The Project Moon series of games and tie-in works are a vast and rich landscape about the horrors of unfettered capitalism and, well, just horrors in general.

However, it's also a notoriously hard series to get into, partly because of the brutal difficulty of the previous two games, and partly because so much of it is scattered and not really in any one central place for easy access, especially if you are an English-speaker. For many people, Limbus Company is their first step into the series, and they probably have NO IDEA where to start with trying to dig into the more overarching backstory and lore of both it and the others in the series.

That is where this guide comes in. This guide will detail how to read/watch PM's media, in what order, and provide links to pretty much everything so as to get the most out of Limbus Company and so *you* don't have to go trawling through YouTube/Reddit/wherever to try and find this stuff yourself.

NOTE: There may be spoilers for the various games and other works in this series, so you *are* warned.

Anyway. On to the guide!

Lobotomy Corporation is the first game in the series. It is a roguelike management sim where you play as "Manager X", tasked with handling employees and various monsters known as Abnormalities in order to generate daily quotas of a power source substance known as Enkephalin and a mysterious "Seed of Light" project. You are aided by an alleged team of AIs known as the Sephirot, and your very own personal assistant AI, Angela. It's often been likened to "anime SCP Foundation."

This is the game where it all began, and without it, we wouldn't have the plot of Limbus. This is where the Golden Boughs come from, this is where Abnormalities come from, this is even where Distortions come from - but we're getting ahead of ourselves on that front.
LobCorp is known to be brutally punishing even by PM standards, and while I have played and enjoyed it myself, I cannot personally recommend it unless you are really, *REALLY* invested in this series. Playing it is a lesson in perseverance through frustration, and even modding to make it marginally more accessible is a Herculean task.

But, there is good news!
>>This playlist<< has all the cutscenes for LobCorp in proper order, right up to the true 100% Seed of Light Ending.

I also recommend >>the wiki.<<[antifandom.com] This is where you can read up on the specific Abnormalities in the game and a lot of their flavor text, some of which is even lore-relevant (such as the info for Bloodbath and Snow Queen), and some of which is technically inaccessible in-game (such as Don't Touch Me or the legacy abnormality Price of Silence).


There is also a very good summary by one WordsmithVids, in case you find even the cutscenes daunting in length. Some people dislike him, I think he does a fine job, decide for yourself.

Wonderlab was a webcomic drawn by an artist named MIMI, aka Whitezombies. It was originally available to read on the >>Project Moon Postype account<<[projectmoon.postype.com], however, after the scandal in summer 2023 - when Korean incels ruined everything for everyone and got one of the game artists, Vellmori, fired - MIMI requested it taken down and dissociated themself from it and Project Moon.

The comic follows the adventures of Catt, Taii, and Rose, three members of a Lobotomy Corporation branch Disciplinary Team as they go about the day to day of working in the facility.

Wonderlab is no longer considered canon, if it ever technically was. But as it is our first introduction to Distortions and the concept of Aberrations of existing Abnormalities, as well as featuring the "missing" member of the Magical Girls group of Abnormalities (Servant of Wrath) who later appears in Library of Ruina, it still provides some very good foundations and flavor to the overall PM world.

As such, efforts have been made to >>archive the comic and ensure it is still available to read for those who missed out on it before the scandal.<<[archive.org]

There is also a fairly good summary video, once again by WordsmithVids, in case some people take issue with the ethical ramifications of reading the requested takedown comic.

NOTE: So, this is the point the lore starts getting messy. Allegedly, Distortion Detective and Library of Ruina actually take place at the same time in the story, post-LobCorp, though I personally think it's better to get through Ruina before DD. There's also some debate on whether or not Distortion Detective in its current form is actually meant to still be canon since Project Moon wants to make a DD game, which is what Limbus' gacha revenue is allegedly funding, yet it's also referenced *in* Limbus as of the Blade Lineage event-...look, I don't know, the even *more* hardcore PM lore nerds can go argue it out in the comments.

Moving on.



Library of Ruina is set a few months after Lobotomy Corporation, after Angela partially sabotages the Seed of Light project for her own uses and causes the White Nights and Dark Days. An alleged "Grade 9 Fixer" known as Roland finds his way into the mysterious, tower-like Library that has sprung up in place of the former main facility of L Corp, where he encounters Angela and the other Sephirot (all now Librarians). He begins assisting her in finding "the perfect book", which requires the sending out of curious invitations to various groups of people to entice them to the Library, which then culminates in fighting off their guests, various Fixer Associations, and Distortions alike - as well as the mysterious group known as the "Reverberation Ensemble."

As with Lobotomy Corporation and the Abnormality flavor text, I once again recommend >>the wiki<<[antifandom.com] to read key/character pages to get that extra squeezing of lore that you just might miss out on from watching cutscenes alone. And, unlike LobCorp, I will say that Library of Ruina is at least somewhat more accessible to play, so you could just play the game yourself.

Now, unfortunately, I have yet to find a comprehensive playlist of cutscenes in order in the same way that I have for Lobotomy Corporation, and WordsmithVids has not finished his summary of Ruina owing to financial issues. The first two parts will be linked here, for convenience if nothing else, and this guide will likely be updated if/when further parts are released.



BUT. Thanks to a dear and wonderful friend of mine who I owe the world to (the one who actually got my stubborn ass into this game series by dangling a a hot bug man with PTSD in front of me), they did the legwork in >>listing the proper order of the cutscenes,<<[docs.google.com] so that you can follow along with the following vids by clicking the correlating timestamps, to get the full story for Library of Ruina.



Is it perfect? No, but hey, at least it works.

Ruina sets up a lot of things we run into in Limbus as well, so it's essential to the story. Here we have the Library that's been mentioned by Dante, the various Fixers and Associations, many characters that show up as IDs or otherwise make appearances in the Cantos of Limbus, and again, more of the Distortion phenomenon and their origins. Which leads us into...

Set at the same general time as Library of Ruina, Distortion Detective is a webnovel following a pair of Fixers known as Ezra and Moses (and later a Taboo Hunter known as Vespa) as they deal with the Distortion Phenomenon now starting to spread across The City. It can be found and read in English on the >>Project Moon Postype account here.<<[projectmoon.postype.com]

I will level with you - I have not read Distortion Detective, nor do I know of any video essays that summarize it, because I was under the impression it would be noncanon with the development of the DD game that's supposedly happening. Apparently I was wrong, and now it's required reading as of the Blade Lineage event/Yield My Flesh To Claim Their Bones. Don't fit the illiterate PM fan stereotype, read the webnovel, I know I'm going to have to read it too at some point.

(Oh boy, if you thought Ruina was a rough one, this was the *really* messy entry.)

Leviathan is the direct prequel to Limbus Company, detailing the origins of Vergilius as well as Charon, their dealings with the Ring Syndicate, and how both came to work for Limbus. Several other characters, such as Gubo and Aseah of Hermann's group affiliation, also made their debut in this story.

Leviathan was originally started as a webcomic, drawn by an artist known as Monggeu, aka koug99. However, due to Monggeu's various health issues impacting their ability to work, later portions became a webnovel with illustrations done by PM's own artists. The first 15 chapters were officially translated into English, however, the translation was *also* put on hold, and it is unknown if it will ever be finished. Fan translations of the final chapters, both human and machine, exist however.

>>Someone else already wrote up an excellent guide on how to read Leviathan,<< so I recommend you use that, as it's far more polished and less messy than the version I would have produced with Imgur links and the like.
Give them a thumbs up and a favorite for putting in the legwork on this particular mess, because despite its vital importance to the story of Limbus, Leviathan's half-translated, half-comic-half-novel state is just that: a mess.

You are currently here.

I would, uh, I would hope I don't have to explain how to access the story of Limbus Company and what order it goes in on the Limbus Forums. Or the classical literary novels that are referenced by each of The Sinners, right?

...

...right?

Though again, there is >>a wiki, just in case.<<[antifandom.com]
The main reason I offer the Limbus wiki up is mostly for Identity Uptie stories, which can provide lore tidbits in their own right, and unless you've been playing from the very beginning, it's unlikely you have *every* ID in the game, let alone uptied, to be able to see those stories.

Otherwise, pretty much everything else is in-game and accessed through gameplay.

...

Ahhh, who am I kidding. Look, as fair a gacha game as this is, I still don't trust gachas, and PM difficulty is still just that - PM difficulty, even if Limbus is the 'easy' game in the series so far. If the hooks hadn't gotten in me deep, I would never have played Limbus and would have stuck to watching the cutscenes on YouTube.

So for the fellow casuals in the audience, should you find that even Limbus Company is too hard for you, >>this playlist is for you.<<

I'd like to thank the following for making this guide possible:

• My very good friend E, whose persistence not only got me into this nightmare (affectionate) of a franchise, but who also made and allowed me to duplicate their guide for viewing the Library of Ruina cutscenes.
  
• Steam user NeedsMoreDoge for writing up the Leviathan reading guide with links, and saving me the headache of having to do it myself.
  
• The various Limbus Discords I am in, which encouraged me to do this so that other people might be able to get into the series and understand the story more easily.
  
• YouTubers such as WordsmithVids, Folex, and Bek for posting their cutscenes and summaries.
  
• Certain Limbus Company Steam forum and subreddit users for their...particularly *charming* brand of hospitality to new players that made me want to spite them by offering story alternatives for newbies/casuals in the first place.

And of course, readers like you, who stuck it out through a lot of the long winded explanations and the many links. You guys make me proud.

If you liked the guide, feel free to leave a like or favorite.

If you can think of ways to improve it, or have questions about things mentioned or that you'd like to see added or possibly expanded on in another guide (such as a breakdown of a lot of the literary references/works that are in this series), leave a comment or two below.

...and if you wanna leave hatemail, good luck f*cko.