10 Best Co-Op Indie Games on Steam in 2026
The best indie games to play with friends on Steam right now. From survival horror to cozy farming, these co-op games are worth every session.
Slay the Spire 2 launches on March 5 with four player online co-op, and it is about to remind everyone how good it feels to play games with friends. But you do not have to wait. Steam is packed with outstanding co-op indie games right now, covering everything from survival horror to cozy farming to chaotic cooking.
Here are the 10 best co-op indie games you can play on Steam today.
1. PEAK
Developer: Team PEAK | Released: June 2025 | Players: 1-4 online | Steam Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive
Winner of the Steam Awards 2025 Better With Friends award, beating out Split Fiction and Schedule I. PEAK drops you and up to three friends on a deadly mountain after a plane crash. You climb, you grab each other to safety, you fall to your death, and you laugh the entire time.
The genius is in the proximity voice chat and the grab mechanic. You can physically pull friends to safety or accidentally drag them off a cliff. Every session generates stories you will retell for weeks. It is the defining co-op indie game of 2025.
2. Lethal Company
Developer: Zeekerss | Released: October 2023 | Players: 1-4 online | Steam Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive
You work for a shady corporation. Your job is to land on abandoned moons, scavenge valuables from dark industrial facilities, and get back to the ship before the monsters find you. Made by a solo developer, Lethal Company became a cultural phenomenon in late 2023 and shows no signs of slowing down.
The proximity voice chat is what makes it. You can hear your friends scream from across the facility when something finds them. The tension, the comedy, and the genuine jump scares create a co-op horror experience that nothing else on Steam matches.
3. Core Keeper
Developer: Pugstorm | Released: August 2024 (1.0) | Players: 1-8 online | Steam Reviews: Very Positive (93%)
Think Terraria meets Stardew Valley in an underground cavern. Core Keeper lets up to 8 players mine, craft, farm, fish, and fight bosses in a procedurally generated underground world. The 1.0 launch in August 2024 added a full story, new biomes, and polished every system.
What makes it work as co-op is the division of labor. One player mines for ore. Another tends the underground farm. Someone else explores the dangerous outer biomes. You naturally specialize, and the shared base you build together becomes genuinely satisfying. Hundreds of hours of content for a small price.
4. Across the Obelisk
Developer: Dreamsite Games | Publisher: Paradox Interactive | Released: 2022 | Players: 1-4 online | Steam Reviews: Very Positive
If you are excited about Slay the Spire 2’s co-op mode, Across the Obelisk has been doing cooperative deckbuilding since 2022. Each player picks a hero with a unique deck. You coordinate plays, build synergies between your decks, and face escalating encounters together.
It plays like a party based RPG with deckbuilder mechanics. A healer sets up a damage dealer. A tank absorbs hits while a support player buffs the team. Two major DLC expansions have added significant content. We featured it in our best roguelike deckbuilders list too.
Play Across the Obelisk on Steam
5. PlateUp!
Developer: It’s Happening | Released: August 2022 | Players: 1-4 local + online | Steam Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive (96%)
You run a restaurant. You cook the food, serve the customers, clean the tables, and upgrade your kitchen between rounds. Sounds simple. It is not. PlateUp! is Overcooked meets a roguelike, and the combination is wickedly addictive.
Each run generates a new restaurant layout and menu. You unlock appliances that automate parts of the workflow. The strategic depth is surprising. Do you invest in a dishwasher or a bigger stove? The decisions compound, and by the late rounds you are running an absurd Rube Goldberg machine of a kitchen with your friends screaming at each other to plate faster.
6. Don’t Starve Together
Developer: Klei Entertainment | Released: April 2016 | Players: 1-6 online | Steam Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive
The co-op version of Don’t Starve adds multiplayer to one of the best survival games ever made. Gather resources, build a camp, explore a hostile world drawn in Tim Burton’s sketchbook, and try not to lose your sanity. Literally. Sanity is a game mechanic.
Klei has supported this game for nearly a decade with free content updates, seasonal events, and new characters. The depth is enormous. You can play casually or min-max your way through the toughest bosses. From the same studio behind Griftlands, which we covered in our deckbuilders list.
Play Don’t Starve Together on Steam
7. Cuphead
Developer: Studio MDHR | Released: September 2017 | Players: 1-2 local co-op | Steam Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive
The greatest couch co-op game of the last decade. Cuphead is a run and gun shooter drawn entirely in the style of 1930s cartoons. Every frame is hand animated. Every boss is a masterpiece of design. Playing with a friend on the same couch, shouting at each other through impossible pattern recognition, is one of gaming’s purest joys.
The Delicious Last Course DLC (2022) added an entire island of new bosses and a new playable character. If you have not played Cuphead with a friend sitting next to you, you have not experienced it properly.
8. Stardew Valley
Developer: ConcernedApe | Released: February 2016 | Players: 1-4 online + split-screen | Steam Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive (98%)
Stardew Valley holds a 98% positive rating on Steam. That is nearly identical to Balatro, making it one of the highest rated games in Steam history. The co-op mode (added in 2018, expanded with update 1.6 in 2024) lets up to four players share a farm, explore the mines, and build a life together in Pelican Town.
It is the ultimate cozy co-op experience. There is no time pressure. No fail state. Just a farm that grows more beautiful with every season. Made entirely by one person, ConcernedApe, who continues to support it with free updates years later.
9. Unrailed!
Developer: Indoor Astronaut | Released: September 2020 | Players: 1-4 local + online | Steam Reviews: Very Positive
A train moves forward. It will not stop. Your job is to chop trees, mine ore, craft rails, and lay track before the train derails. With friends, this becomes pure organized chaos. One person chops. One crafts. One lays track. One panics.
Unrailed! is the kind of game where communication breaks down in the best possible way. The voxel art style is charming, the difficulty ramps perfectly, and every biome introduces new obstacles that force you to adapt your teamwork. Sessions are short enough for a quick game night but deep enough to keep you coming back.
10. We Were Here
Developer: Total Mayhem Games | Released: February 2017 | Players: 2 online | Steam Reviews: Very Positive
Two players. Two different rooms. One walkie talkie. We Were Here is an asymmetric co-op puzzle game where each player sees something the other does not. You must describe what you see and figure out the solutions together through voice communication alone.
The first game in the series is free. If you enjoy it, four sequels expand on the formula with increasingly complex puzzles and darker atmospheres. It is a brilliant concept that tests your actual communication skills, not just your gaming reflexes. Perfect for two friends who want something different.
Play We Were Here (Free) on Steam
What About Slay the Spire 2?
We deliberately left Slay the Spire 2 off this list because it has not launched yet. But when it enters early access on March 5 with four player online co-op, it will immediately become one of the strongest co-op experiences on Steam. We wrote an entire article on the best roguelike deckbuilders to play before it arrives.
For more indie game recommendations, check out our best roguelike games of 2026 and our March 2026 indie games preview.
Written by
Florian HuetiOS dev by day, indie game dev by night. Trying to give life to GameDō Studio.
Building games and talking about the ones I can't stop playing.
