The Forest v0.09 - Multiplayer Mode Added

Posted in the forest

Everyone's been asking for a multiplayer mode in The Forest since it was first released on Steam this year. Well good news, the time has finally come for the game to catch up with the likes of DayZ and other survival games. Version 0.09 includes the first co-op mode letting you invite one other friend to join your game. Don't worry that's not the final limit and Co-Op mode will be improved in the future allowing more than 2 players to play at once.

As this is the first version of Co-Op there's a few things to watch out for. First, there's no voice chat so you'll want to consider hooking up Skype or something similar. If you don't, then it's easy to lose track of the other player since there's no player tracking or anything to help you find your companion, especially at night when it's dark.

That apart, the Co-Op mode is a lot of fun so I strongly recommend you give it a try.

How to start a Co-Op game

To start a multiplayer game simply click the new Co-Op menu option from the title screen. See image below:



Following the co-op selection, you'll see a textbox and two buttons. The textbox lets you specify the name you would like to appear above your character (which is viewable to the other co-op player). The first button is for creating a new Co-Op game, which another player can join. Whilst the second button lets you join someone else's game which is in progress.



The image below shows the screen following the Join Game button. As you can see the screen requires you to specify the other players IP Address and Port in order to connect to their game.



If you choose the Create button then you'll see the screen below. This tells you your IP address and the port which another player can connect to. You need to send these details to your friend who can then join your game.



It's important to remember that the initiating player must keep their game and connection open for the other player to remain connected. That includes the necessary firewall changes to open gaming channels or any restricted ports. See your firewall documentation for help there. Alternatively, you can use Hamachi or other VPN software to create a virtual network.

Note: There aren't any matchmaking features in 0.09 so you might want to use the forum for finding new friends to play with.

Multiplayer Features

As mentioned above, 2 players can enjoy co-op play in version 0.09. The other player appears with a default skin and a name above their head which they specified before joining the game.

Upon death, players respawn at the last save point (or the plane if no save) and they can attempt to find their dead body to recover lost items.

There are a few bugs with the multiplayer mode, the main one being that if you try and save the game it will overwrite your single player save game. It's not a big problem because it allows you to continue as single player but not as a multiplayer game. This will be corrected in future versions.

That apart, Co-Op is a huge step in the right direction for The Forest and it's good to know that the devs are focusing on this.