Great game. One problem.

[The Gut]

No co-op multiplayer option.

This game looks like it could be easily adapted for a co-op game and a few different skins too.

Why hasn't this happened?

The game is good, the game is fun, and would be more fun and good with friends.

Make it happen, thanks!

[Kelrycor]

Beside it looks very obvious to make a local coop for this game, this is done by a small indie studio. I think the most obvious reason is too less human resources and financial possibilites to do it.

SteamWorld Dig 1 focused on rogue-like gameplay and was the "training horse" for the studio.
SteamWorld Dig 2 focused more on story telling.

After that, sadly, they wanted to do something completely different... so they focused on another game concept and made SteamWorld Heist, which is kind of a sequel as it plays after the story of SWD2, but is still a completely different type of game.

Hopefully they come back to make an official SWD3 some day, but a local coop for SWD2 will most likely never happen.

[The Gut]

Originally posted by Kelrycor:

Beside it looks very obvious to make a local coop for this game, this is done by a small indie studio. I think the most obvious reason is too less human resources and financial possibilites to do it.

SteamWorld Dig 1 focused on rogue-like gameplay and was the "training horse" for the studio.
SteamWorld Dig 2 focused more on story telling.

After that, sadly, they wanted to do something completely different... so they focused on another game concept and made SteamWorld Heist, which is kind of a sequel as it plays after the story of SWD2, but is still a completely different type of game.

Hopefully they come back to make an official SWD3 some day, but a local coop for SWD2 will most likely never happen.

Give me co-op or I will feed.

[Topias]

Implementing even local multiplayer isn't a trivial effort at the best of times, and online would be a massive undertaking for a small studio. You could argue local is enough with Steam's Remote Play Together feature, but that didn't exist when this game came out, and going back to implement it this long afterwards would hardly be worth the opportunity cost, even if you were to sell it as DLC.

Aside from the technical hurdle involved, the game isn't even designed to be co-op. Indeed, there are a fair few puzzles in the game currently which would be broken if you no longer needed to figure how to get that crate on that switch, or whatnot. Not to mention the changes that would need to be made to the AI. More generally, for a co-op experience that wasn't just lazily tacked on, you would need to redesign the game from ground up. I find the games in the SteamWorld series to be remarkably polished, so I suspect the developers wouldn't want to feature a co-op mode that wasn't thoroughly integrated into the game.

Not that you couldn't make a game in this genre with a co-op mode. You certainly could, but, again, online would be a massive technical hurdle, and local would have to rely on a Steam feature to ever see more than a negligible amount of use. Designing a game for co-op would mean the game would likely be a weaker experience for the majority who play singleplayer, unless they literally designed two separate versions of the game.

If we ever get another Dig game, I doubt it'll have co-op or any other multiplayer, aside from maybe leaderboards or something simple like that. I wonder if the devs could even come up with enough ideas for new gameplay mechanics to make a third game feel distinct from the first two, which are already pretty similar as is. Maybe if they made something focused on replayability, like a roguelite in the vein of Spelunky, but that would be a departure from their games thus far.

[The Gut]

Originally posted by Topias:

Implementing even local multiplayer isn't a trivial effort at the best of times, and online would be a massive undertaking for a small studio. You could argue local is enough with Steam's Remote Play Together feature, but that didn't exist when this game came out, and going back to implement it this long afterwards would hardly be worth the opportunity cost, even if you were to sell it as DLC.

Aside from the technical hurdle involved, the game isn't even designed to be co-op. Indeed, there are a fair few puzzles in the game currently which would be broken if you no longer needed to figure how to get that crate on that switch, or whatnot. Not to mention the changes that would need to be made to the AI. More generally, for a co-op experience that wasn't just lazily tacked on, you would need to redesign the game from ground up. I find the games in the SteamWorld series to be remarkably polished, so I suspect the developers wouldn't want to feature a co-op mode that wasn't thoroughly integrated into the game.

Not that you couldn't make a game in this genre with a co-op mode. You certainly could, but, again, online would be a massive technical hurdle, and local would have to rely on a Steam feature to ever see more than a negligible amount of use. Designing a game for co-op would mean the game would likely be a weaker experience for the majority who play singleplayer, unless they literally designed two separate versions of the game.

If we ever get another Dig game, I doubt it'll have co-op or any other multiplayer, aside from maybe leaderboards or something simple like that. I wonder if the devs could even come up with enough ideas for new gameplay mechanics to make a third game feel distinct from the first two, which are already pretty similar as is. Maybe if they made something focused on replayability, like a roguelite in the vein of Spelunky, but that would be a departure from their games thus far.

Making it locally co-op would not be that big of a hurdle, the gaming industry has been doing this for literally 30+ years.

Saying Co-op will break the game is a non issue, because first we the players would have to care. We don’t. Fun with friends in Co-op modes always trumps breaking a game, and breaking a game in itself is and can be great, because the player is going to do what they want no matter what, including not play the game at all.

Are you trying to defend the game for some reason, or are you confused about how difficult making a game Co-op would be?

Do you think Co-op is a bad thing because you like the game, or do you admit its a great and wonderful part of gaming that should always be included in games when possible?

Playing solo is good, but playing with friends is better for most games imo.

[Topias]

Originally posted by Senior Behemoth:

Making it locally co-op would not be that big of a hurdle, the gaming industry has been doing this for literally 30+ years.

I didn't say local co-op would be "that big of a hurdle", I said it wouldn't be trivial. An awful lot of those older games you're probably thinking of didn't have things like scripted sequences, NPC interactions, or a world comprised of multiple levels that would need to be figured out in this game, adding to the effort.

Originally posted by Senior Behemoth:

Saying Co-op will break the game is a non issue, because first we the players would have to care. We don’t. Fun with friends in Co-op modes always trumps breaking a game, and breaking a game in itself is and can be great, because the player is going to do what they want no matter what, including not play the game at all.

Which is why I referred to the games in this series being polished experiences. I doubt the developers would be inclined to add a rudimentary co-op mode that didn't feel on par with the singleplayer experience. Some devs and games do things like that and embrace player customization even to the point of potentially breaking the game, but not Image & Form, I really don't think.

Originally posted by Senior Behemoth:

Are you trying to defend the game for some reason, or are you confused about how difficult making a game Co-op would be?

Do you think Co-op is a bad thing because you like the game, or do you admit its a great and wonderful part of gaming that should always be included in games when possible?

Playing solo is good, but playing with friends is better for most games imo.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't try to paint me as a shill of some sort. I'm not here calling you entitled, either. Just basic respect, both ways.

I don't know how difficult implementing local co-op in this game would be, nor do I think most people who haven't worked with whatever engine they're using for the game do. I am willing to guess it wouldn't be trivial to make happen in its most basic technological level, and that's without actually changing any of the design to benefit from co-op.

I'm also not saying co-op would be a bad thing. What I'm saying is it wouldn't in this case be worth the opportunity cost even with a minimum of necessary effort, let alone redesigning the game to properly benefit from co-op play. In general, I really don't think devs should be concerned about adding co-op into their game for the sake of having co-op. It's up to their creative vision and the resources available to them.

Most importantly, this game came out over two years ago and hasn't really had any continuous development afterwards, so expecting the devs to now go back and implement a feature only a small minority of players would've used even at launch is so far from realistic it should be plainly obvious. Maybe for a sequel, sure, but not this game.