Before you come at me, let me just say I love every game on this list and “friendslop” here is no insult. Instead, I’m using it affectionately. It’s an increasingly useful tongue-in-cheek term to describe a particular genreless genre: games you can pick up on the cheap, jump into without much preamble or complex tutorials, and really get bang for your buck when playing with friends near and far. These games are often only as difficult as you make them, rewarding competent teamwork and often featuring some form of janky hilarity as part of the package. Top-tier party games for the budgetarily-limited.
When you’re looking for the best friendslop games you don’t have to dig too deep. A lot of these games have been featured prominently on streaming sites and are favourites of YouTubers and Twitch gamers alike. They all share a quirkiness and an ease of access (both financially and skills-wise) that mean they’re a joy for pretty much anyone who gives them a go. If you’re playing with a smaller group, be sure to check out the best two-player co-op games list for more ideas, too.
R.E.P.O.
REPO is funny and dumb on the surface but as anyone who’s played it will know, it gets terrifying pretty quickly. Despite the cute little bug-eyed characters, and the fact that REPO is one of the funniest co-op games, some of the unexplainable threats lurking in haunted artifacts or around dark corners will make you jump out of your skin. The real skill is keeping focused on your task when something grim is in your peripheral vision.
Tasked with carefully transporting valuable objects in teams, the group has to work together to shoulder some increasingly cumbersome burdens in some very dark places. It’s a primarily physics-based game so takes very little learning, but might take hours of practice to truly finesse. There’s also semi-regular updates so there’s usually something new to try if you’ve not been online in a short while.
Content Warning
Film your friends doing spooky things to become famous on the internet, what could possibly go wrong? Well, Content Warning has plenty of answers to that question, and once again gets surprisingly dark at times. You’re trying to go viral, so the more scares the better, but how close can you get to the line between terrifying and mortally dangerous is up to you and your friends to figure out.
Content Warning indulges that part of us that want to do deeply stupid things and get away with it, encouraging you to take horrendous risks and put your life on the line for mere entertainment. It’s fun in groups of any size up to 4 players, and doesn’t require too much in the way of tutorials–you can just get stuck straight in and fend for yourselves. If you’d rather know what you’re getting yourself into, check out our full guide to all monsters in Content Warning.
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