Last year’s hit indie RPG Sea of Stars has passed an impressive milestone and the team behind the game is celebrating in a bit of an unorthodox way. Since its launch late last summer, Sea of Stars has been played by more than five million players, and to mark the occasion, Sabotage Studio has announced that it will be receiving…three player couch co-op?

Co-op modes are common enough in games, even if they did take a dip over the last few generations, but games like 2021’s raucous It Takes Two, have made for a bit of a renaissance of late. But there are genres that don’t naturally lend themselves to co-op, and traditionally single-player RPGs are among them. That doesn’t preclude it from ever happening, and lord knows that Baldur’s Gate 3 made it work effectively enough last year, but it’s still a bit of a rarity. Add Sea of Stars to the list of titles trying to make it work.

Dubbed “Single Player+,” the new mode isn’t a far cry from what Sea of Stars players are used to from the brief glimpse provided.

Buy Sea of Stars: Amazon | Best Buy | Walmart | Humble Bundle

Up to three players will be able to play at any given time and engage in Sea of Stars’ signature movement and combat, which will have an added wrinkle in co-op. Sea of Stars’ combat, which features timed button prompts a la Super Mario RPG, has a number of advanced techniques that combine characters abilities or simply make use of more than one character at a time. In Single Player+, there will now be “co-op timed hits” that give other party members an active role in the aforementioned moves.

The new mode is specifically referred to in Sabotage’s press release as “couch co-op,” meaning you’re going to have to invite some friends over to play it, rather than go online. Kotaku reached out to Sabotage to confirm that the mode would only support local play and a representative said “That vision is indeed to keep it local co-op.” That resolves any worries about having to time inputs over anything other than the most airtight netcode!

Sabotage had little else to share about the mode except that it’s in active development and to expect more news soon. Besides the surprise co-op announcement, Sabotage has also been working on an DLC for Sea of Stars called Throes of the Watchmaker, which was a Kickstarter stretch goal the game met during its initial campaign.

Buy Sea of Stars: Amazon | Best Buy | Walmart | Humble Bundle

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