Transistor developer Supergiant experimenting with 'under-the-hood' multiplayer elements

Supergiant Games' Transistor will feature "under-the-hood" multiplayer elements that provide players with "a sense of feeling connected to other people who are playing in a subtle way," said creative director Greg Kasavin in an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Transistor won't include "deathmatch arenas or whatever," said Kasavin. Instead, it will offer more indirect multiplayer functionality.

"For example, players can sometimes see traces of other players' paths moving around," said Kasavin. "What's interesting to us about this world is that it lends itself to some interesting things like that." With that kind of multiplayer design, Kasavin explained, players can have a personal solo experience and also feel like they're part of a larger world. The implementation sounds like it could resemble the multiplayer interactions in Dark Souls.

Co-op play isn't a part of Transistor, at least not right now, and Kasavin said Supergiant is still figuring out how multiplayer features in the game will work.

"There's a lot that we're still exploring there. Whatever we end up doing, we'll probably want to be pretty subtle," said Kasavin. "It'll be something a little more under-the-hood that hopefully adds an interesting dimension to the world."

Check out our own interview with Kasavin, including our impressions of the 15-minute demo of Transistor that Supergiant showed at PAX East 2013, for more on the studio's upcoming title.