
Under the employ of a mysterious computer intelligence known only as the Taxman, it is your job to locate, transport and extract valuable items from the haunted remains of a long lost humanity. Up to six players can work together to satisfy their creator with the extraction of physics-based objects.
The game was released in early access on Steam on February 26, 2025.
R.E.P.O. contains examples of:
- Abandoned Laboratory: McJannek Station, located around the Articnote filled with valuables of the scientific variety.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Plenty!
- There is no time limit to worry about when going about a run. This means you can stay for as long as you can handle the monsters searching for loot to make quota.
- Unlike most imitators of Lethal Company, it's possible to revive dead teammates by bringing their heads to an extraction point. However, the game goes out of its way to make sure that player heads can be grabbed. If a player's head becomes well and truly unrecoverable, such as getting wedged where it can't bounce out of a pit, or by glitching out of the level boundaries, their head will be respawned inside of the truck. Player heads will also automatically bounce out of pits should they fall into one.
- Whenever an enemy dies, they drop a valuable Soul Orb. If the enemy was killed by dropping them into a pit, the Soul Orb will bounce out of it to be grabbed. Additionally, Soul Orbs are completely invulnerable for a few seconds after they appear, so players have a chance of getting situated to transport the orb before it reverts back to its notoriously fragile state.
- At the start of each level, you are provided a hovering cart that can carry loot items. Items placed inside the cart are more resistant to damage, the cart totals up the value of all loot items placed inside, and it can be easily dragged up stairways and inclines and slotted neatly into the extraction compartments. You also do not have to retrieve the cart after completing all extractions, and may simply leave it behind once you're finished with it, as a new one is automatically provided at the start of every level.
- The cart and extraction zones are "cushioned" — items that land in them will not take damage, no matter how hard they were thrown and no matter from how high they were dropped.
- Artistic License – Physics: While not nearly as durable as their hardness often leads people to believe, diamonds are still fairly tough in real life. Yet they're one of the easiest loot items to break in the game. Particularly egregious considering that there are several loot items made of less durable materials and yet they are harder to break than the diamond.
- Ascended Meme: In the Museum of Human Art it’s possible to stumble upon a painting depicting a yellow semibot with angel wings flying in the night. A clear reference to the "I Love" meme.
- BFS: One of the loots in Swiftbroom Academy is a sword with enormous size even for a human. Compare it to the sword you can wield, which is rather small.
- Bloodless Carnage: Justified in that the player characters are actually worker robots that simply explode when killed. Enemy monsters get turned into a purple essence when defeated.
- Combat Resuscitation: As mentioned above, dying during a run drops your head as an item your teammates can retrieve. If they successfully bring it to an extraction point, upon the next successful extraction, you'll be revived with a single Last Chance Hitpoint.
- Continuing Is Painful: If you die, you can be revived mid-level if your teammates manage to extract your head. However, you only revive with a single Last Chance Hitpoint, which means unless your teammates can share their health with you or your team brought a spare medkit with you, you're stuck as a One-Hit-Point Wonder for the rest of the level. The same is true if you are left behind but your teammates manage to escape in the company truck.
- Consolation Prize: More of a mockery, though. If players fail to finish a level (if all of them die), they are taken to a disposal yard, where they are forced to fight each other to death. Last player standing becomes "King of the Losers" and gets a special crown for the next run. If a timer runs out, everybody is deemed to be a loser and nobody gets a crown for the next run.
- Co-Op Multiplayer: Up to six players can join a lobby. There are gameplay mechanics designed with co-op play in mind, such as the benefit of having someone revive a dead teammate at an extraction point, or several players helping each other to lift heavy objects.
- Crouch and Prone: The player robots can crouch down in two different states, one at half height, the other at a third of the height — the latter-most being useful in high within/underneath different places.
- Cute Machines: The player character robots are adorably cartoonish, looking like collapsible thermoses with LED eyes and a trash can-lid head.
- Creepy Doll: One of the treasures in Headman Manor is a disturbing-looking doll as big as the Semibots, and is worth a decent amount of money. Unfortunately, when it's grabbed, it starts letting out a hellish scream that can alert enemies and flails erratically, which can hurt players, makes getting it in the cart extremely annoying, can break items that are already in the cart, or even break itself, making it dangerous to try to cash in.
- Dangerous Backswing: You use items - any items - as a bludgeoning weapon simply by holding it and swinging your view around. As a result, friendly fire is a common sight amongst players in tight spaces when they're hauling items around.
- Dead Person Conversation: The new 3.0 Monster update allows dead players in Co-op mode to communicate with the other players briefly at the cost of needing to "recharge" before being able to communicate again. However, if the head is worn by a Headgrab, the player can communicate infinitely until the head is knocked off.
- Destroyable Items: All of the loot you can extract starts off at a set selling price, and gradually loses value if it gets banged up against the environment or attacked by monsters, eventually getting completely destroyed if players are too careless. Items placed inside a company cart or the extraction point are protected from damage, however, incentivizing players to haul goods around inside it.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Plutonium Hourglass slows down time around the person holding it, which debuffs their movement and lowers the pitch of their voice chat. However, the Semibots' eyes dilate heavily whenever they grab it and are covered in a pink mist while doing so, making it evocative of another kind of scenario that is generally associated with the same effects.
- Downer Ending: Considering it's an Endless Game, it doesn't matter how well you do. Even with a full team of six people, you will inevitably fail to make quota, whether it be due to breaking too many valuables or the entire team getting killed by monsters. And when you finally do, you're all promptly thrown into a scrap heap to fight to the death. But hey! Whoever wins becomes "King of the Losers" and gets to wear a shiny crown for the next run!
- Duel to the Death: The punishment for failing to meet quota isn't being flung into space, but instead being taken to the local dump and sent to an arena located atop a massive pile of junk, filled with items and weapons. Last player standing "Wins".
- Explosive Stupidity: A few of the valuables you can extract will explode if damaged enough, including explosive barrels and propane tanks.
- Fun with Acronyms: The game's titled "R.E.P.O", which stands for "The Retrieve, Extract, and Profit Operation."
- Fun With Blenders: One possible item in the Museum of Human Art is a blender filled with money which will turn on when touched and destroy the money inside it.
- Interface Screw: A few items can cause effects that make extracting them difficult.
- The music box in Headman Manor spins around alongside the player and camera, and will often be sent flying when dropped.
- The hourglass in Swiftbroom Academy slows the player down when picked up and lowers their voice.
- The gumball machine in the Museum of Human Art will illuminate with hypnotic swirls and force the player who touched it and anyone near it to stare at it.
- Relating to monsters, a dead player's head worn by a Headgrab in Co-op Mode will have the camera follow the monster's movements with the player unable to control it until the head is removed.
- Lethal Joke Item: The inflatable hammer. Most of the time, like you'd expect, it harmlessly bounces off anything you swing it at and does no damage. It has a small chance, however, to cause an explosion on hit, doing enough damage to instakill anything short of a Trudge.
- Kaizo Trap: Apart from monsters entering the company truck and slaughtering your team as they are about to escape, the extraction spots can also accidentally crush anyone standing too close to them when they go off, or destroy certain large valuables if they aren't placed neatly enough within its boundaries.
- Love Potion: One of the valuables that can be found in the numerous locations is a heart-shaped bottle containing a pink-colored potion. When a player picks up the potion, their eyes will turn pink and the game's text chat will have them automatically spout messages either complimenting other players or complimenting the potion itself. These messages only stop appearing once the player holding the potion drops it."This potion is like the most pleasant dream.""I can't help collab over this potion.""Low-key, [player-name] is the most neat person."
- Menacing Museum: The game's first update introduces the Museum of Human Art, an abandoned art gallery filled with unsettling exhibits and wide spaces with very few spaces to hide.
- Mission Control: The mysterious Taxman who sends you to the various locations you scrounge around in. For some odd reason, they only speak in Emojis.
- Money Is Experience Points: Money can be used to buy upgrades as well as items.
- Motifs: Emojis. The icon of the game is a Crying Laughing Emoji that's modified to look like a Nightmare Face, and the communication between "Taxman" is exclusively done through Emojis.
- My Little Panzer: The clown doll explodes when its nose is touched three times. This can be useful for killing enemies if players lack weapons and have enough items to fill the quota.
- Off with His Head!: When a Semibot dies, its body explodes and the only trace of it left is its head. Fortunately, the head can be picked up by teammates and brought to an extraction point to resurrect them when the quota is fulfilled.
- Only Mostly Dead: During the Monster Update, a feature made it so that Semibots that die will still maintain a weak regenerating battery that lets dead players briefly "regain consciousness" to relay information to their living comrades. However, they'll be unable to do anything else until they're properly revived at an extraction point.
- Overcrank: The Hourglass is an item that is very profitable, but casts a time-slowing field on whoever holds it, affecting their voice and most crucially, their movement speed.
- Safe Zone Hope Spot: It is very much possible for monsters to follow you into the escape truck and kill you, even after completing all the extractions in the level and calling for the exit.
- Schmuck Bait: The clown doll will warn you not to touch its nose if you press it. Pressing the nose a third time will cause it to explode.
- Screamer Prank: Sometimes, there's a TV that asks you if you're still watching "Moose Fighting Volume 2: Antler Mania". Clicking it results in a horribly deranged moose screaming in your face and sending you reeling.
- Synthetic Voice Actor: Typing in-game results in your character speaking in a simple text to speech voice, one word at a time.
- There Was a Door: You always enter a level by crashing your truck into it back-first, coming in through a random wall instead of any traditional entry point.
- True Art Is Incomprehensible: Most of the items in the Museum of Human Art are bizarre sculptures or objects, including giant milk bottles, diamonds mimicking burgers, lip-shaped pacifiers, and statues of golden feces. As most of these are art sculptures, they go for a higher amount than other extract items.
- Troll: Every so often after completing a level, the Taxman will delay starting the engine while filling up its chat log with spam. This can be inconvenient if an enemy shows up.
- Unwinnable by Design: Zig-zagged. Unlike other similar games, you cannot progress until successfully extracting enough loot at each extraction point in a level. All loot in the level is breakable, and if too much of it gets devalued or destroyed, the only "easy" way out is to either die to a monster or level hazard, or self-destruct in the pause menu. On the other hand, larger monsters will respawn over time and their souls can be used to fill the quota; the main question is whether you're able to kill them and not die in the attempt.
- Use Your Head: Not in the traditional sense - the heads of your deceased cohorts can be used as an emergency weapon to knock down monsters, or even bludgeon them to death if they're stunned.
- Wizarding School: One of the levels you can get sent to is Swiftbroom Academy, a school that taught exactly what you'd expect.
- Wreaking Havok: One of the main draws of the game is its physics system. Items can be grabbed, turned, and used to bludgeon the creatures. (And also your teammates.)
