We’ve been working behind the scenes for a while to refactor SHIFTBREAK for online co-op. After playing through it together in our tests, we can say it’s been a lot more fun with a teammate!

For now, sessions support up to two players. We’ll also be testing four-player co-op in the future, but we haven’t committed to expanding the player limit yet.

You can create public, private, or friends-only lobbies, and copy your lobby code to share it with someone you want to play with.

Going down doesn’t have to mean the end.

In co-op, when a player’s health reaches zero, they’ll be downed, giving their teammate a limited amount of time to revive them. If that time runs out, they’ll stay out of the fight until the surviving player reaches the next checkpoint.

If both players go down, it’s game over. Watch each other’s backs!

Bosses and mini-bosses now use a black-and-red color scheme, making them easier to distinguish from the black-and-white regular enemies.

This should make bigger threats easier to recognize as soon as they enter the fight.

Facepunch’s September 29 s&box update introduced scene compilation, a new tool for optimizing levels built directly in scenes—which is exactly how we build ours.

We adapted our custom global illumination system to work with it and compiled the map. The result: draw calls dropped from 1,872 to 416 in the comparison shown below. That’s a reduction of approximately 78%!

It’s a substantial reduction in rendering overhead and a welcome improvement as we work toward larger, more varied levels. 

Starting with the next update, we’ll begin reshaping SHIFTBREAK’s gameplay around what we feel is its strongest feature: the gunplay.

The original concept revolved around replaying the same map with different abilities. While that gave us a foundation for the game jam, we felt it could become repetitive and limit what we could do with level design.

We want to give you more places to go and more reasons to keep moving forward.

In the new structure, you’ll start with a weapon and discover others as you progress. Some will be single-use, while others can stay with you for longer. You’ll have limited space for weapons, so choosing what to carry will matter. Some weapons will have ammunition available throughout the level; others will need to be used more sparingly.

Some of the existing abilities will also return as dedicated weapons, bringing their unique behaviors into the new combat system.

The plan is to build a series of levels with different settings, enemies, and challenges, playable solo or with a teammate. Rather than requiring you to repeat the same map to progress, we want each level to take you somewhere new.

This transition will happen over upcoming updates, with the first changes arriving in the next one.

---

Thank you so much to everyone who has played SHIFTBREAK and shared feedback. 

Seeing people enjoy something we’ve made has been incredibly rewarding, and your feedback is helping us shape what comes next.

We’re excited to keep building it, and we hope you’ll join us for the next shift! 

We now have an official Overnight Games Discord server! If you’d like to follow development more closely, share feedback, or chat with us about our games, we’d love to see you there. 
 

Join the Overnight Games Discord

If the invite link ever stops working or gets nuked, you can also reach me directly on my professional Discord account:  arthurjf .