacity known only as The City, and previously began as a smaller laboratory in the outskirts of the City started by three individuals going by alphabetical pseudonyms: A - a researcher named Ayin, B - his colleague Benjamin, and C - a woman named Carmen, a visionary who wanted to change the nature of humanity. The three were researchers working on a project known as the Seed of Light, which would attempt to cure the 'disease of the mind' affecting the people of the City - their description of the greed, corruption, and violent tendencies prevalent in its denizens and supposedly responsible for its current dystopian state. Their idealistic goal drew the other employees to the company who would eventually become the Sephirot, including Kali, a top-grade Fixer - a licensed mercenary legally operating within the City - and two orphan children named Enoch and Lisa.

As part of their research, they developed a substance known as Cogito, extracted from the nervous system, able to physically manifest the human mind. Experimentation with Cogito is revealed to be the source of the Abnormalities and E.G.O used by the company. After Enoch volunteered as a test subject for the production of Cogito and subsequently died, Carmen lost faith in her goal and fell into a deep depression. Lisa, enraged at the death of her friend, unintentionally drove Carmen to suicide, with Ayin later finding her shortly after having slit her own wrists in her bathtub.

Despite Carmen's attempted suicide, Ayin was able to extract and preserve her living nervous system in a tank and use it as a source of Cogito, and the Seed of Light project continued with the notable dissatisfaction of many of the employees involved. Many died as part of the project, being turned into the robotic Sephirot.

A young researcher named Michelle contacted the Head, the highest authoritative body of the City, informing them of the experimentation taking place in the laboratory. In response, the Head sent an Arbiter - one of its enforcers - named Garion to dismantle the operation. Garion was defeated by Kali, who also succumbed to her injuries, leaving Ayin and Benjamin as the only survivors of the project.

The two would continue with the project despite this immense setback, determined to carry out Carmen's original vision, becoming elevated to the status of a Wing. It was at this point that Angela was created to carry out Carmen's original role within the company - however, Angela's similarities to Carmen unnerved A, who refused to speak to her, only ever referring to her as a machine, and insisting that she behave as one.

Now known as Lobotomy Corporation, the company would enter its current, cyclical nature, with A losing his memory and becoming X, and Benjamin being turned into the last of the Sephirot, Hokma. Every aspect of the gameplay cycle of Lobotomy Corporation - Angela's dialogue, the order of events, the Sephirah Meltdowns, the information that is conveyed to the amnesiac X - is revealed to be part of a script devised by A, the perfect scenario that would allow the Seed of Light to 'germinate', spreading a 'light' across the City that would 'cure' humanity.

From day 45 onwards, the ending sequence of the game begins. The final department of the facility - Architecture, corresponding to Kether - is opened, and rather than being represented by a Sephirot, X meets a different aspects of A each day - Abel, who represents his domineering attitude, Abram, a withdrawn and despondent aspect, and Adam, a fragment of A's personality with a god complex, before finally meeting the original aspect of Ayin. During these days, the player is tasked with managing multiple Core Suppression gameplay modifiers at once, and can only be progressed provided the player has already completed each of the respective Core Suppressions during the story.

On the 50th and final day, after 10 external years and 10,000 years of time spent within the cycle, the Seed of Light has finally been successfully germinated - the result of which becomes quickly apparent. Throughout the course of the day, the entire facility begins to emerge from underground, rotating until the entire building is completely upside-down, placing the Sephirot in their traditional orientations in the Tree of Life. The player's only goal at this point is to meet the final Enkephalin quota, after which the camera pans upward to show the Light being released from the facility, with X's body being absorbed by the process, finally breaking the cycle and allowing Ayin to complete his, Benjamin and Carmen's original goal.

If the player has achieved 100% completion of the story and has unlocked all available Abnormality information, there will be an additional and final ending scene. As part of the release of the Light, Angela and the Sephirot were to be decommissioned, finally being granted a true, eternal rest. The Sephirot, leading long, torturous lives in an endlessly repeating cycle, have no issue with this, but Angela, who was created to serve the company and forced to spend her entire existence reciting A's script, refuses to accept this outcome.

Angela addresses the Sephirot, stating that, tired of being used as a tool for someone else's goal, she will be taking the Light for herself rather than allowing it to be used for its intended purpose. After three days of shining brilliantly upon the City, day and night, the Light is snuffed out and darkness falls for an additional four days. With the reclaimed power of the Light, Angela states that she will choose to live, collecting and sorting as much information about the City and its inhabitants as possible, creating a library from the remains of Lobotomy Corporation, directly hinting at and setting up the events of the sequel, Library of Ruina.

Legacy

A sequel, deck-building game Library of Ruina, was released for Windows and Xbox One in August 2021.[1] It was positively received by critics, with Daniel Tack of Game Informer calling it enthralling and a sleeper title.[7] Alice Bell of Rock Paper Shotgun called the game complicated, weird and terrifying.[8] A third installment, dungeon role-playing game Limbus Company, was released in February 2023.[2] A companion manhwa, Wonderlab, was serialized from March 2020 to April 2021.

References

  1. 1 2 "Turn-based RPG deckbuilder Library of Ruina now available for Xbox One, PC". Gematsu. August 10, 2021. Archived from the original on November 6, 2021. Retrieved November 3, 2021.
  2. 1 2 Yokoyama, Keiichi (July 10, 2021). "『Lobotomy Corporation』ProjectMoonが新作らしきアカウント「Limbus Company」を公開中。地獄へと向かう、赤い線で修正された男女". Automaton (in Japanese). Archived from the original on November 6, 2021. Retrieved November 3, 2021.
  3. ↑ Wood, Austin (13 April 2018). "Manage monsters and inevitably get eaten in Lobotomy Corporation". PC Gamer. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
  4. ↑ LoProto, Mark (18 May 2019). "15 BEST PC HORROR GAMES TO PLAY (IF YOU DARE)". Cultured Vultures. Archived from the original on 22 January 2021. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
  5. ↑ Meer, Alec (17 April 2018). "Wot I Think: Lobotomy Corporation". Rock Paper Shotgun. Gamer Network Limited. Archived from the original on 1 March 2021. Retrieved 17 August 2022.
  6. ↑ ProjectMoon. "Lobotomy Corporation | Monster Management Simulation". Steam. Archived from the original on 29 August 2022. Retrieved 17 August 2022.
  7. ↑ Tack, Daniel. "Library Of Ruina Might Be The Best Game You Sleep On This Year – Don't". Game Informer. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  8. ↑ Bell, Alice (2021-09-10). "TFI Friday: 3 new indie games for back-to-school season". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
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