Wyldheart Adopts West March Style for Flexible Co-op RPG Without MMO Clutter

Wyldheart, a new cooperative RPG from Wayfinder Studios – composed of former Star Wars: Battlefront developers – aims to simplify game nights for friends. While a prior announcement touched upon the game's reveal, recent discussions with Creative Director and co-founder Dennis Brännvall and Marketing Director Erin Bower offered deeper insights into its unique multiplayer mechanics.

Specifically, we delved into Wyldheart's cooperative nature and how its gameplay, designed for groups of four, can actually support up to 20 players within a single campaign through the implementation of a West March-style shared save state.

Brännvall elaborated, "While you can play with four characters or players simultaneously, it's possible to invite up to 20 unique players to join a campaign. We have 20 character slots in each campaign, meaning you could either share multiple characters among a smaller group or allow many different friends to participate. The only constraint is that not everyone can play at the very same time."

He continued, "This system is heavily inspired by the West March style of play, a more recent development in the tabletop RPG space. It addresses the common challenge of scheduling; not everyone has the time to commit to every game night, especially if sessions are frequent. Therefore, you aren't obligated to attend every session. The game's save state is uploaded to the cloud once everyone logs out, and the first person to start the campaign again downloads it, allowing progress to continue seamlessly. This flexibility means that participation can truly ebb and flow. Some of us might play often, while a busy friend can still join in and have fun when they have the chance. Any gear found can obviously be shared, and much of our progression relies on equipment. While character progression also contributes to your power level, you can simply hand someone a very good sword, and even if they don't have the same XP as you, they'll still be useful, hopefully."

Bower added, "The shared cloud save is also incredibly useful if you have friends who enjoy crafting and gathering in these types of games. You can ask them to log in independently, perform these tasks when you’re unavailable, and then when you all gather, you can jump straight into a dungeon with the full squad. This creates a significant amount of the flexibility you'd find in games like MMOs, without the overwhelming feeling of being on a server with thousands of strangers."

Wyldheart could thus be a compelling option, particularly for groups of friends who enjoy tabletop RPGs but frequently face difficulties meeting in person due to time constraints or geographical distance.