Simply put, too many people have requested this feature for us to ignore it. So, we have finally decided to do it! Online will be added to Lance A Lot in (what will hopefully be) a few months!
The first step going forward is to implement an online beta, which will be accessible to everyone who has purchased the game. We hope to be able to launch the beta sometime in December or January, but we cannot say for sure yet.
The online mode will support 8-players and will be kept separate from local play. It saves us a lot of headaches if local and online play are kept separate (as they have different UI-, camera- and level- requirements), and more importantly, we can make larger levels suited for 8-player online if they are kept separate (which wouldn’t work on a shared screen as the camera would be too zoomed-out). This also means that we will add four new player characters, along with a few new levels. More content and mechanics could also be included over time, but nothing is final about that yet (please let us know if there’s anything specific you want added to the game!).
This also means that releases on Mac, Linux and Xbox One will be postponed until after we have implemented the online mode. We are quite limited in the number of things we can do at any given time since we only have one programmer on the team, and implementing online will therefore have to be prioritized over other platform releases.
For those wondering about whether we are going to add AI, well the answer is that we might. We cannot promise anything about it at this point though. But please tell us if you feel that AI is important.
Why wasn’t online part of the game from the start?
For many various reasons. The main reason is that Lance A Lot was originally planned as a short 12-week project, developed primarily as a way to get experience as a team (it’s our first commercial release) and to prepare us for our next project which is a much bigger game (and has now of course been postponed until we’re completely done with LAL). Over time though Lance A Lot expanded into a half-year project. If we had known from the start that we would spend over six months on this then we would most likely have included online from the start, or made an entirely different game instead.
We should also be clear that adding online to a game that was originally built for local-only could prove problematic. We’ll try our best though!
What will happen in the next few months?
We have a minor update planned for the next few weeks, fixing bugs and improving on UI and other minor issues. After that we probably won’t make any game update until we’re ready to release the online beta in hopefully December/January (unless there are other bugs or technical issues to fix of course).
We want to hear your suggestions!
We have a lot of ideas about new mechanics, features and content that could be added to the game. But before we commit to anything we want to know that there’s a wider interest for the game, so an online beta is the first step to verify that. If everything goes well though, we could expand upon the game with new modes like racing, team fights (two knights on one rocket perhaps?) or pass the bomb. Updates could also include new mechanics like power-ups, boosting and re-implementing a more balanced version of the barrel roll ability that was part of the beta.
But we need your feedback! So please let us know what you want added to the game, and please post your suggestions in either the steam community or over at our subreddit. We read pretty much everything posted in either group. We will also post there whenever we have questions or something we want your feedback on.
For those who want to follow the continued development of Lance A Lot, we suggest subscribing to our YouTube channel for (usually) weekly updates. We also have a Facebook and Twitter page of course.
tldr; 8-player online coming to Lance A Lot. A beta will be available hopefully in December or January (or later) to everyone who has purchased the game. Mac, Linux and Xbox One release postponed.
EDIT March 28 2017: The online mode has unfortunately been cancelled, read more here.