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 an average shift at a warehouse. But what happens when the two worlds combine? What you’ll find is something that’s both equally cathartic and chilling.
I was recently given an opportunity to take an extensive look at Order 13 in its complete form ahead of its official release date, and trust me, I have quite a bit to say about what I got to experience. Despite my initial impressions being a little rough, what I found was a surprisingly addictive game that provides just enough of a dopamine boost to keep you coming back for more.
Playing Order 13
In Order 13, you play as a worker for The Jolly Box Company, with your main responsibility being to fulfill a set dollar amount of orders before you go to bed and do it all again the next morning. The thing is, the warehouse you work at is your home away from home. You have a small compartment in the facility all to yourself, housing a computer, a mattress, your tools of the trade, and an adorably cuddly cat that keeps you company.
But as soon as you venture into the warehouse proper, things don’t seem quite right. The stacks upon stacks of merchandise are dimly lit and frequently in disarray. Strange noises and what feel like screams echo out in the distance. Every now and then, you feel like your eyes are playing tricks on you — surely there wasn’t something moving in the distance, right?
Things only become more intense when you realize that your cat is pretty attached to you, as in, maybe a little too attached. You can only spend so long outside your room without your cat getting distressed, which is marked by a large countdown in the bottom left of your screen. The more it ticks down, the more you’ll have to hoof it to meet your quota. Should it reach zero . . . well, you don’t want to find out what happens if it reaches zero.
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Thankfully, once you complete your daily quota, you’re more than free to either call it a day or fill out another order or two for some additional cash. You start out with only $20 to your name, but the better you perform each day, the more cash you walk away with, allowing you to purchase a number of upgrades that’ll help you meet the game’s increasingly difficult challenges. Forgot what item you need to grab? Buy a scanner, and you’ll have it in front of your eyeballs at all times. Can’t see in the dark? Fork over some cash for a flashlight. Even your cat can get some fun treats, either in the form of toys or food, in order to more effectively manage their temperament.
And trust us, you’re going to need these upgrades. The daily quota only goes up with each and every passing day, with you having to venture further and further out into the warehouse to retrieve your orders. Not only that, you’ll have to come face to face with a growing horde of strange creatures that don’t take too kindly to your trudging around. There’s only so much time you can spend away from your cat, and it becomes more and more of a rare resource the farther you go out.
There’s a level of strategy here running underneath the moment-to-moment gameplay since your upgrades carry over into every successive day. No save scumming here either—if you want to change up your initial strategy, you’re going to have to start all the way back from day one.
But fulfilling orders isn’t as easy as you’d think. Before you get your scanner, you’re assigned a ticket for each order that you have to commit to memory before venturing outside your room. Each ticket details a specific area of the warehouse the item is in, which aisle the item is located in, and what specific shelf in that aisle the item is contained within. On top of that, each shelf is also locked with a unique code. If you don’t get that code right, you’re not walking away with what you need. If you’re really unlucky, you may even accidentally knock over something from way up high, alerting a nearby monster to come check out the noise.
Don’t forget to complete all the steps for packaging something correctly, as well. Three layers of protection: close the box, tape, sticker. Screw any of these steps up, and you’ll be docked some of your pay for that order. I was admittedly thrown off by this at first. But paying more attention to the signs in your room set me on the right course.
Things only become more complex as you unlock more areas of the warehouse, along with the ability to fulfill multiple orders in a single run. The basement, for instance, is a significantly different environment compared to the first floor of the warehouse. The halls are more cramped, there’s less light to be found, and sections are divvied up between small gaps you can crouch through and holes in chain-link fences. But orders you complete from the basement will net you more cash overall.
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It almost evokes the same kind of feeling one might get when playing Five Nights at Freddy‘s. While not as demanding mechanically, your ability to juggle different independent variables tied together with simple but effective mechanics forms a surprisingly addictive gameplay loop. There’s the anticipation of preparing for your next journey into the warehouse, the high of running for your life and quickly grabbing what you need, and this wonderful coming down period where you’re just tenderly shipping an order away, just to do it all again. I was surprised at how much I really took to it.
Presentation-wise, it’s fine. I’d almost call it practical. Little really stood out to me in terms of unique qualities, but when you’re playing something like this, being distracted by pretty objects in the environment isn’t really conducive to having a good time. That said, I do like the gradual corruption that starts to infest the warehouse with each passing day: disembodied limbs and corpses occasionally line the aisles, entire bodies and splashes of viscera fill the corners in the basement, and an ominous glowing light growing in the distance really help sell the escalating danger that’s enveloping you. I feel similarly about the game’s music. I like the jukebox that plays in the comfort of your room, but otherwise, I didn’t feel too strongly about anything in particular.
Special mention should go to how you can change your cat’s appearance. Beyond just changing the color of its coat, you can even cycle through a few different weights to form the right cat for you. It’s an unnecessary touch, but it’s one that shows a level of effort that’s really appreciated. I turned mine into a tabby.
Should You Play Order 13?
If I had any gripes with Order 13, it would be how the monsters are handled. I feel mixed about them.
On one hand, the need to have an unpredictable threat roaming around the halls is necessary for there to be a greater challenge. And for what it’s worth, they accomplish exactly that. Having to navigate around a monster standing directly in front of the shelf you need to access will easily add 10 or 20 seconds to the time spent outside, and it really adds to the pressure of the game overall.
On the other hand, successfully escaping them after you’ve gotten their attention amounts to just ducking underneath a shelf if there’s space available. When you get a chance to see them up close like this, and how they kinda look like a potato with working vestigial limbs, I do think the fear factor is lost a bit.
But that’s the nature of the beast when it comes to games like this. They become something you stop fearing and instead treat as an obstacle, like an errant tire or piece of gravel flying at your windshield on a freeway. The monsters themselves aren’t necessarily scary, but their presence and their impact on your strict time limit still leave a tingle down your spine. I’m ultimately glad they’re here because of this.
The game’s performance took a little bit to really dial in as well. This is more on my end than anything else, but I found that disabling VSync and keeping settings hovering around medium or so on an Nvidia 2060 card kept things at a stable 60 FPS. I could’ve done more testing, but I was pretty happy with the game’s performance from here.
Overall, Order 13 really managed to hook me, much more than I initially thought it would. The warehouse randomizes itself every time you start a new game, the game continues past its ending as long as you can meet the daily quota, and the differing tools you can unlock based on your performance allow you to formulate several distinct strategies to keep moving forward. As a plus, it reminded me to give my own cat a bit more attention.
If you want a horror game that prides itself on making the mundane feel morbid and monstrous, Order 13 manages to accomplish this and then some.
Order 13 will release on Steam on March 10, 2025.
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