No online play?

[Caine]

as the title. I see it labeled as strictly local co-op

[LtUlman]

It's not going to ship with it, but you can use the Remote Play feature of Steam itself to play with friends.

[Granite]

Remote Play Together isn't a good substitute. Each player is going to want to look at the board individually, and their own cards and such, in order to cooperate. If each player has to share the same screen to see anything, then there will be difficulty in each player getting to see the board state. From what little I could tell of the gameplay video it kind of looks like most everything is on screen at once, except for power card selection. That looks like a screen-sized pop-up or something?

[Jo]

If it works like their Sentinels of the Multiverse port, they'll add Multiplayer in eventually but they start with just getting the game out there as opposed to making multiplayer a priority

[melkathi]

They ran an indiegogo campaign and sadly the stretch goal for multiplayer wasn't reached. It is planned, but they need money to pay for food while they work on it :)

[Narkulus]

Originally posted by melkathi:

They ran an indiegogo campaign and sadly the stretch goal for multiplayer wasn't reached. It is planned, but they need money to pay for food while they work on it :)

I'll drop them a loaf of bread in the mail then if that'll help.

[[OPP]SuperCow]

With remote play does this mean you have to take turns or can you all play at once like you can in the physical board game?

[J_Kennedy]

All stretch goals were eventually reached. I'm sure they will implement multi-player after they get the main core polished.

[jffdougan]

@J_Kennedy -- there were two "original" stretch goals which were removed from the campaign near the end when it became clear there was no way that they would be reached (and existing ones were revised to lower funding tiers). Those were, in order, implementing Branch & Claw -- the currently existing expansion for the cardboard game, and which changes the play in some interesting ways -- and online multiplayer.

I'm among those who hopes that online multiplayer (and both expansions) make it to this at some point, if only because some of my new favorite spirits are among those appearing in Jagged Earth.

[MigrantP]

That is also our hope =)

[Northern Yeti]

I was just about to buy this but I can't see me getting it now. Without online play what's the point? Especially during a pandemic. I'll pick this up once I can actually play it with people.

[MigrantP]

The point: It's a cooperative game, so you can play solo (1 spirit or up to 4 if you can manage the puzzle). There's no hidden information, so you can play remotely with friends over Steam Remote Play Together, Parsec, Discord, or other services.

We'd love to add online multiplayer, but we don't think it's worth delaying releasing a game for a long time for a feature only used for less than 10% of games (based on real data). It's a good feature, but the game is still great without it!

[caracole]

Thanks for the reply! I'm not bothered by the absence of multiplayer for now.
As I have never played Spirit Island yet, doest the digital game include an interactive tutorial?

[MigrantP]

We are working on a tutorial for an update soon. In the meantime we have a video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2q9ZThCqrQ

[Star Paladin]

The POINT is it's cooperative, so you need people to play with to COOPERATE to play. I have the board game here, if I want to play with others here, I'll play the board game. This is just like Pandemic, a cooperative board game which does not allow you to play on line so you can cooperate to play.

I was excited when I saw this, now I and my friends are like what the heck?!?!?!

I am usually quite the wordsmith, but all I can think of to say is DURP.

[Hankroyd]

The POINT is it's coopeerative, indeed.
Meaning people can't play by themself, they have to coordinate with other players.
So, the remote play together does the job. It is not perfect, but ut works well enough for an unreleased game.
Yup, everyone share the mouse, but when your spirit is the one where the choices are made, you take control of the mouse and play.

Last saturday, Handelabra hosted a stream where 2 people played two games of SIusing this feature, it went well.

I'm not quite a wordsmith, but I can think a lot of things to say like "It's far from perfect but it's playable and will do well enough until the game is completed and leave early access." for example.