Housemarque’s roguelike shooter Housemarque is getting a major expansion, with new battles to take, new monstrosities to battle in the Survival Mode, and online co-op multiplayer to the game. It’s all free as part of Update 3.0, which will release on 22nd March 2022.
Co-op mode lets you play through the whole main journey with another player, which is pretty much exactly what you would expect.
Update 3.0 will also add the Tower of Sisyphus for players that have progressed far enough to unlock the Icarian Grapnel. This is described as “an ascending gauntlet of increasingly dangerous phases, with each containing twenty floors. Upon entry, eliminate all the enemies on each floor and secure your passage to the next one up. Just be ready for what you might encounter within…”
Unfortunately the Tower of Sisyphus is not available in co-op – we think it sounds like a nice challenge for two, but OK – and there’s also a blocker to House sequences and Challenge Mode for co-op play.
One of the first PlayStation 5 exclusives, Returnal launched in April to plenty of praise. Housemarque were lauded for their ability to combine the developer’s mastery of arcade shooters with a new third person shooter form and an engaging roguelike game structure.
In our Returnal review on PS5, we scored the game a masterful 9/10:
“It feels immensely satisfying to be sat here in 2021, eons after playing Super Stardust HD on PS3, and see just how far Housemarque has come. Offering a visual bullet hell spectacle, a showcase for the DualSense controller and a rewarding sci-fi narrative woven around the roguelike loop, we can say with unflinching confidence that Returnal is the PS5’s best game to date.”
Returnal guides & more from TheSixthAxis
- Returnal Review
- Watch us play 45 minutes of Returnal from the start of the game
- Returnal Items Guide – Parasites, Artefacts & Consumables, what do they do?
- Returnal – Phrike boss battle guide
- Returnal – Ixion boss battle guide
- Returnal – Nemesis boss battle guide
- How Returnal and Deathloop are evolving the roguelike genre
