Have you ever wanted to use your friends as literal pawns to help you solve puzzles? Well now you can! Superliminal has added co-op, letting four of you jump into the world-bending puzzler together. The update dropped on Friday, and it seems that even your pals aren’t safe from the game’s forced perspective. They’ll appear in the world as little chess pieces, and from the looks of things you can pick them up to use as puzzle solving items.
In this gif from developer Pillow Castle’s announcement post, one player picks up their friend and plops them up high on a platform. It looks as though that friend gets bigger as they go too, which I feel is somehow going to make the game even more confusing than it was already.
If you don’t fancy playing with friends, however, you can play against them now too. Superliminal added a battle royale-style mode last month, which pits 12 people against each other in a series of “frantic” obstacle courses. The devs suggest that that game mode will only be around for the holiday season, but they’ve added a bunch of new puzzle rooms and power-ups for it alongside the co-op update. So, watch this space, I suppose.
In her Superliminal review, Sin found the narrative a little lacklustre, but was otherwise impressed by the game’s visual tricks: “It’s an accomplishment, and it’s certainly better and more original than the vast bulk of games in the physics-gimmick subgenre, but I respect it a lot more than I like it.”
Perhaps the story will matter less when you have mates to mess around with. You can find Superliminal on GOG or the Epic Games Store for 50% off in their holiday sales, or on Steam at its full price of £16/€17/$20 (it’s worth noting Steam’s winter sale kicks off on Wednesday though). It’s also on Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbone.