V Rising is the latest self-published indie game to go virally popular off the back of a massive viewership growth on Twitch and other streaming platforms. As exciting as that must be for developer Stunlock Studios, it also means that it now has a voracious community hungry for additional content and features. Content takes time, but some technical features that V Rising players want may be more straightforward. With that in mind, Stunlock has newly delivered one such feature — offline/LAN play.
V Rising is an early access game release. It’s solely available through Steam at the moment, as Stunlock Studios works toward developing the full release currently planned for 2023. As an early access game, however, V Rising lacks some functionality that some players believe should be expected. Offline play, the ability to play V Rising without an internet connection, is one such feature. It just happens that Stunlock agrees, as it has now made the feature fully available.
Hotfix 0.5.41448 is now available for V Rising and enables offline play, with a catch. While it may be contradictory, in order to play V Rising offline players will first have to go online. Steam users must log in and then select the “Go Offline” option from within Steam’s settings. This appears to be Steam’s requirement, an anti-piracy measure, rather than a design decision from Stunlock. It may not be optimal, but it should provide an option for V Rising players looking to LAN with friends.
Admittedly, the offline option for V Rising isn’t necessarily going to be a massively popular feature. It’s mostly requested by PC gamers who prefer the idea of an offline option as opposed to those who need it. That Stunlock was willing to add the feature despite that is indicative of a dedication to V Rising‘s community and its feedback, at the very least.
In addition to the addition of offline mode to V Rising, Stunlock also made some in-game fixes to various bugs. For example, servants can’t be sent on multiple hunts by placing multiple thrones, and castle floors won’t disconnect when multiple players are dismantling floors at the same time. Stunlock also added support for Steam Cloud to save V Rising server history, which should be useful.
V Rising is still a very young game, having only launched this past week. The developer at Stunlock has set an aggressive development cycle, with a plan to leave early access in 2023 while yet adding a massive amount of content beforehand. It’s a pace that’s difficult to believe, but if Stunlock can continue to roll out V Rising updates in response to feedback like it’s doing now then maybe its content plans are realistic after all.
V Rising is available now on PC.
