I can't believe it's almost here! For months now, ever since our meeting at BitSummit, we've been absolutely amped to work with peakvox to help GOCCO of War reach a worldwide audience. Now, with just another day left on the counter, it's a matter of hours, not weeks, until we get to see everyone's reaction and enjoyment! As such, we're happy to bring you the third (and last) installment of our GOCCO prep blog. Today's saga: the world online!

 

Beneath the amazingly cute graphics and sometimes hilarious customization are the missions and levels of GOCCO. The campaign and the stories are everything, for, without something great to drive it forward, this would just be another adorable community to hang out in. The quests are shaped in such a way that being able to play with other people not only make it easier, but infinitely more rewarding. For example: did you know that the badges you receive at the end of each stage are contingent on how quickly you can accomplish your goal? If you want to have the most upgraded weapons and best outfits, you need more badges to equip all those things. And if you want the best badges, you gotta work with other people!

 

 

GOCCO allows players to create or join online "lobbies" in which other GOCCO goers can drop in or out at any time. The lobbies are incredibly varied, as well. you can have up to 32 players join at any one time, which creates adorable havoc as everyone runs around, posing, jumping and yelling things to one another. Though there isn't a voice chat, GOCCO has you covered on communication. For one, there are 110 preset phrases that will appear in English or in Japanese, depending on what you set your game to as default. These can be brought up and sent at any time, which is especially great when playing with a controller: simply tap left on the D-pad and pick what you need to say to your colleagues.

 

 

Also, there's a free chat option! Hitting the enter key on your keyboard allows you to send up to fifty characters of free talk across to everyone in the lobby. Like the name input, many languages are supported out the gate. Also, to keep things a bit more family-friendly, there is a bit of a language filter that prohibits too many expletives from getting through. We'd like to think GSJ is the most family-friendly shooting range online. Probably.

 

 

Once you get into the lobby, it's up to someone to select a quest and the difficulty. From there, others can check out the quest board to decide which of the quests they'd like to join. Some quests only call for a couple people, but others could have three or four open slots, and I've even heard rumors of an "all in" quest, though I have yet to see it. If you see a quest you haven't finished yet, this is a great chance to team up with some people and see if today's the lucky day! Are all the quests old hat? Then you can help out some new players and, if everyone's a vet, show off and grab as much gold as you can swipe. There's no friendly fire (yet), so don't worry if someone wanders into your crosshairs during a mission, it wont affect them at all. Just enjoy the exploration and potentially get ready to see some hilarious plays.

 

 

Can't find an available lobby online? Not a problem! You can start one up and fine tune it however you'd like. Make it for everyone, or beginners only. Set the location to domestic (for faster pings) or global (for more friends!). And you can send a poke to everyone on your friend's list to come and join the fun right from inside the game. Are they trying to sleep? Too bad! I'm trying to fight Satan and I need all the help I can get. Wake up!

 

Rest assured, if your friends don't get on the GOCCO train fast enough or, like me, you want a game to be more than just a multiplayer experience, GOCCO of War is entirely beatable solo. Is it more difficult? I'd say yes, but I'm also really bad a video games. I need at least two other Playism employees to help carry me. But GOCCO is infinitely more fun with others involved. Dress up and show off for your friends, drool over a sweet custom machine gun someone created, and yell things to strangers who are quickly becoming comrades! It's everything you could want and more in a game that our own Nayan Ramachandran dubbed, "Chibi Destiny."

 

There's only a couple more hours, so I need to go get ready so I can log in as soon as the game goes live! We hope to see you all online, thanks for reading! Let's go! Let's GOCCO!