Lobotomy Corporation

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Lobotomy Corporation
Developer(s)	Project Moon
Engine	Unity
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release	April 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[edit]

Lobotomy Corporation takes place over fifty in-game days, with the overall goal being to fully expand Facility X-394. The facility consists of ten departments, each corresponding to the Sephirot in an inverted representation of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and led by an AI named after the corresponding Sephirah. Each day, the player must expand one of these departments by completing a full workday, which is divided into two phases: preparation and management.

During the preparation phase, the player hires, trains and customizes employees by using LOB points and equipping them with E.G.O. Each employee has four stats, Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance, and Justice, which affect their HP, SP, Work efficiency, and movement and attack speed. They are equipped with E.G.O, suits and weapons which are extracted from Abnormalities during gameplay and affect their attack and defense stats.

Abnormalities are organized according to their energy output; in order from lowest to highest, the risk classes are ZAYIN, TETH, HE, WAW, and ALEPH. The player always starts with the ZAYIN-class Abnormality "One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds", who is based on Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot. After this, the Abnormalities are randomly selected out of three for the player to manage and are placed in a new containment room at the beginning of the next day, with the difficulty of the Abnormalities increasing over time. Abnormalities that have had their information unlocked in previous playthroughs will instead have their name displayed.

Most Abnormalities have a value called the Qliphoth Counter, which starts as a positive integer and must be kept above zero to prevent negative effects from occurring, usually the Abnormality breaching containment or causing other undesirable effects. The counter changes according to the unique conditions of each Abnormality; each Abnormality has unique quirks which the player must discover by earning information points through the work process, which can be used to learn an Abnormality's traits or unlock E.G.O equipment based on the Abnormalities. Abnormalities deal damage to the employees in the process of working them when a Negative Enkephalin box is generated during the work process or by attacking while breaching. There are four types of damage: RED, which is dealt to an employee's health (HP) and kills them when it reaches zero, WHITE, which is dealt to an employee's sanity (SP), BLACK, which is split between HP and SP, and PALE, which is dealt as a percentage of the employee's maximum HP rather than a numerical value. Once an employee's SP reaches zero, they will enter a panic state, causing them to become uncontrollable.

The management phase begins after selecting a department to expand and consists of sending 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, with preferred work types having a higher chance of generating more energy; this affects the work result, which can be Positive, Neutral or Negative. Once the quota is met, the player can end the day and have their performance graded, which determines how many LOB points they will receive as a reward. The performance rating is influenced by how many employees survived, while a penalty is applied based on the risk classes of the Abnormalities that breached. Employees' stats will increase corresponding to the type of work they performed during the day.

The player is also 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 rewards the player with gameplay perks, such as increasing the facility's healing capabilities, shields that grant defensive buffs to employees, or the ability to call in an elite private military unit to lock down a department and suppress enemies within it. Once all of a Sephirah's missions have been 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". This involves completing days with additional challenges, such as work types being randomized, healing systems disabled, reduced employees' stats, or a boss battle against one of the Sephirot. Completing each Sephirot's Core Suppression is required to reach the game's true ending.

At any point during the workday, the player can reset to the beginning of the day, revert to a checkpoint, which is reached every 5 days starting with day 6, 11, 16, etc., or reset back to day 1. 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 available Abnormalities, and the story cannot be completed in a single run without resetting.

Story[edit]

Setting[edit]

The Player, who is referred as "X", is the manager of Lobotomy Corporation, an underground power company that harvests energy from strange beings and objects known as Abnormalities. They are tasked with overseeing the process, ordering employees to "work" on Abnormalities in order to fill the daily "quota" of energy while suppressing them to place them back in containment if they breach it.^[3][4] Over the course of the story, it is shown that the Corporation and the world are a harsh place to live in, as the employees and the Sephirot struggle with mental health issues, employees are treated as expendable and often die, and Angela states that contracts with the Corporation are only terminated if the employee dies. As well, Abnormality story entries and dialogue imply that the outside world is an authoritarian dystopia.

The premise is inspired by the SCP Foundation as well as television series Warehouse 13 and horror-comedy film The Cabin in the Woods.^[5][6]

Characters[edit]

Lobotomy Corporation[edit]

• X is the manager of Facility X-394 and the player character.
• Carmen (카르멘 Kaleumen), also known as C, is one of the founding figures of Lobotomy Corporation
• Angela (앤젤라 Aenjella) is an artificial intelligence created based on Carmen's personality and appearance and serves as X's guide.
• Ayin also known as A, is one of the founding figures of Lobotomy Corporation

The Sephirot[edit]

• Malkuth (말쿠트 Malkuteu) is the Sephirah of the Control Team. She is diligent and energetic and seeks to make herself appear competent and capable to the Manager.
• Yesod (예소드 Yesodeu) is the Sephirah of the Information Team. He is organized and seen as strict and fierce by those under his management, being known as 'Viper'.
• Hod (호드 Hodeu) is the Sephirah of the Training Team, who is responsible for ensuring that Employees are properly equipped to handle managing Abnormalities.
• Netzach (네짜흐 Nejjaheu) is the Sephirah of the Safety Team, a role he has practically given up on due to Lobotomy Corporation's disregard for safety.
• Tiphereth (티페리트 Tipeliteu) is the name given to a girl and a boy, who collectively form the Sephirah of the Central Command Team.
• Gebura (게부라 Gebura) is the Sephirah of the Disciplinary Team, who is responsible for suppressing dangerous Abnormalities and does not hesitate to use force to deal with problems.
• Chesed (헤세드 Hesedeu) is the Sephirah of the Welfare Team, who is calm and well-mannered.
• Binah (비나 Bina) is the Sephirah of the Extraction Team, which is responsible for the procurement of Abnormalities and the creation of E.G.O.
• Hokma (호크마 Hokeuma) is the Sephirah of the Records Team, who is unique among the Sephirot in that he displays an understanding of the cyclical nature of time within the Corporation and appears older than them.

Other[edit]

• Myo (묘 Myo) is the leader of the Rabbit Team, a private military force of the company R Corp, who is contracted to provide defense services to Lobotomy Corporation.

Plot[edit]

X is the manager of Facility X-394, the headquarters of Lobotomy Corporation, who views the Facility through a monitor in their office and is assisted by their guide Angela, an advanced AI. As X unlocks the Facility's departments, they meet the Sephirot, starting with Malkuth, the head of the Control Team. It is later revealed that X's monitor has a perception filter that prevents them from seeing the full extent of the damage the Abnormalities cause to prevent them from going insane like previous managers did. X later receives a letter from the company's CEO, A, as well as messages from an individual known as B, warning them not to trust Angela before she seemingly murders them.

As the Sephirot's Core Suppressions are completed, it is revealed that X is an amnesiac A, Lobotomy Corporation's founder and CEO, with the Facility's previous managers being incarnations of A in a repeating cycle, and that Sephirot are employees of the Corporation whose brains were placed into mechanical bodies. The background of the Corporation is also revealed. Located in The City, it was a smaller laboratory founded by scientist Ayin, his colleague Benjamin, and Carmen, who were known by the pseudonyms A, B, and C. They were researchers working on the Seed of Light, a project which aimed to cure the 'disease of the mind' affecting the City's people; their goal drew other employees to the company, including the mercenary Kali and orphans Enoch and Lisa.

During their research, they developed Cogito, a substance which is extracted from the nervous system and capable of physically manifesting the human mind, with experiments involving it being the source of the Abnormalities and E.G.O. After Enoch died after volunteering as a test subject in the experiments, Carmen committed suicide after losing faith in her goal and falling into depression. Ayin extracted and preserved her nervous system in a tank, using it as a source of Cogito, and the Seed of Light project continued, during which many died and became Sephirot.

Soon after, researcher Michelle contacted the Head, the City's highest authoritative body, and informed them of the experiments. In response, the Head sent Garion, an Arbiter and one of its enforcers, to stop them. Kali died from her injuries while fighting Garion, and Ayin and Benjamin continued the project to carry out her vision, creating Angela to fill her original role. Now known as Lobotomy Corporation, it entered its cyclical nature, with A losing his memory and becoming X and Benjamin becoming the last of the Sephirot, Hokma. The game's events were part of a script A created to be the perfect scenario, which would allow the Seed of Light to 'germinate' and spread a 'light' across the City that would 'cure' humanity.

From day 45 onwards, the final department of the Facility, Architecture, is opened, and X meets a different aspects of A on each day - Abel, who represents his domineering attitude, Abram, who is withdrawn and despondent, and Adam, who has a god complex, before meeting the original aspect of Ayin. On the 50th and final day, the Seed of Light is germinated and the Facility emerges from underground. The Light is released from the Facility and X's body is absorbed, breaking the cycle and allowing Ayin to complete his, Benjamin, and Carmen's original goal.

If the player has achieved 100% completion and unlocked all available Abnormality information, there is an additional scene in the ending. As part of the release of the Light, Angela and the Sephirot were to be decommissioned; the Sephirot, having been part of an endless cycle, accept their fate, but Angela refuses to accept this. Tired of being used as a tool by others, she declares that she will take the Light for herself rather than let it be used for its intended purpose. After three days of shining upon the City, the Light is snuffed out and darkness falls for four days. With the power of the Light, Angela states that she will choose to live and collect information about the City and its inhabitants. She then creates a library from the remains of Lobotomy Corporation, setting up the events of Library of Ruina.

Legacy[edit]

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[edit]