Speaking to The Game Business, design director Jens Andersson said the aim was to make The Great Circle "the most accessible MachineGames game so far," and it being on Game Pass meant that anyone with a membership could give it a shot. The data coming back to MachineGames showed that Game Pass players would "jump in for five minutes and they drop out."
I don't know that we've ever seen a year quite like this one when it comes to new co-op experiences. From major-publisher-backed hits like Split Fiction and Grounded 2, to indie darlings like REPO and Peak, there hasn't just been a significant quantity of games meant for co-op play, but they've gone in so many different, yet similarly exciting, directions.