Void Crew's Multiplayer Design
We received a nomination for Best Multiplayer Game at the Unity Awards 2025! This makes us extremely proud, but also made us think about how the heck we actually managed to land that nomination given the lineup of other games that served up excellent multiplayer this year.
- the Unity Awards are decided by the players, and voting is still ongoing - if you want to help us boost the visibility of the game and spread the gospel of METEM you can do so by voting for the game here: https://awards.unity.com/vote/category/5
Our multiplayer design sits on the extreme end of the coop spectrum - What we wanted to do with Void Crew was to make a game where players genuinely feel like they are contributing to the success of the mission by successfully playing their role. Not simply a game where players are four copies of each other, helping each other by contributing the same thing towards a shared objective. We wanted to create a game where each player is given a niche of responsibility and allowed to shine and excel in that niche to the benefit of the rest of the crew.
It’s the direct reason we didn’t add handguns to the game - the moment everyone has a gun, everyone starts thinking about problem solving using their gun. Even if you’re in a game with distributed roles, if you have a gun, you tend to think of yourself as someone who shoots that gun first and foremost. By removing the gun and leaving you with your bare hands, you’re forced to take a step back and start to consider your role and which tools you need for that role first.
This approach to coop also comes with a certain collection of caveats. We needed to design four separate niches that all feel satisfying and empowering to play - but we also needed to make it possible to enjoy the game without necessarily having all four niches filled while playing. This naturally led to the current state of the game where some roles are more mandatory than others - with Pilot and Scavenger being the two extreme outliers. It would be wonderful to have a solve in place where in the most extreme case you could play as a solo scavenger and everything ship-board was fully automated, but we opted for a model where the Scavenger class is more of a luxury option for larger crews, but also the class that has privilege of being the person to open all the treasure chests and breaking the news to the rest of the crew. Having a Scavenger on your crew might not be mandatory, but it’s always a luxury if you can afford the manpower.
The fact that success in the game relies on players figuring out and succeeding in their niche also contributes to making the game pretty hardcore - if you’re not the pilot, there’s some things you can do to compensate for a bad pilot, but ultimately THEY have to grow with the challenge. I’ve read a few comments comparing Void Crew to other roles-on-a-crew type games where we ended up being the hardcore variant. Probably because the game has quite a lot of systems, and figuring out how to exploit them is part of the discovery process - we are not as “hand-holdey” as we could be, but that’s also where the charm of “getting better” comes in. The game is stressful until it’s not, but the genuine sense of empowerment you end up with once you master the systems and know how to prioritize is awesome - especially when it happens across the whole crew. Going from stressed-out yelling at each to executing perfectly timed objective hit-and-runs is still exciting to me to this day.
Coop also takes on an interesting aspect when you think about the failure scenarios. Failure has to be a shared responsibility - so the game mechanics that work well are the ones that string together cascade failures - multiple steps where the various roles COULD step in and save the day, but if no-one does so, the ship blows up. Bombers are a good example of this: Someone COULD shoot the HOLLOW Bomber before it fires, someone COULD have stocked the inventories with bullets for the KPD, someone COULD have kept the ship hull repaired, someone (often me) COULD have managed to dodge the homing projectiles… and so on. Placing blame should be a mandatory part of any METEM mission debrief, since it’s often everyone’s fault.
All that to say that we are absolutely delighted by the reaction from players with whom the game resonated - it’s a stressful and emotional thing to build a game and put it in front of players… but when the game finds its audience, and those people suddenly start celebrating the experience they are presented with… that’s the best feeling in the world - knowing that we have created something that is generating meaningful experiences for others. Bringing people together in play. In my mind, the nomination must be reflecting this - you guys and gals enjoyed the game because it made you play together in a way that went just a little beyond what you normally experience - so from all of us at Hutlihut: THANK YOU for playing along!
// Laurids Binderup
Game Design Lead at Hutlihut Games
As mentioned above - the Unity Awards are decided by the players, and voting is still ongoing - you can help us out by voting for Void Crew here:
https://awards.unity.com/vote/category/5
Giveaway
WIN 3x VOID CREW Steam keys + 3x Founder's Pack DLC!
Voting for us is not a requirement for giveaway participation.
Share this article with whatever friend or three of yours you'd want to play coop with style - Then you get them to:
1) Push that RATE UP button on this article, and
2) add a comment with the words "METEM PRESERVE YOU" in this article's comments
... and we will draw and announce the winners on Friday 21. Nov at 21.00 CET!
Note: The winners will be announced here (as an edit to the article) so remember to check back in!
EDIT:
WINNERS
And the winners of the Void Crew STEAM keys ARE ... (Drumrolls please!):
Cynnobin
Twofoxich
C.S. Fox
And the winners of the Void Crew FOUNDERS PACK keys ARE ... (Another drumrolls please!):
Keysmash666
digi2k
JadeDragon15
Huge congrats to the winners from the Hutlihut team!
Important: For us to contact you, check friends invite so we can send you a steam code (you can remove us afterwards)!
Nooow get those friends onto Void Crew so you can blame 'em! Don't hesitate to share with us your experience on our Discord!
//Hutlihut Games Crew
