The video game is one of the few mediums where it is possible to have a great success that appears out of nowhere. In 2024 we already have two, with Palworld and Helldivers 2, and if we extend a little further, to the last months of 2023, we could say that Lethal Company was even greater than these two. The reasons why they have become popular seem tremendously disparate from each other. At first, there doesn’t seem to be any common pattern. Although many people wouldn’t say the same about the new game that has exploded in popularity.
Content Warning is the new big hit on Steam. While its peak player count is not as impressive as these other three games, currently standing at 204,439 players, what is impressive is the number of downloads it has garnered, reaching 6.2 million in less than 48 hours. This makes it the fifth best-selling game on Steam, and the most popular new game on the platform.
If you’re wondering if there’s a catch, the reality is that there is. Content Warning was announced and officially launched for pre-order on April Fool’s Day, April 1st, allowing it to be downloaded for free until the afternoon of the following day, April 2nd, shortly after its release.
While that has helped increase their numbers, it doesn’t mean that their success is solely due to that. To start with, in the last twenty-four hours, they have almost tripled the number of followers on Steam. In addition, their peak player count was just before their official release, but they have maintained steady numbers with a slight growth curve. This, combined with a growing presence on Twitch, suggests that it won’t be just a one-day curiosity. Even if it were, it would be impressive to achieve these numbers for an independent company.
Talking about the game itself, its premise is very simple. Just like in Lethal Company, we have to get on a rocket to go to alien lands and investigate sinister and dangerous abandoned industrial places. Unlike Lethal Company, here we are not looking for resources, but something much more mundane: recording videos for Youtube.
Although the foundation will be familiar to Lethal Company players, as the purchase and resource management is practically identical, it is very different in terms of the main game mechanics. Here the important thing is to record things that are scary while trying not to die and give the whole thing the feeling of being a cohesive video. We have a limit for the camera, the batteries of our flashlights run out, and the building we are investigating is full of monsters and deadly traps. Monsters and deadly traps with which we will have to interact, risking our lives, if we want to be popular on Youtube.
The beauty of this is that the game quickly becomes a mix of horror and comedy. By having to work together, it’s easy to go from laughing while recording and fooling around, to the tension of some of the game’s most sinister creatures or artifacts. Including the possibility of losing the camera and having to go back and find it, or the very likely circumstance of getting lost and finding ourselves alone in a labyrinthine place.
Where Lethal Company emphasizes terror and makes comedy come from the players’ own actions, in Content Warning the premise itself is comedic, and the designs themselves invite it. The house where we start is colorful and childish, our animations are silly, and everything in the game invites us to do what many people want to see on the Internet: people clowning around. This is reinforced when, if we manage to survive, we can save the video we recorded during the game on our computer.
Content Warning has caught attention for being a clone of Lethal Company and has had an advantage for being free, but if it hasn’t lost impact after the first few hours, it’s because it’s genuinely fun and different. An excellent mix of comedy and horror, which practically demands playing with friends, but will delight those who consider Lethal Company to be perhaps too dark and methodical for them.
