Players have been asking for multiplayer for a while, so we did the only reasonable thing, which was to release it on April Fool's day without any prior indication. It's still missing a few quality of life features, like steam matchmaking / friend list integration, so the process is a bit old-school right now, but it does work and it is fun!
Wildermyth is, first and foremost, a game about heroes, their adventures, the choices they make, and how they change and grow over time. Since heroes are highly customizable, a lot of players have been making them look like their friends, and then letting their friends make decisions about those heroes' abilities and the choices they make. We love the idea that Wildermyth can be a kind of Dungeons & Dragons-esque storytelling device for groups of players, and the way we've implemented multiplayer attempts to make that form of collaboration easier (and, hopefully, more fun!)
The multiplayer mode we've added to Wildermyth is cooperative, and the overall structure is the same as the single player game. You can start a single player game and continue it later in multiplayer, or vice versa. The main difference is that multiple players can control heroes at the same time. Actions can still only happen one at a time, but one player can be planning to move a hero while another is planning to attack with a different hero. By default, any player can control any hero, but there are also some options to give players exclusive control over heroes, so only they can decide their abilities and what actions they take. There's a lot of visual feedback to help show what other players are hovering over, both in missions, on the overland, and during comics.
We've also enabled
Steam Remote Play! With controller support implemented, local multiplayer is a little more possible. It still needs some refinement, and it's not quite as extensive as online multiplayer; if you're playing with controllers, each player can have their own cursor, but everyone is controlling the same heroes and actions, so you'll need to decide amongst your friends which of you is going to take control at any given moment. Or, if you have a
really well-behaved group of friends, you can just give them all mouse and keyboard access.
It's fun watching all the interesting ways this game has brought players together. We're hoping that continues to be the case, and we'll try to help it along in whatever ways we can. We expect to release a smoother connection experience pretty soon, along with other tweaks and bugfixes as we go.
