It’s been a while since local-cooperative games have had to be split-screen at all times, but in Never/Together the separation of the two characters is essential to your journey and race to escape from a deadly prison ship.
Never/Together is the next title from Noname Studio, the team behind Worldless, and it revolves entirely around fast-paced co-operative play. Now, co-op story games aren’t exactly a brand new concept, in fact — due in part to Hazelight Studios — they’re likely more popular than ever, but the novelty here comes in the speed and precision required in order to survive. That’s because Never/Together is an action game before anything else.
You might be wondering what that means. Well, it means that you’ll be moving almost constantly, relying on your reflexes while also trying to take in as much information as possible about your surroundings. That plays out as you running through corridors, tossing the only gun the two of you have to share, between each other so that you can shoot out the doors blocking your way. When not doing that you’ll be clearing waves or enemies or fighting bullet-hell style boss fights, juggling dodging with blasting.
I played a prototype build of Never/Together while at Devcom, and I did so alongside a complete stranger. Notably, while the description of the game above might make it sound incredibly tough — and it certainly can be at times — it’s definitely not tough to get to grips with the controls. Everything is incredibly intuitive and simple, with the weapon passing, aiming and shooting incredibly easy to understand. Easy to learn, hard to master is the way here.
However, in no time we were knocking out enemies by clipping them with the weapon as we passed it from side to side, deliberately endangering each other — as you share a health bar — in order to try and do something cool. We did get a little tripped up on the boss fight, largely as the zone that you can move in rotates while the boss is moving, spawning enemies and shooting at you. If the weapon hits the bosses shield, or a wall, then the passing of the weapon will cancel, adding an extra wrinkle to the gameplay. To boot, when you touch the barrier, by mistake or not, you take damage, and that racks up quite quickly while there are a dozen moving parts… but, that’s also perhaps some of the charm here.
Never/Together is currently in development for PC, Mac and (as of yet unspecified) consoles.
