Hello Mayors!
It’s here, it’s here, our SIXTH major update, Online Co-op is here! This has been an update we have been hard at work at for some time, so it’s wonderful to see it come to fruition!
Co-op Overview
There’s a lot involved with online co-op and we’ve taken so much of what we learned from local co-op (which is still available!) and supercharged it.
The Basics are here, but we’ve got a very long FAQ on Steam that you can check out for specifics, but tl;dr:
Play with up to 4 players
You can mix online and local in the same game
Invite your Steam Friends with a simple click, or share a code for people to join your game
This update also has a LOT of community-driven features, so we're marking those with 💡 in all our notes!
Co-op Permissions 🎛️ When you invite people to town, there can be a range of what you want them to be able to do. You'll now have 3 tiers (Vice-Mayor, Townie & Tourist) and for each you can set the permissions of what they're allowed to do in your town, from building, importing items, using EGO and more
Text Chat & Emotes 💬💢 Chat with your fellow players easily AND we've now got emotes, so you don't even need your words to say you're happy, sad, angry or more. High-fives and rock paper scissors have now moved to the emote picker so it's even easier to start them up
Location Ping & Widget to see other players 📍 It's a big map, so how do you keep track of where your friends are? Add this new widget which will point you in the right direction to find them. And you can always put out a ping to help them find you!
💡 Phones for all players 📱 All players will now get their own phones! Based on permissions, you might not get all the apps that P1 has (and they'll still manage the Town Info) but you can import, export, and play tunes to your heart's content.
What if a player leaves? 🧳 Someone has to leave mid-session? They'll leave all their things in a duffle bag, so you can take back any tools or items they're holding. If you leave the duffle as-is, though you can build them a maze that they have to escape from when they come back. Your call!
But wait, there’s more!
We’ve used this as a chance to put in a bunch of things we’ve been working on (and have merged our Q4 update into this one) so it’s extra-full. Here’s a look at some of the key features:
💡 Shop rotation The ability to 🔁 rotate shops 🏪 has been our #1 request for some time, so we're so excited that after a lot of work (those pesky NPCs) we've gotten it to work! (and there are alternates on what the backs can look like) And if you can rotate the shops, what else can you rotate? Well, everything. Give it a go!
💡 Move the train station & zone entrances 🚉 Want a Spirited-Away style ocean-side train station? Or to hide it within some woods in the back of the map? What about just rotating it sideways? You’ll be able to adjust it to wherever you like. And why stop there? Move the deep forest, sewer and mine entrances to better locations in your town (so you won't have to build around them)
Fast Travel 💨 Want to travel to far locations more quickly? TownCo has the solution! Once you find and repair stations in the outer areas, you'll be able to build a handy-dandy hub in town, and you can schedule go-kart races much faster!
New Tools 🦨🥾 While digging underneath Go-Go Town!, a few... strange items were discovered. Explore to find them and then, well, perhaps a bit of chaos is in order…
💡 Eat food from (selected) shops! 🍟 All those delicious food products that you've wanted to eat? We get it. You can now eat the food from select shops AND once you've eaten it: free garbage for you! Make sure to find a trash can… or….
Eat garbage 🗑️ Does what it says on the tin. There will be consequences!
Throw Items 🤾🏽 Ever wanted to hit your friend with a Horned Ribeye? Or maybe just an egg? Now, if you have something in your backpack, you can put it in your hand, then throw it at another player, into storage, or even in another player's backpack! Try hitting a player with garbage and see what happens
New Vehicles 🚘 Your friends are now in town, so how will you carry them around town? We've got brand new rides:
Hooptie - yes, it has hydraulics
Hackney Motorbike - perfect for taking a friend on a tour
Good-E-Bike - why have one person on a bike when you can have four?
Flying Broom - just for one, but why would you want to share?
Galaxy Bouncer - just for fun :)
QOL things
Couple things that we’ve added to make your life easier:
💡 Named Save Profiles 🔤 Want to keep your save separate from a loved one? A town for friends and a town for yourself? Want to run weird experiments? You can now have multiple towns that are easy to swap between so you can keep everything neatly organized. (And you don’t have to share—unless you want to)
💡 Import Catalogue Changes 🛃 Big on importing but hate TownCo's cooldowns? Worry no longer! You can import as much as you want, provided you have the tickets for it. Now you can also import more POI should your heart desire—build a coastful of lighthouses!
More Content!
Look, you want more townies and goodies, we want to give you more townies and goodies.
💡 New Townies 🆕 NINE new townies for you to invite to join the town
New Player Clothing 🥽 Three new clothing items for you to collect: Goggles, Pretty Fly Hat and the Rocket Backpack
New Items! 🛏️ A bunch of new goodies to get at vendors or find in the world:
New beds (including a hammock)
Dockable security camera
Camping tent to house a single townie
Campfire
New health-themed items, including a Mood Swing, Meditation Pillow, Community Book Stand, and Koi Pond
A dumpster for storing more trash
💡 A storage skip for storing more… storage
Two new rides for townies (and you)
We’ve been having quite a lot of fun running around with people in online co-op, and we know you all will as well. Please share with us any funny moments, or how you’ve redesigned your town now that you can rotate everything, we really do love to see it.
Our Discord is also a great place to find people to play with, share designs you’re proud of, and chat about the game.
Cheers,
Emily & the Prideful Sloth team