And even with multiple banks of people in Oculus headsets playing the game, he still heard the standard trash talk and chatting between players. The team has really only tested remote play once, at last month's EGX Rezzed in London. James said he wasn't worried about the game's qualities being lost in translation, and so far, the results have backed that up. Especially with online multiplayer, you tend not to be in the same room as someone anyway, so I think the headset adds to. As long as you've got things like voice chat so you're still interacting with people. But Coatsink COO Simon Launder insisted that hasn't been the case, saying, "I think VR adds to the experience a bit. Of course, the social aspect of local multiplayer gaming could be altered by both the move to online as well as the experience of playing with a headset on. And the significant rollout of online is going to take us a little while to get our heads around certain aspects of it, and we needed them to have the patience to work with us on some of that stuff." They also know the structure of our company, how new our company is in terms of dealing with business. It's more collaborative than that," James said, "The reason we wanted to partner with Coatsink on the VR stuff was partly because they have history and considerable experience working with VR, but also we know they know the game, that they play the game and enjoy the game. They found a partner in Sunderland, UK's Coatsink to help bring both features to life. They also wanted to introduce a virtual reality mode to the game, as Michael explained, because it fit with the game's concept of dueling vinyl toys, and would make levels feel more like action figure playsets than digital arenas. However, online multiplayer wasn't the only feature they needed help with. "So it was really important to work with somebody that already knew the game and was familiar with what was fun about the game and what the annoyances in the game are currently." "Online is effectively the fourth time we've rebuilt the game, because it has that much of an impact on how the game works at a system level," James said. They knew they'd need experienced help to make it happen. While Boneloaf had shown itself to be proficient at prototyping a fun game, it had still never shipped a game, much less one with an online component. "Any kind of negative reviews we get are generally about people buying it and expecting online because the audience for games has gotten used to expecting that," James said.
But for all the positive feedback Gang Beasts has received since it launched into Early Access in August of 2014, its lack of online play has been a constant sore spot for users. When they started participating in game jams, those were naturally the games they gravitated toward. James said he, Michael, and fellow brother (and Boneloafer) Jon Brown grew up playing local multiplayer games and always wanted to make their own versions of those games. "Online is effectively the fourth time we've rebuilt the game, because it has that much of an impact on how the game works at a system level."
Michael's the only one who's trained on that, and he's a recent graduate." We're not trained in game design or development. Four out of the five people that have worked on the game from Boneloaf are all trained in fine art or illustration. "There's no obvious business intelligence in Boneloaf," James agreed, adding, "We're kind of a stretch company to be doing game development, really, because we have pretty limited skills or experience. "I don't think we're that clever," Michael said. While the studio is set up explicitly to produce "experimental multiplayer party games," Boneloaf developers Michael and James Brown spoke with and dismissed any notion that it was a calculated move to capitalize on a resurgent trend in gaming. Gang Beasts from Sheffield, UK-based Boneloaf has been another indie local multiplayer success story, with the Early Access multiplayer party game providing a light-hearted take on the fighting genre with procedurally animated characters stumbling their way through a variety of absurd and often hazardous arenas. The last few years have seen an uptick in success stories for local multiplayer games, with titles like Towerfall and Nidhogg underscoring that some games are still best enjoyed when played face-to-face with friends (or enemies, for that matter).