Gather unknown signals from deep, silent space · By
Maybe. But you also have to question how complicated that might be to do. I'm not a coder or game creator by any stretch, but I imagine that might take a lot of time to do, let alone developing a co-op mode to begin with.
Possible? Maybe. Likely? I'm not sure. It's a neat idea, and I can imagine that if co-op did come around, they might end up doing something like that.
The difficulty of multiplayer is everything that has to "match-up" between the 2 players. e.g. physics objects moving, the state of the world (where is everything), data-races (we both put the same thing in our inventory at a similar time).
Individual scares are actually the easiest to implement as long as they are transient, i.e. they don't change anything permanent, like moving a chair.
I honestly see a hypothetical multiplayer mode as something like The Funny Setting. It might ruin the atmosphere for you, but if it does, you just don't use it.
A lot of people play this game while in a voice chat with others (myself included, occasionally), which I personally feel affects the atmosphere just as much as having a whole second player would, and yet the atmosphere still persists (personally). I feel like being in a voice chat might even affect the atmosphere more than having simply another player would, as you would likely constantly be separated and alone while the other player is doing something else, while voice chat will have another person always there with you.
The game already half treats itself as a wacky sandbox outside of the job sim and horror, especially when turning on the special settings and interacting with their content, so I feel like you wouldn't really be losing that much from multiplayer existing. All depends on the player, I guess.
A lot of people play Solitaire while in a voice chat with others (myself included, occasionally), does that mean Solitaire needs a multiplayer mode? Because the second you add multiplayer to solitaire, it literally becomes a different game. Is that game better than the original? It doesn't matter, because it's already different and thus not the intended vision. Obviously, you already agree with me that adding voice chat effects the games atmosphere like you said. But you admitted to playing the game in voice chat all the time, so clearly the actual games atmosphere is not your priority here—it's messing around with friends. That's totally fine! There's tons of games like that already for messing around with friends. Not EVERY game needs to be developed so you can mess around with friends.
The question here is if the game itself get IMPROVED from multiplayer, or just pushed into being something it wasn't intended to be? I believe that is what would happen, and this game is so unique and special I would be truly bummed if it got multiplayer slapped onto it and became the next "wacky zany streamer game". Fans aren't always right. I don't need a partner in the mountains. Keep it solitary, please. If the game isn't fun enough for you without multiplayer, maybe you just don't actually like the game that is being developed as much as you think you do.
*sorry about all the edits i wrote this before coffee. added another edit to type this lmao
But you admitted to playing the game in voice chat all the time
I might have worded it badly, but I meant I very occasionally play it in one, like maybe 1/30 of my sessions have me in one. I have played this game for hundreds of hours since version 0.6.1 and loved every second of it, most of the time without having any contact with anyone else, so it's not like that is what is keeping me attached.
I don't even really want multiplayer for the game, nor would I ever want the devs to do it if they didn't want to, I would just be fine with it's addition if it was ever added. I would still primarily play singleplayer, but if a friend was up to it, I would definitely play multiplayer for a bit.
To tack onto this second part: I was recently talking with my friend while playing, completely distracted, and the game still freaked me out with a sound-based event. So on one hand, yes, we understand that the game is meant to be singleplayer, but on the other, adding a multiplayer option would not affect the overall experience.
That said, and agreeing that the dev shouldn't add it to this game, it would be nice to see it added in a potential other, VotV-like game from the same dev, be it a sequel or a different game.
Edit: Forgot to mention, my friend did ask if he could join, only to be disappointed that he couldn't lol
