Co-operative game modes: Campaign and Challenge Maps

Welcome to the sixth part of the Leviathan: Warships development diary. This time I will go through our two co-op modes, Campaign and Challenge Maps. From the start, we knew we wanted co-op gameplay. Even though versus is always fun, sometimes you just want to play with your friends and work together against the computer. All our co-op modes are playable by 1-4 players.Our main campaign is called The Arctic Serpents and follows you as a young captain while you fight Marauders and other threats to the Commonwealth Navy. As the campaign progresses through nine maps, things get more intense while you discover both new enemies and friends. The story aspect is lightweight and we try not to interrupt gameplay except with briefings and debriefings.We have tried to make the campaign as versatile as possible with lots of different objectives like defense, escort and survival. We even have a few boss fights! And the last mission... well, that is quite spectacular! We are definitely looking forward to doing more campaign content if it proves to be popular.The Fleet Editor is available during the campaign from Mission 2. You can customize your ships if you want or use the ones we provide. When playing with multiple players, you all share the point limit for the map. So you have to build smart and coordinate to get the most out of your fleet. And remember, friendly fire is always on!We estimate that the campaign will take a few hours to finish and it certainly offers replayability value for those of you that would like try it alone or with different friends.Challenge Maps are standalone maps which areharder than the normal campaign maps. Some of the maps let you customize your own fleet and other forces you to use a pre-built fleet. The goal of the maps is usually to survive a certain number of enemy waves. There are some sub-objectives on a few maps to further complicate things. We intentionally designed the maps to be for the more experienced players.Lets go through some screenshots where I play through Mission 2 of the Campaign!The briefing screen is rather simple, but is a good way to convey the necessary objectives of the map including some lore and a few good tips.Mission 2 is a defense map where you protect some Antalin rigs from a Marauder attack. If you loose too many rigs, you loose the map. We are playing this map with two players. The Mine Launcher is introduced in this map as a new weapon, and using it correctly is the key to survive the Marauder onslaught.The key is to take out as many Marauders as possible with the mines, which is often a one-shot kill if it hits them. We also see some static defenses in action. Not very efficient but they can trigger system failures which can be real handy. System failures are debuffs that affect ships in different ways like limiting the sight radius or loosing the ability to move (only temporary of course). The Repair Platforms refills weapons with limited ammo (Like Mines or Rockets) and repair ships. They have limited energy though and needs to recharged before using them again so you can only use them sporadically.The Overlord is a massive battleship and one of the first boss fights in Leviathan: Warships. The Marauders might not build the most efficient weaponry, but they can take a punch so you better be prepared to take this ship down quickly. And the Captain of this Overlord is apparently expertly trained in avoiding ALL the mines I spend the whole match preparing for him! And he uses a Destroyer to shield him before we take him out, coward! But in the end, we are successful and the Antalin Crystal rigs are protected.It's gets pretty intensive while playing and the experience is quite different than playing a versus match. I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the co-op modes. After all, it's not long until the game is released!