We just pushed a branch of VALA that'll make it possible to play with friends without needing extra controllers (by using your phone!).
Early Access
Table Realms, the tech behind this, has just launched in limited early access open to South Africans. The VALA changes we've made won't effect you unless you switch to the TableRealms beta branch on Steam, detailed at the end of this post.
Heartwarming backstory you'll want to skip
When I was a kid my parents would let me choose what to do each year on my birthday.
Every year I would choose exactly the same thing: Have friends over, rent a Playstation, and eat salt beef with a carrot stuck through it.
We couldn't afford our own console or TV Games, but the single video store in my small town had a Playstation 1 that we could rent for the day.
The video store had a memory card available to rent, however we weren't able to get that. I have both fond and terrifying memories of having to play Crash Bandicoot for the entire day without exiting because then we'd lose our progress. On one of the years we took a break for lunch and left the console on the carpet. When we came back we discovered that it had restarted, presumably because of overheating, and we had lost all progress.
They also had an extra controller on offer. However we always just got 1 controller and played in turns.
One year we were able to get a second, and playing Cool Boarders with each other was about the most amazing thing I'd ever done.
Fast forward to 2018 and a few things have changed, but having multiple controllers lying around for friends to play with is not one of them.
This was actually a big worry when we originally planned VALA, because we obviously wanted as many people to be able to enjoy it as possible.
Enter: Table Realms.
Fancy Controllerey Thing
Put very simply, Table Realms is a fancy Android (and iOS soon) app that will turn your phone into a controller for VALA.
Here is a video about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2R4C4GC8TM
At the bottom right of the main menu in VALA you'll now see a QR code
If you scan it with the Table Realms app then your phone will connect to the game (over the fast local network). We were even able to match the phone menus to the game. For instance, when you're selecting difficulty and District:
And then once you've dropped in, you get a controller:
If you happen to be at the rAge expo in South Africa this weekend, come try it out at our stand!
We also have sweet llama fridge magnets for anyone (well, until they run out) that buys the game at rAge!
How to get it
To use TableRealms for the moment you'll need to switch to the VALA TableRealms branch in Steam. This is beacause Table Realms itself is in early access, and I'd consider our integration still beta.
Right Click on VALA in your Steam games list, then click Properties:
Then go to the Betas tab, and select tablerealms in the drop down:
After you close the window the game will update to be the version with Table Realms.
Now I'll end off with the worlds cheesiest photo for you to print out and put on pizza, stolen from the Table Realms site.
