Elden Ring Nightreign is a cooperative spinoff with an asterisk. You can play it with a group of three or by yourself, but not in a duo, according to an IGN interview with director Junya Ishizaki. There isn’t a technical reason for this awkward limitation, however. It’s about game balance.

“This was largely a game balancing decision, rather than a game design decision,” Ishizaki said. “So it came as development progressed.” Like in Elden Ring, enemy health will scale based on your group size. However, the team found the “sweet spot” is three players because it doesn’t “feel too overwhelming or too busy,” he said.

Even though Elden Ring worked just fine with two people, Nightreign has a very different approach to combat. You only have three nights to level up and collect gear before its baddest bosses show up. Hands-on previews from IGN and PC Gamer say the run-based structure speeds up the action from what you’re familiar with in the original game, and its unique heroes have abilities they can perform together.

Getting around its randomized world will be faster, too. The trailer has characters flying over lava pools on ghostly eagles and scaling walls. You’ll be racing to find as much loot as possible before night falls and a battle-royale-style circle swallows you up. Three player groups “allowed each player to go off on their own, potentially, and cover a bit of the map” before they reunite for the boss, Ishizaki said.

Solo players or duos looking for a third can use matchmaking to fill the empty slots. Otherwise, you still have to use a group password to find each other. As someone who played through the game using the Seamless co-op PC mod, I wouldn’t be surprised if a modder figures out how to make two-player co-op work. But until then, the rules are the rules.

Understandably, not everyone is happy about this. “Well… that sucks. I was planning on playing with my friend who I always co-op’d Elden Ring with,“ one Reddit user commented in a post about the news. “If it throws in random third person, maybe it’s okay, but it’s not like that person is going to be included in our voice chat.”

The circle might not be the only thing Nightreign recreates from the battle royale experience: You might be the third wheel in a group coordinating without you, or the duo ignoring the random player on the team. In a game as brutal as Elden Ring, I’m not even sure a ping button would fix that.

Elden Ring Nightreign will launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC in 2025. FromSoft is also running a short beta test in February.