Full ReleasePC

R.E.P.O.

semiwork · Horror, Survival, Stealth

Overview

An online co-op horror game with up to 6 players. Locate valuable, fully physics-based objects and handle them with care as you retrieve and extract to satisfy your creator's desires.

R.E.P.O. is an online co-op horror game featuring physics, proximity voice chat and scary monsters. You and up to 5 friends can venture into terrifying environments to extract valuable objects using your physics-based grabbing tool.

Even the monsters are affected by Newton's law of gravity!

Under the employ of a mysterious computer intelligence. It is your job to locate, transport and extract valuable items from the haunted remains of a long lost humanity.

...but know when to stay quiet.

Transport anything from heavy pianos to fragile ceramics and use teamwork to make sure that the precious cargo will safely reach its destination.

Robotic enhancements increase your chances!

Use your hard earned cash [SURPLUS] to purchase upgrades and weapons from your heartless [GENEROUS] creator.

From the game's Steam store page.

THE GAMEQ VERDICT10,000 reviews analyzed

What players are actually saying

1. Summary

R.E.P.O. is loved as a game for laughing with friends. A quarter of all reviews mention playing with friends, family or partners, and they describe a physics-driven loot run where someone always drops the vase, a blind man with a shotgun hears the one person who will not stop talking, and a carefully planned extraction collapses into screaming. Players praise the mix of real scares and slapstick, the proximity voice chat and uncensored text-to-speech, the low price, how well it runs on old hardware, and a developer that kept shipping updates. Some credit the cosmetics update, released shortly before most of these reviews were written, with giving the endless loop a long-term goal.

Among the substantive negative reviews, 17% center on monster balance and early-level difficulty, 17% on repetition and thin content, and 15% on connection drops with no way to rejoin. A group of returning players felt the 2026 updates made the first levels far harsher, with high-tier monsters on level 1, respawns near the truck and hits through walls. Solo play and public lobbies divide players. Some call solo a great hardcore challenge and public servers the place they made lifelong friends, while others find solo brutal and lobbies full of shrieking soundboards, kick-happy hosts and modded cheaters.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Best with friends: a co-op game built for group chaosHigh

25% of all reviews mention playing with friends, family, partners or "the boys," in every playtime bracket from 3 hours to 1,000. Players describe weekly game nights, siblings and parents playing together, couples who started dating in lobbies, and friend groups who keep "coming back to repo" even after trying newer co-op games. Reviews often use the "friendslop" label, some to call R.E.P.O. the best of that wave, others to object to the label or to argue the gameplay holds up once the novelty fades. Group size is the usual caveat: "if you dont have friends dont get the game," one review says, and others add "The more friends the better."

A horror game that is also a comedyHigh

264 reviews mention both the scares and the laughs. The game is tense and jumpy when you are alone or the last one standing, and hilarious once everyone is screaming. The monsters are "comically creepy," and one player finds it "silly enough where most deaths don't feel unfair." Favorite recurring bits include the duck you should not touch, the dog you must pet, the blind Huntsman who hears everything, heads bouncing across rooms, and the post-death "King of the Losers" arena and cart race. Several self-described horror cowards say this is the first scary game they could enjoy. A minority who came for real horror found it too goofy to be frightening once they learned the monsters.

The cosmetics update gave runs a goalMedium

205 reviews mention the cosmetics, and most of them welcome the system. The cosmetics are earned by finding and extracting boxes rather than bought with money, each player's drops differ, and finding a rare box mid-run adds tension ("finding a cosmetic box instantly stresses me out because I'm terrified of dying and losing it"). Some say it got their group playing again. A smaller group criticizes the execution: rare and legendary boxes feel scarce, left and right limbs drop separately so outfits end up mismatched, customization slots run out, and losing a box to a disconnect or death stings. A few veterans found the new outfits clashed with the original look.

Developers who keep updating and listeningMedium

Semiwork gets steady praise for frequent and substantial free updates, devlog videos that players enjoy almost as much as the game, and a sense that the studio listens to feedback. Several reviewers contrast this with other co-op hits that stalled. Not everyone agrees: in the difficulty and content themes below, some players feel updates came too slowly or went in the wrong direction.

Cheap, light and runs on almost anythingMedium

Players call it good value, often citing a low price or a sale price, and some are surprised it runs on old laptops, integrated graphics, Steam Deck and Linux through Proton. A small minority report heavy GPU load, low frame rates, or a performance drop after the cosmetics update.

Proximity chat, text-to-speech and expressive robotsMedium

The in-game voice chat fades with distance, alerts monsters and animates the robots' mouths, and many of the funny moments players describe start there. Items that alter your voice, the text-to-speech for mic-less or Deaf players, and the semibots' faces and eye movement all get specific praise. A few players hit mic bugs or echo issues.

Monster design and varietyMedium

Some reviewers praise a large roster of distinct monsters, each with its own rule to learn, and the satisfying turn from hiding to fighting back with bats, shotguns and tumble launches once upgrades build up. The same monsters also draw many of the complaints, covered under frustrations.

Mod support extends the gameLow

A steady stream of players say mods (via Thunderstore) keep it fresh: more players, shared upgrades, save mods, spawn control, custom maps. Some admit they only keep playing modded.

Where players are split

Solo play: great challenge or punishing slogMedium

One camp loves solo as a tense, scarier, roguelike experience, and some players log most of their hours alone and reach very high levels. The other calls solo brutal: no revives, a single mistake or bad monster roll ends a long run, items can be too heavy without strength upgrades, and enemy counts do not scale down for one player. Some fans of solo still ask for a pause button, a save backup, or a one-time second chance.

Physics: the charm and the frustrationMedium

The physics-based carrying of fragile valuables is the game's signature, and reviews that mention it mostly enjoy it: moving a piano through a doorway becomes a team event, and losing a $30,000 item to a bump is half the comedy. The complaints come from the same system: items breaking from tiny drops or rugs, the cart spitting out loot or falling into pits, large objects clipping or getting stuck, awkward grabbing, and physics turning janky under high ping.

Public lobbies: new friends or a toxic free-for-allMedium

Some praise public matchmaking and the server browser as the way solo buyers found groups, and a number say they met close friends, or partners, there. Others describe lobbies full of children with soundboards, slurs, hosts who kick without reason or demand mics, "18+" servers that feel creepy, griefers with admin mods, and European servers dominated by Russian-language lobbies. Players with 50+ hours raise these complaints more often than newcomers.

Lethal Company comparisonsMedium

Lethal Company is the usual reference point. Reviews that pick a winner mostly pick R.E.P.O., for its physics, fightable monsters, shop progression, polish and continued updates ("Lethal Company walked so R.E.P.O. could run"). A persistent minority calls it a sillier, less scary copy with a shallower loop, and a few short negative reviews say little more than "just play Lethal Company."

What frustrates players

Monster balance and early-level difficultyMedium

17% of substantive negative reviews center on monster balance and early difficulty, and some positive reviews raise it too. Players describe one-shot deaths before they have any upgrades, multiple high-tier monsters or duplicates spawning on level 1 or 2, monsters that respawn seconds after being killed, enemies converging on the truck after the final extraction, and hits that pass through walls, doors, shelves and hiding spots. Specific monsters draw repeated complaints: the Loom, the Tick, the Cleanup Crew, the Huntsman's accuracy, Upscream stun-locks into pits, the Hidden dragging players into other monsters, and monsters wrecking the cart. A distinct group of returning players says recent updates made the early game far harsher and pushed it toward tryhards, and some of them flipped long-standing positive reviews. Defenders answer that every monster has a counter and complaints are a skill issue, but some positive reviewers still ask for nerfs or an optional difficulty setting.

Repetition and thin contentMedium

Repetition comes up in 17% of substantive negatives, and it is what mid-playtime critics raise most: among negative reviewers in the 10 to 25 hour range, 39% (23 of 59) said the loop got stale. The complaint is that runs never end and nothing carries over except cosmetics, with only a handful of maps (Headman Manor comes up repeatedly as over-represented and too dark) and a monster roster that stops surprising. Requests for more maps, monsters, items, an optional ending or campaign, and extra modes show up even in glowing reviews. Some players felt updates came too slowly or leaned on cosmetics over new gameplay.

Disconnects, client timeouts and no way to rejoinMedium

15% of substantive negative reviews cite connection problems, and long-time players raise them more: among negative reviewers with 50+ hours, 25% (25 of 102) named timeouts, disconnects or crashes. "ClientTimeout" and "ExceptionOnConnect" errors kick players mid-run, often right after finding a rare cosmetic box, and there is no way to rejoin a session in progress. Players also report the whole run ending if the host drops, high ping from limited server regions (South America, South Asia, Southeast Asia), region selection being ignored, and some groups asking for LAN or self-hosting after a server change. A few players report crashes on level transitions or failures to launch. One reviewer says support helped fix the problem.

Run-ending losses: pits, broken loot and permadeathMedium

Beyond monsters, players lose runs to the environment: instant-death pits and narrow planks in later levels, getting ragdolled into holes, the cart or money bags bouncing into the void, extraction points crushing oversized items, and maps where too much loot breaks to meet the quota. Because the team goes back to level 1 when everyone dies, several players describe hours-long runs erased by one mistake. Requests include cart respawns, pit damage instead of instant death, a save backup or checkpoint, and a confirm button before extraction.

Dead time while spectatingLow

Dying early in a group means long stretches of watching others, especially when careful play means hiding under tables for minutes at a time. The death minigames help, and several players ask for more of them.

Shop randomness and pricesLow

Players note shops that go many rounds without weapons or strength upgrades, energy crystals that feel overpriced, and costs that outpace income for small groups. Some want a guaranteed cheap early weapon.

Missing platform and quality-of-life featuresLow

Smaller but persistent requests: Steam achievements (the most common), native controller support, ultrawide and 1280x1024 support, a FOV slider and motion-sickness settings, an emetophobia toggle like the existing arachnophobia one, a pause button in single player, Mac support, a server language filter, Chinese localization, vote-kick and player blocking, and more customization slots.

3. The player conversation

Most reviews are affectionate and loud. Half of the positive reviews are 31 characters or shorter: one-liners like "peak," "fun with friends," and in-jokes about the Taxman and the duck. The longer ones read like war stories about friends, monsters and broken vases. Negative reviews from players under two hours are a mix of "boring," "Lethal Company is better," instant early deaths, controller trouble, timeouts, and having no one to play with. Criticism shifts with experience: players in the 10 to 25 hour range most often complain about repetition, while 50-hour-plus veterans complain about connection drops, toxic lobbies and balance changes.

Only a thin trickle of reviews in this slice came from 2025. Most were written from mid-June 2026, when the cosmetics update arrived, and some writers describe returning after months away. The same period brought a small but pointed backlash from returning players who felt the recent balance changes made early levels punishing and casual groups unwelcome. Weekly sentiment stayed between 93% and 96% positive throughout.

4. What the developers could do

Rebalance early-level monster spawns and lethality. Negative and positive reviewers alike describe high-tier or duplicate monsters on levels 1 and 2, instant respawns, truck camping after the final extraction, and hits through walls, and they name the Loom, Tick and Cleanup Crew in their complaints.
Let disconnected players rejoin a run in progress and fix client timeouts. Veterans with 50+ hours cite timeouts that eject them mid-run and lose found cosmetics, plus whole sessions ending when the host drops.
Add optional difficulty and custom run settings. Casual groups, duos and solo players ask for a difficulty slider, the ability to disable specific monsters, and enemy scaling for small teams, so they don't have to rely on mods.
Soften run-ending losses. Players ask for cart respawns, pit damage instead of instant death, a one-time save backup or second chance in solo, a pause button, and an extraction confirm so hours of progress are not erased by one fall or bad roll.
Expand maps and variety, and ease off Headman Manor. Repetition comes up in 17% of substantive negative reviews, requests for more maps and monsters appear even in positive ones, and players single out how often the dark Manor appears.
Give public lobbies better controls. Players want language and region filters, age-appropriate lobby options, vote-kick and player blocking, and visibility into modded or cheating players.
Ship achievements and native controller support. These are the quality-of-life requests that come up most, alongside ultrawide support and a stable FOV option for motion sickness.
Make shops and cosmetic drops less stingy. Players ask for a guaranteed affordable early weapon, cheaper energy crystals, more frequent rare boxes, and paired limb cosmetics.