Nintendo UK interview - Sine More Ex devs talk added co-op, versus mode

A portion of a Nintendo UK interview with localiser and designer Brandon Sheffield and executive producer Reinhard Pollice...

NUK: What are some of the changes and additions you’re introducing to Sine Mora EX?

Reinhard Pollice: There’s the Versus Mode. It’s like a small multiplayer mode that you can play with two players. And it’s basically small segments; one is about going at full speed and you have to shoot enemies and the one who survives is the winner, and the other is kind of like a ball game where you have to shoot a ball and bounce it so it hits the other player. These are designed for short play sessions because the Story Mode is more time consuming. You can play the Versus Mode for a short time but also, because it’s very challenging, you can play repeatedly and build up your skills.

Another change is a new difficulty setting. The original Sine Mora was quite difficult, so we worked on a Normal Difficulty Mode that’s not that hard, so that even entry level players could have an easy start.

NUK: You’re also adding a Co-op Mode, which is perfect for Nintendo Switch, because two players can share the Joy-Con. But obviously, the original game wasn’t designed around having two ships on screen at once. How did you handle that?

BS: Narratively, it doesn’t make sense to have two ships because the story is basically broken if there’s more than one ship on screen, because you’re the pilot and somebody else is talking to you from somewhere else, because they’re doing something else. The whole thing about this game is most of these actions take place simultaneously and so you wind up hearing the same conversation again because then you’re the other person that was involved in that incident.

So the second player essentially plays as a drone. It plays differently from the main ship as well. If it gets hit, it doesn’t have its own life bar, it loses you time. And it works pretty well, it’s about as natural as you can make it and it’s obviously fun to play games together. And you know, obviously with Nintendo Switch, players want to have multiplayer experiences that can be enjoyed on one screen or in tabletop mode.