Multiplayer
Tower Craft supports co-op multiplayer for 2–4 players (technically up to 6 — limited by the colour palette). Everyone shares the run.
Joining a party
From the main menu, click MULTIPLAYER:
- Create Party — generates a 4-character party code (e.g.
H7K3). Share it with your friends. - Join Party — type a code you've been given.
Once everyone's in the lobby, the host clicks START GAME. From that moment the party size is locked — late joiners can still drop in if you get disconnected, but the leaderboard bracket (solo / duo / trio / quad) is fixed at start.
What's shared, what isn't
| Shared across the party | Per-player |
|---|---|
| Inventory (one pool) | Character position |
| Crafting station queues | Movement targets |
| Tower placements | Tech tree picks (party-wide once unlocked) |
| Lives | — |
| Research Points | — |
| Wave state | — |
| Compendium discoveries | — |
If one player picks up a stone, everyone has it. If one player places a tower on the defense board, it's there for everyone.
This intentionally encourages division of labour — one player can run the crafting loop while another places towers, or you can divide by tier.
Server-authoritative simulation
The game server runs the wave simulation (enemy movement, tower firing, damage). Clients render snapshots received over WebSocket. This means:
- No client can cheat by tampering with their local state — the server is the source of truth.
- Latency between players is invisible for the simulation itself, but you may see your own character position update slightly faster than other players' positions.
- If you disconnect mid-game, the server keeps your party + the simulation running. You can rejoin via the REJOIN prompt that appears in the main menu after an unintended disconnect.
Rejoining after a crash
If you lose connection mid-game (browser crash, network blip, server restart) the next time you open the menu you'll see a banner near the bottom:
LAST PARTY: H7K3 [ REJOIN ] [ DISMISS ]Click REJOIN and you'll re-establish the WebSocket connection and re-enter the same party with all the state you missed (current wave, lives, RP, tech tree, towers, the compendium) backfilled in one shot.
This relies on the party still existing on the server. If you were the only player and you all disconnected, the party gets garbage-collected after some time and the rejoin will fail with a "Party not found" error.
The leaderboard
There are four brackets — Solo, Duo, Trio, Quad+. The bracket is locked at game start by the party size at that moment. Runs are sorted by:
- Wave reached (descending)
- Lives remaining (descending — tie-breaker)
- Completed earliest (ascending — final tie-breaker)
Solo runs are reported by the client, flagged with is_solo_sp and a (SP) suffix on the run label so you can audit them later. Multiplayer runs are recorded by the authoritative server and treated as canonical.
Talking to your party
There's no in-game text chat (yet). Use whatever voice/text platform you already use. The intended workflow is "share the party code in Discord, hop in voice, divide the work."