Housemarque has announced a free update to Returnal that will add a co-op mode to the campaign and a new Tower Of Sisyphus mode.
The trailer for the update was released during the Sony State Of Play last night (March 9), and more details have also been shared in a post on the PlayStation blog.
The PlayStation 5 exclusive Returnal will be adding a co-op campaign that allows players to team up and overcome complex challenges together. Players can access a portal near the crash landing to choose to host or join another player. This will pull in a Selene from another timeline for the duration of the next cycle.
Private or public lobbies can be hosted, and all progress will be local to the host. However, the joining player will still gain rewards in the form of logs and xenoglyphs, plus their scout rank will increase as they assist others.
The new Tower Of Sisyphus will also be coming in the update. This endless mode allows players to progress up increasingly tricky levels in the tower to challenge themselves and set high scores for others to beat. Each phase of the tower will culminate in a fight with Algos.
Housemarque explained the new scoring system in the blog post: “Much like our previous arcade-inspired titles, you will also have a Score Multiplier – keeping this up and increasing it will be the key to racking up the highest possible scores. Your Multiplier will deplete if you get hit or if you don’t deal damage for a while, so you’ll need to be constantly dancing on the knife’s edge to ensure you maintain strong forward momentum.”
The Tower of Sisyphus will be distilled into a more arcade-like experience. The update will be released on March 22.
