Last Year’s Biggest RPG Becomes Couch Co-Op With Surprise Update
Just like the good old days.
Sea of Stars was one of last year’s biggest indie hits, going as far as to win the title of Best Independent Game at the 2023 Game Awards. Before its 2025 DLC arrives, the Chrono Trigger-inspired RPG is set to receive a huge free update next month. Along with plenty of other additions, its headline feature is a new co-op mode that calls back to the SNES days.
Titled Dawn of Equinox, the free update is set to arrive on all platforms on November 12. There are a number of smaller updates, including a new Mystery Locks system that allows players to “break” enemy spells, which sounds like an expansion of the elemental weakness system already in the game. Party members will also retain Combo Points that enable powerful attacks after battle, offering the chance to start the next fight with a big move and test out new strategies. But the biggest change coming to Sea of Stars is the update is the arrival of a local co-op mode.
Sea of Stars new update will be followed by a free expansion next year.
Co-op games in general certainly haven’t gone anywhere. While competitive games tend to dominate the multiplayer scene, Helldivers 2’s massive popularity this year shows there’s plenty of room for playing on the same team, and co-op modes are also popular in survival games like Core Keeper. Most modern co-op games tend to thrive on online play, however, as opposed to the couch co-op modes that were popular on consoles well into the 2000s with games like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance.
The co-op mode coming to Dawn of Equinox feels like an even rarer feat since, unlike all of those games, Sea of Stars is turn-based. Even in the heyday of couch co-op, multiplayer turn-based games were rare. Nowadays, the closest comparison would be something like Baldur’s Gate 3, which allows both online and local multiplayer. There’s more! Making Sea of Stars even more of a rarity, its couch co-op mode will support up to three players. Two of those players will control the game’s main characters, Valere and Zale, who remain together for the entire game. That leaves the third wheel to presumably handle whichever other party member you’re traveling with at that point in the story.
Sea of Stars’ new update adds co-op play for the whole game.
Turn-based games can be an odd choice for multiplayer modes, since only one player acts at a time in battle, meaning there’s typically a lot of time for their companions to sit around and wait. Developer Sabotage Studio says Sea of Stars will be playable “in its entirety” by three players, with all three running around the overworld together. In battle, the Dawn of Equinox update adds Co-op Timed Hits. While the update announcement doesn’t spell out exactly what that means, it does appear that all players will be involved in each other’s turns, likely adding damage to attacks with well-timed button presses, a system that’s already in place in the existing single-player battles.
Co-op mode is the headlining feature of Dawn of Equinox, but there’s plenty more being added as well. Along with revamped combat the game’s story is getting a bit of a rework. In the story’s prologue chapter, players take control of younger versions of heroes Valere and Zale, but it currently doesn’t feature any combat. The update will add combat to that early section of the game, getting players into the action sooner. An entirely new cutscene is also being added later in the story.
Multiplayer turn-based RPGs are something of a rarity, making Dawn of Equinox even more surprising.
Other additions include new difficulty presets and a mysterious relic that will add some undisclosed features for speedrunners.
Dawn of Equinox’s timing is interesting, considering the future of Sea of Stars. The game’s first DLC, Throes of the Watchmaker, arrives in early 2025. As Sabotage revealed this summer, Throes of the Watchmaker introduces a new story chapter and an additional playable character heavily reminiscent of Chrono Trigger’s mechanical companion, Robot. Sabotage confirms that Throes of the Watchmaker’s entire campaign will work with the newly added co-op mode.
Sea of Stars didn’t entirely win me over at launch, thanks largely to an underwhelming story. Still, a new local co-op mode is an enticing addition to the retro RPG, especially if its DLC’s story ends up being more satisfying than the base game. However it turns out, Sabotage is certainly going off the beaten path with Dawn of Equinox to embrace Sea of Stars’ retro roots while still offering something unexpected.
