ORDER 13 – Review

ORDER 13, developed by Cybernetic Walrus and co-published by Oro Interactive and Drillhounds, asks a pertinent question: what’s scarier than running for your life from a monster? The answer, of course, is meeting your daily quota during a typical shift at the warehouse. But what happens when the two worlds merge? What you’ll find is something both cathartic and chilling.

In Order 13, you play as an employee of The Jolly Box Company, and your main job is to fulfill orders worth a certain dollar amount before you go to bed, and do it all over again the next morning. You see, the warehouse you work in is your home away from home. You have a small compartment in the facility you’re in, housing a computer, a mattress, your tools for work, and an adorable plush cat to keep you company.

But once you enter the warehouse, things don’t seem quite right. The stacks of goods are dimly lit and often in disarray. Strange noises and what sound like screams can be heard in the distance. Every now and then, you feel like your eyes are playing tricks on you – surely nothing was moving in the distance, right?

Things get even more tense when you realize that your cat is very attached to you, maybe even too much. You can spend a certain amount of time outside your room without stressing your cat, which is indicated by a large countdown in the bottom left corner of the screen. The longer it ticks, the more you’ll have to kick it to meet your quota. If it hits zero… trust me, you don’t want to know what happens if it hits zero.

Luckily, once you’ve met your daily quota, you’re more than free to either call it a day or complete an extra order or two to earn extra cash. You start with just $20 to your name, but the better you do each day, the more money you earn, allowing you to purchase a range of upgrades to help you tackle the game’s increasingly difficult challenges. Forgotten what item you need to grab? Buy a scanner and have it in front of you at all times. Can’t see in the dark? Spend some money on a flashlight. Even your cat can get some fun treats in the form of toys or food to help manage his temper.

And trust us, you’re going to need those upgrades. Your daily quota only increases with each passing day, and you’ll have to venture further and further into the warehouse to get your orders. Not only that, you’ll have to face a growing horde of strange creatures who aren’t exactly welcoming to your wanderings. You can only spend so much time away from your cat, and the further you go, the rarer the resource becomes.

There’s a strategy layer here that works underneath the instant gameplay, as your upgrades carry over to each subsequent day. There’s also no saving – if you want to change your initial strategy, you’ll have to start over from day one.

But completing orders isn’t as easy as you might think. Before you get your scanner, you’re assigned a ticket for each order that you must memorize before you leave your room. Each ticket tells you what area of ​​the warehouse the item is in, what aisle it’s in, and what specific shelf in that aisle it’s on. Additionally, each shelf is also locked with a unique code. If you don’t enter that code correctly, you won’t leave with what you need. If you’re really unlucky, you might even accidentally knock something down from above, alerting a nearby monster to come check out the noise.

Don’t forget to follow all the steps for proper packaging, too. Three levels of security: close the box, tape, sticker. Fail to follow any of these steps, and you’ll be docked a portion of the payment for that order. I admit, I was confused at first. But after paying closer attention to the signs in my room, I’m on the right track.

Things get even more complicated as you unlock more areas of the warehouse, as well as the ability to complete multiple jobs in one go. For example, the basement is a completely different environment than the first floor of the warehouse. The rooms are tighter, there’s less light, and the sections are divided into small gaps you can crawl through and holes in the chain-link fencing. But the jobs you complete from the basement will earn you more money overall.

The lurking monsters in Order 13 are extremely deformed and shockingly hideous. Despite their deformed bodies, the monsters display a menacing, instinctive rage and inhuman levels of speed as they chase you down – it’s a heart-pounding experience, but the sad thing is that you won’t feel a near-fatal sense of danger as you evade this monster. The monster’s disturbing anatomy may make you feel uneasy, but it certainly won’t scare you to death.

Overall, Order 13 actually manages to keep you hooked for a while, much more so than it initially intended. The inventory is randomized each time you start a new game, the game continues after you finish it as long as you can meet your daily quota, and the various tools you can unlock based on your performance allow you to formulate several different strategies to keep moving forward. On a plus side, it reminded me to pay a little more attention to my cat.

If you want a horror game that prides itself on turning the mundane into something disgusting and monstrous, Order 13 delivers on that and more.