Sea of ​​Stars Dawn of Equinox: Developers Dive into 3-Player Co-op and Combat 2.0, Today

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Hello everyone, this is Thierry speaking on behalf of Sabotage. Our friends at PlayStation invited us to share more information about everything that’s happened since launch Sea of ​​Starsand how this led our team to work full-time for the better part of a year on a immense free update called Dawn of Equinox.

So let’s take a look at the content summary, i.e. general updates, combat 2.0 and couch co-op.

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Updates

In addition to countless bug fixes and micro-adjustments, we added a bonus pre-rendered cutscene and were finally able to freshen up the first hour of the game with combat animations for the child versions of our heroes. This allowed us to abandon the flashback structure and place the action directly in the intro, something we unfortunately had to abandon during production.

We’ve also added difficulty presets, several up-to-date relics to customize your gameplay, and even a comprehensive Speedrun mode designed with the support of our community. There’s some up-to-date music, character portraits and animations – the list goes on.

Combat 2.0

The update introduces two key changes to the combat system: Sticky Combo Points and Mystery Locks. With a comprehensive balance pass, of course.

Sticky Combo Points: The gist of this is that Combo Points now persist after battle, making combo moves much more useful overall, whether they’re meant to open up more aggressively in regular combat or provide more options for dealing different types of damage when dealing with locks.

This one mainly concerns the impression that there is not enough variety of moves in the game. The vision has always been to provide each character with a tiny set (MOBA style) where each move has situational application, rather than a immense list where players pigeonhole themselves using only a few of their favorites. We mean well, but while the game boasts a total of over 40 unique and animated moves, the scarcity of Combo Points means players rarely engage with most of them, limiting the perceived scope of combat to the feeling of having only three skills per character.

Mystery Castles: This is another one that should always be there. In low, Mystery Locks introduce a up-to-date gameplay loop by discovering how to break the spells of enemies when you first encounter them. Instead of displaying the types of damage required for each lock, they are hidden, requiring the player to try different attacks to see what will break each lock. Please note that this is dependent on enemy type and spell, meaning your progress in discovering Mystery Castles is recorded in real time.

The main impact on gameplay is that there will be more enemy spells flying in general, which will cause a slight boost in difficulty by relying on more brutal enemy movements to occur, rather than relying solely on the complicated balance between damage dealt and received. This change also adds a “Discover” feature to certain character skills and combos, adding more layers of strategy depending on whether it’s time to map a up-to-date enemy’s spells or go full-on damage. Combined with Sticky Combo Points and Mystery Locks difficulty settings, it gives us the ultimate edit to Sea of ​​Stars’ combat system.

Couch co-op (or online with Share Play)

We knew it would be a challenge, with hundreds of cutscenes, interactive objects, camera work, puzzles, menus, NPC interactions, and countless other things that would simply break in a thousand ways if more than one player had full control over the game world.

However, the collaborative dream was very much alive within the team, so we went for it, manually implementing each Edge case one at a time until we had a full three-player mode. You can even apply Share Play on PS5 to play online co-op with a friend (PlayStation Plus console required, here’s how to apply it).

In combat: Combat begins when any player touches an enemy or projectile. In this mode, it doesn’t matter who controls which character in the entire world; players take turns randomly selecting the next action of their chosen character.

Whenever action takes place, all players can pitch in to perform team blocks and team hits for even more bonus effects. For example, whenever all three players correctly measure a block, the damage is always zero.

In the world: Our goal was maximum freedom outside of combat. All three players can run, swim, climb, shop, change equipment, talk to NPCs, trigger cutscenes, initiate combat, etc. Everything that a solo player could do, we wanted to make accessible to everyone. There are even 1v1 wheels now.

In addition to a warm bubble that draws stray players back into the adventure, the high five mechanic provides a fun way to interact with each other while gaining a low speed boost in the process. Oh, and we’ve also provided the required fishing animation kits for all characters.

Looking to the future

With the Dawn of Equinox update on the horizon, the team is now focusing on the upcoming free DLC Throes of the Watchmaker, scheduled for release in Spring 2025.

We hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at what’s been going on at Sabotage over the past year. Thank you all again for your great support. Whether you’re playing for the first time or going on your next ride, we hope you enjoy Sea of ​​Stars in all its glory.

The Sea of ​​Stars: Dawn of Equinox content update is now available on PS4 and PS5. Safe travels!

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