Exciting news!

This week's update will have our new emote and chat system so that when you play online with friends, you'll be able to communicate! This was something that we had been thinking about but didn't prioritize until the community got back to us and asked for it. Once we played around online with strangers (fans, I hope?), we saw clearly that it was necessary to feel that couch co-op feeling while playing online.

We knew we wanted to have something that was quick to access, had short messages, and wouldn't get too confusing or bothersome. We took some inspiration from Rocket League and their system where pressing a direction on the D-pad would open a list of 4 categories, and then pressing one of those would open 4 emotes to choose from. The yellow box on the left of the screenshot shows the emotes.

"But I want to control my character with the D-pad!" This is something we had to consider as well, and we decided that holding the left trigger (not currently being used) will open the emote system and allow you to choose a category. We didn't want the player to lose control of the character, so when the emote system is up, players can use the right joystick to get their message across.

This system gives us 16 options, in 4 different categories. We decided to start with the four following categories:

Information
Reactions
Compliments
Apologies

These categories might still change, but I think we'll see how people react to the emotes that we have and we can change them accordingly. We think they're fairly intuitive though and cover a wide range of emotions.

Another big difference in how we made our system was that the words originate from the character themselves. This means that the player doesn't have to look away from themselves to communicate, and it's clear which player is saying what. Those emotes will show up on the corner of the screen so that other players can see it.