Does Order 13 deliver the goods?
I’ve worked in a warehouse before and let me tell you, Order 13 isn’t too far from reality. Aside from the horrible flesh monsters — they’re much worse in reality. Order 13 is a new game from the excellently named devs at Cybernetic Walrus, and has you working in a seemingly empty warehouse, completing orders to be shipped out. Strangely, you seem to live, work, and sleep at the warehouse. But maybe, with enough work, you’ll be able to find a way out.
There’s a plot of sorts in Order 13, but it doesn’t really mean much. You awaken in a warehouse where you must fulfil orders. Should you complete enough correctly, you can go to sleep and do it all again tomorrow. Should you fail, it’s likely due to you falling victim to the monsters within, you’ll awaken in a new warehouse and need to do it all again anyway. Why all of this is happening is unclear, even if you reach the end, but in reality it’s just a framing for you to complete what is arguably a fairly menial task.
Each day, you’ll need to print off order tickets, go and find the item in the warehouse, and input a code to collect it. Once you have the item, you return it to your station where you box it up and send it off to its destination. You’ll have a quota each day that you need to hit before you can progress to the next one. All of this is easy enough until you realise the warehouse is quite haunted. At first, it’s just dark, with spooky noises, and the occasional stray body part, but before long you’ll find that there’s a monster skulking between the shelves that will hunt you down as soon as it spots you.
You’d think that taking your time to sneak around and gather your quota would be the best course of action, but you have a timer in the form of a cute cat. Yes, you have a pet cat, which means we’re in GOTY territory here. When you’re out of your room, your cat’s happiness starts to decline, and should it reach zero, you’ll immediately fail having lost your only companion in this weird warehouse. In reality, this is just a time limit to push you to be more aggressive when collecting your items, but making it a cat is a stroke of genius. Everyone loves a cute animal. It’s a shame that it isn’t more animated, instead sitting in one place whilst you’re in the office and only moving around once you leave. Still, I liked that you could name and customise it in the main menu.
As you progress, you’ll earn money that can be spent on a variety of upgrades. Things like scanners will record the order tickets so you don’t have to memorise locations and pass codes, whilst a backpack allows you to collect multiple orders in one run. There are cat related items too that will increase its total happiness or provide a happiness boost should you be struggling on a specific day.
Importantly, for a fairly hefty price you can get certificates that will allow you access to lower floors in the warehouse that contain higher value items as well as the chance to visit Human Resources. Maybe you can file a complaint about work conditions there. Anyway, these lower floors are how you finally reach the end of the game, which took me about three hours total if you like to know how long this will last. They’re also much more difficult to navigate, with shelving units being all over the place and there being fewer places to hide from monsters. I’m glad there were these areas, as I found the initial floor got quite samey after a short while once you know how to deal with the monster.
Sadly, the lower floors don’t really have any other new tricks. The monsters are the same, only looking a bit scarier, and the non-threatening don’t change much either. It’s a shame, as delving deeper into the facility provides great opportunities to introduce new threats. Those opportunities are missed, though, instead giving you more of the same in a creepier looking room. I will say that the fear factor early on is quite solid, with you not wanting to lose progress and being unsure what threats there are. Once you’ve got this figured out, it’s more of a time management game than a horror game, so don’t expect to be freaked out for long.
Still, I found the cost aspect of finding items and shipping them out to be surprisingly enjoyable for such a menial task in a game. It has that Powerwash Simulator feel to it where simply completing a task is enjoyable in itself. The fairly well presented world and really rather solid ambient sounds certainly keep you on your toes, but the gameplay loop is fun even without the scares. The ending is a bit disappointing, being just a short block of text, but the opportunity to go back and complete more shipments was surprisingly alluring. I’m looking forward to how Cybernetic Walrus build on this premise in their future releases.
Order 13 is available now on PC.
