The game was at one point in early development going to feature multiplayer. Back when it was Project Nico, a 2003 tech demo depicted a group of masked, horned boys riding horses while attacking and defeating a colossus. This feature was ultimately dropped from the final product.

Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido (producer) revealed that it was merely a technical demo designed to show off the interaction mechanics between the hero and Colossus. The creation of the demo was more important than the creation of entirely new characters, so they had simply used an existing character model for the demo.