End-of-year retrospectives deemed 2025 the year of the friendslop game, but if recent announcements are any indication, the era of cheap, comedic, and crude multiplayer games is only getting started. Left and right, indie developers are rushing to cash in on the ‘friendslop’ trend dominating Steam charts and Twitch streams alike.
Friendslop games are so hot right now, they’re blowing up before they’re officially announced. Such was the case for We Are So Cooked, a co-op game where players are tasked with removing the body of someone they accidentally murdered, without leaving any witnesses. Despite a lack of release date, official trailer, or even a website, footage of We Are So Cooked has already been viewed by millions on social media sites like X. The game is early enough in development that rough edges are evident throughout the gameplay. Animations are stiff, and core mechanics like sneaking around and using tools seem underbaked. At one point during the trailer, players have to actively walk into a guard for him to take notice of them and pull out his gun.
None of this matters. Viewers are latching on to the kernel of a strong idea and running with it. Just knowing that moving the body is difficult and requires a lot of coordination between players is enough to sell people on the game. Rather than focus on the unpolished presentation of We Are So Cooked, people are fantasizing about the good time they’ll have playing it with friends. There’s an implicit assumption that, much like its $7.99 progenitor Peak, a game like WASC will be cheap to buy.
During that same time frame, another game with teamwork at the center also exploded: Log Riders, out Feb. 12, is a co-op platformer where lumberjacks struggle to maintain balance on a log. But it’s not enough for both players to be on the same page about what they need to do. If you push forward at the same time, the log may start moving too rapidly. But if your pal tries to compensate and goes too far, your log won’t go where you want it to, either. Log Riders combines these tricky controls with an emphasis on physics. “Characters react realistically to collisions, falls and other physical interactions thanks to ragdoll physics,” reads Log Rider‘s Steam page.
Early February also saw the announcement of Yapyap, a magical co-op game where players take on the role of minions sent to break into an enemy tower. Players cast incantations with their actual voices, and that mechanic opens the doors to all sorts of shenanigans. Critically, Yapyap knows that its players are agents of chaos and empowers them as such. “Break their piano, clog their toilets, pee on their rug … Every inconvenience you create gives you more points towards your vandalism target for the night,” the official description reads. Unlike We Are So Cooked and Log Riders, Yapyap is already out. It’s doing well, too, at one point breaking into Steam’s top 20 best sellers. The development team at Maison Bap consists of fewer than a dozen people.
Log Riders seems like a more put-together product than We Are So Cooked — which makes sense, since the lumberjack game launches next week. But both games appear to be guided by similar philosophies: A concise gameplay scope, a good sense of humor, graphics good enough to get the idea across, but simple enough to run on low-end computers. Both games prioritize teamwork and shared goals, but add just enough friction to spark a llittle bit of conflict between players.
The problem with talking about friendslop, both as a concept and practice, is that it’s difficult to do without sounding disparaging. There’s no way to dress up the negative connotation behind ‘slop,’ and the implied lack of polish sets up a hierarchy between these friendly co-op titles and buttoned-up ‘real’ games. Pointing out the similarities between friendslop games makes it sound like it’s easy to make a popular game, even though there are countless examples to the contrary. There’s also a pervasive sense that people rate friendslop games too highly, since playing with pals can make anything fun. The livelihood of a streamer is proportional to their ability to convince their audiences they’re having an amazing time when they’re actually working.
But the hunger for co-op games isn’t a sign that game developers are pulling a fast one on people who want to have a good time. As others have pointed out, there are many reasons gamers are embracing friendslop. Games made quickly, without the oversight of venture capital or a risk-averse board, don’t have to cost $70 or more. Pricing is just the tip of the iceberg, though.
Most multiplayer games are competitive and stressful, even outside the context of esports. Think about it. You’ve got leaderboards, kill/death ratio, skill-based matchmaking, and ranks. The most popular genre of the moment, battle royale, only has one winner at the end of a round. Things aren’t that much better in team-based games, where the chances of having a stranger ruin your match become exponential.
Dissecting friendslop games inevitably simplifies them, too. Dozens of games are released every day across various platforms. Standing out is even tougher for an indie made by a new team. Finding your niche and reaching an audience is no easy feat in the world of free-to-play games. Developing an appealing gameplay loop is also shockingly difficult, as evidenced by all the big-budget games that don’t quite come together in the end. And even ‘bad’ graphics can have an art to them.
And, ultimately, I’m over it. I’m over the way launching a video game is “supposed to” work. I’m over massive games selling millions of copies, yet still being written off as failures because they can’t recoup years’ worth of investment. I’m over games promising the world and launching broken. I’m over games constantly trying to sell me something via microtransactions, or making me feel bad for not dressing up my avatar with branded shoes. The humble and playful nature of a friendslop game is a balm against the increasingly dour nature of the gaming industry.
I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way. Giants that once seemed invincible, like Call of Duty, are buckling under the unrealistic expectations of perpetual growth. There’s a reason why friendslop games are succeeding at the same time that we’re seeing a rise in small and mid-sized studios, like Sandfall Interactive. At the risk of sounding obvious, people want fun, affordable games that respect their time and intelligence. People yearn for games that feel human and personal, which is difficult to achieve when a game is being made by committee. Friendslop harkens back to a better time, when games were made by small teams with few resources and a clear sense of vision.
So, sure: You could look at the crudeness of friendslop and deem it a deficiency. The flaws, however, might be the precise thing that makes friendslop trustworthy and approachable as a genre.
