Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (opens in new tab) is a beautiful and difficult game, and now you can play it with a friend. Independent developer Luke Yui has created a mod called Sekiro Online (opens in new tab) that lets up to six players go through the game together on the Steam version of the game.
Not only can you play through the game with friends by your side, but Sekiro Online also includes PvP combat. Players are able to invade other people’s sessions and you can summon your friends as phantoms to battle alongside you – think Dark Souls’ or Bloodborne’s multiplayer models.
Whether or not the player joining your session has been summoned or is just invading your virtual space, they will be scaled to the host. “If you have 40 attack power and your opponent has 1 attack power, they will hit you as if they have 40 and you’ll hit them as if you have 1,” the mod page reads.
The inclusion of multiplayer dramatically changes the tone and pacing of Sekiro. As a single player game, Sekiro has an intricate parrying and posture-based combat system and tasks you with assessing situations to figure out how to best attack a group of enemies. Running into a space full of enemies and trying to hack away at them one-by-one will end in your swift death.
But adding more players into Sekiro completely changes the game’s vibe, as six Sekiros means you can all pile on a single enemy and hack-and-slash him to oblivion. That means there’s no need to scope out an area before running in – instead you’ll get more Leeroy Jenkins moments than anything else.
Yui plans to release regular updates and patches to solve any bugs that pop up during gameplay.
If this has you in the mood to play with friends, here’s the 25 best co-op games (opens in new tab).