No Rest for the Wicked Co-Op Has Friendly Fire for a Very Specific Reason

Playing the new co-op update for No Rest for the Wicked with both Mahler and game designer Kevin Jordan recently highlighted how well the game’s friendly fire system fits its overall design. Wicked focuses on deliberate combat, understanding your surroundings, and teamwork – elements that many modern action RPGs sacrifice for faster, easier gameplay. In co-op mode, this extends to how players interact with each other, forcing everyone to be mindful of where they’re attacking. During our time playing with the developers, they shared with TopMob why friendly fire is so important to achieving their vision for the game.

![The system’s time complexity is delineated into three phases - Initialization [latex]T_{init}[/latex], Data Processing [latex]T_{process}[/latex], and Finalization [latex]T_{finalize}[/latex] - each contributing to the overall computational cost and defined by distinct equations that govern their respective durations.](https://arxiv.org/html/2602.05641v1/figure/time_complexity_diagram.png)


