Astral Chain Can Be Tackled With Two Players, But It Makes The Game Harder

Planning to venture solo through Astral Chain for Nintendo Switch, but want to bring a friend along for the ride? Thankfully, it looks like that will actually be possible!

Recently, Kotaku sat down with the game’s director Takahisa Taura to discuss more about the upcoming action title. Amidst other details, Taura eventually reveals that the game will actually have some form of couch co-op for two players. Namely, one player controls the main character, while the other controls their Legion partner.

“You may have noticed that the characters are connected by a chain. That’s not to say that I have a thing for chains, or anything, but that when you’re controlling two characters, that chain allows you to see where the other character is in relation to the one that you’re controlling.”

“I thought as I was developing the game that, of course, it could be made into that kind of system where it could be split up, but generally what I wanted to do is have one player control two characters at the same time. But the Switch actually has this great feature where, obviously, you can detach the Joy-Con and share play. We wanted to take advantage of that as well.”

However, Taura elaborates that this could actually make the game more ‘challenging’ in some places. This is because the Legion attacks autonomously in single-player – whereas two human players have to coordinate their attacks separately!

“Because you don’t just have one person doing assists. Both players actually have to put effort into controlling the characters and playing the game.”

“If you’re going for a high score, it’s challenging to do this, playing in two-player. As one example, while you’re playing the game, there are several synchronous moments where you’re doing attacks with the Legion at the same time. And if you’re playing two-player, the other player and you—actually, it’s almost like you would actually have to be of the same mind.”

Things are certainly shaping up wonderfully for the game – now that friends and family can also join in the fun! We’ll report back when we hear further details about the title.