An online co-op mod for very French and very puppety soulslike Lies of P has been released in alpha form. As of writing, it’ll let you take on boss battles with a friend and its creators are hoping to offer full multplayer playthroughs similar to Elden Ring‘s brilliant seamless co-op mod further down the line.
While the multiplayer mods of most FromSoft games are famously the work of modding savant Yui, this Lies of P co-op add-on’s been developed by a three person crew called Ember Wave. They’ve sunk “more than one year of reverse-engineering and systems development” into getting their project to this alpha release on Nexus Mods, having shown off some progress via YouTube and Patreon along the way.
As of right now, the mod’ll let you jump into boss fights across the base game and DLC – including the likes of the Scrapped Watchman, Nameless Puppet, and Arlecchino the Blood Artist – with one other player. So, duos for the moment, but the modders do note in a fresh Patreon FAQ that they’ll consider upping that limit as they overcome more technical hurdles.
You’ll be able to see each other’s health bars, spectate your partner via a special death cam if you fall, and be revived if they activate a stargazer. “You can mess around after killing a boss,” the modders say, “but crashes might happen.”
As for their next steps towards releasing the full co-op mode that’ll allow seamless end-to-end playthroughs, the Ember Wave add that they “still need to sync world events (doors, elevators, quests, etc.) and fix a specific issue related to entering the Hotel, which causes unexpected behavior”. So, that’s on their plate going forwards, alongside nixing any major issues with the alpha release.
If you fancy giving the alpha a go, you’ll need to be running Windows 10 or 11 and have a Steam copy of Lies of P running September’s version 1.12.0.0 update. Radmin VPN is also required to “simulate a LAN connection” in order to host co-op sessions. Finally, if you want to battle DLC bosses, both players will need to own the DLC in question.
It’ll be interesting to see if this co-op mod for the boss battler former RPS reviews guru Ed Thorn dubbed “the closest we’ll get to Bloodborne on PC, probably” can hit the complex heights of Yui’s masterpieces when it reaches its final form. Until then, the modders’ll no doubt keep on pulling marionette strings to see what they can accomplish.