Grid-based dungeon crawlers of old seem to have found new niche lately thanks to Legend Of Grimrock or StarCrawlers, mostly keeping true to their origin while also adopting some new gameplay mechanics or technical features not available during their original Dungeon Master heydays.

However, one feature which still seems to be painfully absent from the genre is multiplayer. From the top of my head the only grid-based crawler I can remember is Hired Guns which was over 25 years ago.

There seems to be one obvious design obstacle, which is - how to solve movement for a group of four adventurers split into four individuals (or a combination in between) instead? Hired Guns solved this by having every character occupy a single tile, and while this opens some design possibilities it sounds rather boring for the people in the back row.

However, once you allow characters (single or group) to occupy the same spot you run into the problem of losing another staple of the genre - group formations. The front only offers so much space, and even if one player puts his characters to the front and another player happily occupies the back row, what happens if one of them decides to have his party members turn left (or even make a full turn)?

Any thoughts?

Bloodwych was 2-player - each player controlled a separate party and they couldn't enter the same tile. That's even older than Hired Guns.

One approach might be that you merge parties by having Player A step onto Player Bs tile, and that counts as A joining B's party. B then gets to steer the combined group around, until Player A opts to split off again by stepping into an adjacent tile. You can still allow each player full control over their characters, with only the ‘steering’ limited to the ‘host’ player.

So what decision you have made?

Maybe one player can sort of lead the boat and second (row) do the management (rotations and supportive actions) within the “boat”. Plus rogue (controlled by the second row player) might be able visit virtually one tile neighbour of the group.

Btw: you have made me watch WoodenPotatoes's playthrough. Enjoyable.