The next WolfQuest game update, version 2.0.1, featuring Saga modes for multiplayer, much-improved grass, and a whole lot more, is in public beta on Steam now!
The main new feature is Saga multiplayer, with two new modes:
1) Saga Year. This expands the existing "Story" mode to last through a full year, from Establish Territory to the end of Young Hunter in the following winter. You can have up to five players, all acting as members of a family pack. When playing in this mode, the game ends upon completion of the Young Hunters quest, before the next litter of pups is born.
2) Full Saga, with two players. This is, as much as we can make it, just like single-player, except you can play with a friend all the way through until you're Elder Wolves. This mode has some restrictions: two players, only in a private game, and using the same wolf throughout the entire game. We intend this mode to be for friends who have the time and commitment to devote many hours playing through to the end. As in SP, the game generates a Family Tree with each year's litter. You can't do pack succession or switch to play as a dispersing pup, but you can go to the Family Tree and start a new game with one of your grown pups. And you can get unlockable coats from your pups.
We know that some players would like to have more players in the Full Saga mode, but this just isn't feasible. WolfQuest is an unusual game -- the way the player's wolf pack grows and changes from year to year, spending part of each year at the homesite (where it can split into subgroups) and part of the year nomadic, when the whole pack sticks together. It's complicated enough to manage this in single-player mode, but there at least they're the only one, so they are at the center of the universe and everything revolves around them. Adding just one more player means there are now two centers of the universe for the game to track and manage. That's been a big challenge, but at least we have the premise that they are the two pack leaders who will head up the pack for the entire game. Adding subordinate players, who don't have that leadership role and responsibility, yet still need to in some ways be the center of the universe for those players becomes extremely problematic -- not only in design and coding, but making it clear to each player what's going on, who's doing what, what's allowed and what's not allowed at any given point in the game-year. So the Full Saga mode is limited to two players.
There is much more in this update: the new grass rendering system with new and improved vegetation, and many new quality-of-life features, plus dozens of bug fixes.
See the build notes for the v2.0.1 public beta, with instructions on how to access it on Steam.