REPO dev says it wasn’t actually inspired by Lethal Company, and started as a singleplayer cleaning game: ‘It was nice, but far from what REPO is now’

You’d be forgiven for thinking REPO is a lot like Lethal Company. Both games involve fetching precious objects, hiding from things that go bump in the night, working cooperatively as nigh-identical, disposable grunts, and hollering over voice chat when things inevitably go wrong. Both games are also overnight phenomena, with REPO scrambling to adjust to its massive success and garnering the attention of Lethal Company’s very own creator.

But in a vlog dropped by REPO studio semiwork today, developer Pontus clarified that the game was never intended to resemble Lethal Company. In fact, it began as a solo horror game where players would have to clean a mansion while remaining hidden from Headman, one of many monsters that ended up in the final game. Pontus said in the video that a "deep dive" on the topic is coming in the future, but there are some brief snippets of footage peppered throughout today's vlog.

On the topic of untold stories, the vlog notes that there’s a lot in store for REPO, with new monsters, a challenge mode, and free cosmetics all planned for future updates. You might be surprised to learn that a priority moving forward will be fleshing out the game’s lore, with Pontus saying: "There is a lot of lore that we haven’t really made public yet … we want the lore to be discovered by you, the players. All questions will be answered but you will have to put some effort into it. You will have to search and puzzle things together yourself."

Pretty vague stuff, but it shows that semiwork, perhaps unsurprisingly, is eager to capitalize on the massive virality REPO has experienced. In fact, the game’s early access roadmap is likely to look a lot different now. In the video, Pontus notes that the original six-to-twelve month planned early access period was written when the team was accounting for the possibility that it "failed completely;" but "now that you’ve all given us the opportunity to make REPO as good as possible, we are committed to work on it for at least twelve months before going to 1.0."

He also entertained loftier goals like a multiplatform release, crossplay, and VR support, but that’s all stuff the team plans to revisit once they’ve got a more polished game on their hands. Given how open semiwork has been about its unfamiliarity with all this attention and acclaim, which among other things saw developers going to the community for advice on how to put a multiplayer lobby together, that’s probably for the best.

Regardless, it’s interesting to learn that REPO wasn’t always the silly billy it turned into, nor was it intended as an attempt to hop on the Lethal Company hype train while it’s still rolling. The game still stands tall as one of the most played games on Steam with its first update and semiwork’s frequent dev communication keeping the conversation lively.

If you’re keen to get hooked on some physics-based horror, REPO is available on Steam.