‘Friend slop’ has made co-op gaming goofier than ever in 2025

When a friend invited me to play a new game called Repo Earlier this year, I thought I was wasting my money, not because the game looks bad, but because it feels like it The killer company. The surprise hit 2024 co-op survival horror game has players wandering through unsettling ruined structures collecting trash while dodging monsters. The killer company It was popular with my friendsAnd about everyone else), but its eerie, liminal spaces scared me a lot. My friends swear Repo It was different, although it was so funny that it was hard to be afraid, especially with the goofy robot avatars – and they were right.

Repo It became one of my favorite games, and was one of the biggest co-op games of 2025, alongside similar indie co-op games summit. Over the past few months, the two titles have become the faces of a new sector of gaming with a somewhat controversial name: “friends slop.”

The term usually refers to indie co-op games that are best experienced with friends and focus on humor. They’re usually PC games, cost less than $20, involve close-in voice chat, feature weird game physics, and often fall into the survival horror genre. However, friends’ bullshit isn’t always scary. Some fun flavors of “slob” emerged this year, e.g summitwhere you and your friends try to climb increasingly perilous mountains.

This is just the tip of the iceberg – or rather, the tip – of the friendly iceberg. There too Guilty as a sock!where you and your co-op buddies role-play court showdowns as sock puppets. Closing protocol Takes inspiration from Between usa precursor to the fallen friend trend, where a player attempts to sabotage his friends as they complete routine tasks on a timer in a lonely base. Mage Square It’s one of the cheapest Buddy games to arrive this year at just $2.99. It’s also one of the most unique games – where you compete in magical duels with your friends by verbally shouting spells.

Cliche buddy games tend to follow a similar formula: you and your friends need to accomplish something together, but the consequences of failure aren’t particularly severe (and it’s often funnier if you… no succeed). summit He is a perfect example. I have not yet managed to survive to the end of the round, yet I continue playing. Winning summit Cool, but the funniest part is watching your friends make a wrong jump and fall off a mountain, eat poisonous food, or get chased by your scoutmaster for running forward.

In Friend Slob, the main goal is humor. Winning is secondary. If you’re hoping for a deep, nuanced plot, you’ll likely be disappointed. Friends games also tend to lose their charm when you play alone. Repo It’s not the same when there’s no one laughing every time you clumsily smash a vase.

Therein lies one of the main criticisms of the genre and one of the reasons why it was called “dirty” to begin with. while Repo and summit They’ve been hugely popular this year, and some say they’re only designed for viral, clippable moments and lack substance beyond that, partly because they’re not typically fun to play solo.

This might be a fair drawback depending on what you expect from these games. However, he misreads the “Friends bug” and ignores a possible explanation for their popularity this year.

Elden Ring Nytrin It was also one of the biggest co-op games of 2025, and I had a great time with it as well. However, it offers something completely different from… Repo or summit It feels radically different to play, despite being technically under the same broad cooperative umbrella. Rain at night It requires focus, skill and strategy, instead Repo Mostly it just requires you to keep an eye on the monsters while picking up junk. It’s also a much more affordable game than Rain at night It does not depend on anything Prior knowledge of other games.

This difference highlights one of Slob’s greatest strengths. For all their arguable faults, buddy games are very accessible. They ask little of you – both in terms of money and time. You don’t even need a particularly powerful computer. These games are a way for people to hang out with friends for a little money and laugh with each other. For some, myself included, this is worth as much as a rich story or dramatic boss battles.

This year, we saw Game prices are risingand Gaming computers have become unaffordable For many. Almost everything about the hobby has become more expensive. Friend slop games provide an oasis of this with low prices and low hardware requirements, and remain accessible to a wide range of players, even more so because they are usually easy to learn how to play. The same things that have led some people to call these games “slop” are also part of what has made them so popular in 2025 in particular.

Paige Wilson, Community Manager at summit Publisher Aggro Crab echoed this sentiment. “We actually think friend decline is a fiery term,” they said. Edge. “Sure, it started out with the intention of (having) a negative connotation, but I think we’ve always seen the term as funny and actually very accurate. It’s used to describe a low-cost game that you and your friends can pick up anytime, have some fun, have a good time, and expect a little bit of trivia. I think some people might not look at it that way, but we do!”

In other words, Friends Slob is less about the game and more about the people you play with. If that’s “dirty”, I’ll gladly embrace the “dirty friend” tag as well.