ORDER 13 Review (PC)

It isn’t quite as chaotic as an Amazon Fulfillment Center, but it’s about as peaceful as a McDonald’s drive-thru on a Friday afternoon. It’s dark here, too, so there’s also a sense of loneliness in the shadowy crags and crevices of this warehouse, and not to mention a foreboding feeling that something could happen at any given moment. I have an order to fill, and I have a deadline to meet, despite having little to no knowledge of what it is that I’m actually gathering. But I’m responsible for the fulfillment of these orders, and so, while there is a chance that the solemn eyes beyond the pale will claim me on my next deep dive into the back rooms of ORDER 13, the fact still remains: I must carry out my duties as a courier of ominous packages — even if there’s a chance that it’ll kill me.

I’ve awoken to a twilight shift in an old warehouse, completely oblivious to the fact that, despite there being a friendly feline companion in the office, there are no colleagues or moving pieces. I have but one instruction: to work quickly, and to complete a series of assignments in an allotted time. This means having to traipse through the opaque corridors of the nearby warehouse—a towering duplex that houses more than a cascading array of shelves and labeled crates. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the bitter truth; it’s apparent, really, that something else—something sinister—wallows in the darkness, and that it relies heavily upon a clueless sense of incompetence to make unspeakable acts take shape. It wants to take me elsewhere, and the only way that I can prevent that from happening is to scrape these orders out. Time, sadly, isn’t on my side tonight.

The Graveyard Shift

ORDER 13 immediately thrusts you into the decrepit hallways of a seemingly endless warehouse—a spot of utmost importance to the figureheads of an unknown organization. To begin with, you have little to consider outside of the fact that there is something wrong with the situation at hand. There’s a cat in your office—a furry friend who just so happens to be your only accomplice in this perilous world—and a tight quota that needs to be filled in order to unlock additional sections of the warehouse. You’ve a list of items to collect, and a catalog of potential upgrades to obtain to boost your overall performance and efficiency. But, there’s another issue that you must address: the lingering shadows that grow over the darkest areas of the warehouse. Oh, this isn’t a peaceful place to work; it bodes ill for those who are incompetent at their job.

There’s a fragment of Happy Humble’s Burger Farm etched into the canvas here. And when I say that, I mean that ORDER 13, while sporting a completely different setting and product, mostly requires you to complete orders in a timely fashion whilst juggling the various problematic aspects of the job. As you slowly progress through the orders, the environment begins to change, as does the shadowy nature of the world around you. Naturally, with every box that you fill, a new issue arises, essentially leaving you to alternate between two tasks: descending deeper into the stock room to unearth riskier items, and using the rewards to purchase better tools, and more importantly, keep your fluffy companion safe and secure. And if you fail to balance these tasks, then you may just find yourself assigned to another warehouse, where the process begins from scratch.

Cashier No. 6, Please

To state the obvious, ORDER 13 isn’t a relaxing game; on the contrary, it’s awfully demanding, and it relies entirely on your ability to swiftly produce a complete order in short bouts of time. It’s one of those games—a psychological horror that often uses its ambiance to establish a continuous sense of dread and disbelief. It’s a fantastic setting, too, with the monumental shelves and towering back rooms providing an almost endless labyrinthine effect that makes you feel lost, alone, and without the comfort of a spirited colleague. And, kudos to the creators, because it manages to elevate these aspects of terror to create a prolonged tension between the world and its harrowing entities that loom in the shadows remarkably well.

It doesn’t come as too much of a surprise here, but there is a relatively steep learning curve to the process of getting the necessary items for each of the orders—an uphill struggle, of sorts, that regularly involves succumbing to the shadows in order to learn from previous mistakes to improve further attempts. Thanks to the game making enough room for a hearty banquet of competent and sustainable upgrades, though, it’s never made to feel stupidly difficult, much less that its greatest perks are out of reach or outright unobtainable. And it’s a genuinely fun experience, too, despite being one that frequents death like an old friend. The point is, so long as you don’t mind playing the role of a trainee for the first few hours, then you’ll eventually come to find that the latter portions of the journey tend to conjure up a lot to great frights.

Verdict

ORDER 13 is what Happy Humble’s Burger Farm is to the Backrooms; it’s a culmination of two oddly familiar brands of horror merging into a singular entity. And you know what? It’s a match made in heaven. Granted, the warehouse setting isn’t what you would call thematically spectacular, but for the sheer amount of content that it manages to produce in its procedurally generated hellhole, it’s still an absolute blast to romp through, nonetheless. On that note, if it’s absurdly ominous worlds that you enjoy flicking through, then presumably, you are going to enjoy subjecting yourself to the astronomical demands of this particular fulfillment center for a handful of hours or more.

There’s a solid progression loop here, for sure. The fact that the game also crams in the feline companion and a separate branch of upgradable components to keep them from falling victim to the shadow realm is another great reason why ORDER 13 is substantially better than a lot of textbook corridor hoppers. To that end, it’s easy to recommend Cybernetic Walrus’ cardboard-centric atmospheric horror and all of the bolts, boxes, and behemoth-like shadows that flesh out its dauntingly dainty universe. Is it a perfect fit for the psychological horror genre? That’s debatable, though, given the trajectory of positive opinions that I’ve brought to the table since the beginning of this review, I’m pretty confident that this is, in all honesty, likely to resonate with a lot of die-hard horror fans. Just don’t expect to see fulfillment centers the same way ever again, folks.