The developers of Westwood's action-RPG Nox have been working on a free cooperative multiplayer expansion to their game, which is slated to be released in July. Although Nox had multiplayer features out of the box, online play has been limited to competitive game types. The developers recently addressed a number of frequently asked questions they'd received about Nox Quest, thus revealing a lot of the details about the forthcoming expansion.

　　Nox Quest will allow up to six players to join forces in an effort to fight through a series of randomly interconnected maps whose challenges grow progressively tougher. Should the party succeed in completing all the maps, they'll be reshuffled and the players will continue on and face even greater challenges. Nox Quest continues until the players run out of lives, so the object is to rack up a high score until the inevitable occurs. Players won't be able to hurt one another in Nox Quest, and will instead need to work together in order to beat down a steady stream of monsters that emerge from summoning obelisks, which must in turn be destroyed lest the monsters' numbers regenerate. Player characters will start and remain on the tenth experience level, but will have only a few weak inventory items until they find more powerful replacements, so character development will mainly focus on building out your inventory . The game's areas will be much bigger than the existing multiplayer maps, and will be more similar in size to the game's single-player scenarios.

　　Westwood Online will host dedicated Nox Quest servers, and will also provide a competitive ladder for letting players compare and compete with their high scores. Nox Quest will be available as a free download next month.