Multiplayer Roguelikelike Crawl Unleashes Co-op Hydra

It's a while since we covered the multiplayer roguelikelike Crawl but we're no less enticed by the concept today. It's still in Early Access but released its v0.3 update on Thursday.

In case, like me, your brain entered a dungeon last year and never came back, here's a refresher: in Crawl you and one to three friends take turns controlling A Hero and do exploring, fighting, looting and levelling. You know, Hero Stuff. Meanwhile everyone who isn't controlling A Hero is setting traps and using various monsters to try and bring the quest to a premature and preferably messy end. And in the game.

So what's contained within this mystical update? Only a friggin' hydra, that's what. The hero needs to lop off its three heads whilst - oh, this is going to be hilarious - the other players control a head each, collaborating on walking the damned beast around. It sounds like Twitch Plays Pokemon in microcosm.

There are also five new monsters, which run from the dull-sounding spear-wielding servant and possessed priestess through to the rather more intriguing gluttonous tentacled abomination and putrid mushroom. Don't go near that omelette, guys. It's full of putrid mushrooms and the gluttonous tentacled abomination has fixed about eighteen greedy eyes on it.

The update also includes four new deities to worship and some new interactive scenery to replace all that old interactive scenery you've got lying around. If you've already been playing the game, you'll no doubt find the full update notes more useful than my old non-interactive jokes.

Now all I need are three friends. Or for the developers to get round to implementing some netcode. Someone should set up a petition on Change.org or something.