Hopoo Games is revisiting its 2013 roguelike classic Risk of Rain from the ground up with Risk of Rain Returns, and this time around, online multiplayer will be seeing some major improvements among the many other features receiving upgrades. At the time, Hopoo Games was a fledgling two-man indie game studio, which made it challenging to develop and manage online multiplayer features that have become standard in the last decade.
In an interview with Game ZXC, Paul Morse and Duncan Drummond talked about many of the improvements the team has been working on for the remake, including a completely reworked online multiplayer system that brings the game in line with contemporary multiplayer games. Players should have a much easier time getting into games with their friends, while certain character and gameplay design choices are aimed specifically toward fostering more interesting teamplay.
Joining Multiplayer In Risk of Rain Returns Will Be Much Easier
One of the main criticisms of the original Risk of Rain is the rather roundabout methods players need to employ for online multiplayer. Although local multiplayer is simple enough, online players had to use third-party tools like Hamachi or use port forwarding to connect to each other, which is obviously not ideal. As expected, improvements to multiplayer were highly requested and have been a top priority for Hopoo Games working on the remake.
Now that we've launched Risk of Rain 2 , we wanted to bring Risk of Rain Returns up to that standard. It's a game that should feel modern and should be shoulder-to-shoulder with games that are launching in 2023. So I think the multiplayer was the big one for us. We wanted to make it super simple. It's extremely similar to Risk of Rain 2 where you can just toss an invite to your friend on Steam, you know, the “quick join” aspect of it of like, “Here's my code, just join my lobby, if you want.”
The huge success of Risk of Rain 2 was certainly helped by its comparatively streamlined multiplayer, and it has become an extremely popular game for co-op fans looking to play with their friends. Since Risk of Rain Returns will feature a similar system, it'll be a far more attractive prospect for co-op and could potentially see a much higher player count than the original.
Risk of Rain Returns' Gameplay Has Co-Op In Mind
Although Hopoo Games couldn't spoil too much, the team says that co-op viability was an important consideration when developing Risk of Rain Returns. Risk of Rain's Survivors are each designed to be capable of completing the game on their own, but some Survivors also have certain abilities that are particularly useful in team composition. Hopoo Games has apparently leaned into this a bit more when designing Risk of Rain Returns' brand-new Survivors, which is great news for co-op fans.
I would say one of the things that we've always played with is supportive characters. That's something we flirted with a little bit with the Captain in Risk of Rain 2 . And even the direction the Engineer was heading towards in Risk of Rain 2 . So that's kind of an interesting space that we're still navigating. We still want all the characters to function in single-player, but we're leaning a little bit more towards the multiplayer aspects like, “Hey, what would be fun If I could play a character that could really help out the team?” So I would say that was one of the goals we’re going for.
Risk of Rain 2's Engineer is as great example of a character that works on its own but shines in a group, depending on the upgrades that are chosen. Risk of Rain's items are equally as important as its Survivors when it comes to builds, so fans of the supportive playstyle may want to keep an eye out for the new items in Risk of Rain Returns that go further toward promoting this playstyle.
Risk of Rain Returns is in development and is set to release in 2023 for Nintendo Switch and PC.
