Got a call when a friend invited me to play a new game repo Earlier this year, I thought I was wasting my money – not because the game looked bad, but because it looked good deadly companyThe surprisingly impactful 2024 co-op survival horror game requires players to wander through derelict ruined structures collecting trash while avoiding monsters, deadly company It was popular among my friends (and pretty much everyone else), but its terrifying liminal spaces scared the heck out of me. my friends swore repo However, what set it apart was that it was so much fun that it was hard to be scared, especially with its goofy robot avatars – and they were right.
repo Has become one of my favorite games, and along with similar indie co-op hits, was one of the biggest co-op titles of 2025 braidOver the past several months, both titles have become the face of a new category of games with a somewhat controversial name: “Friend Slop”,
The term usually refers to indie co-op games that are best experienced with friends and that have an emphasis on humor. They are typically PC games, cost less than $20, include proximity voice chat, feature wacky game physics, and often fall into the survival horror genre. However, friend’s sloppiness is not always scary. This year, some lighter flavors of “slope” emerged, e.g. braidWhere you try to climb increasingly dangerous mountains with your friends.
This friendly slope is just the tip of the iceberg – or rather, the peak. there is also Guilty as a sock!Where you and your co-op friends play Court Showdown as sock puppets. lockdown protocol takes inspiration from among usA precursor to the Friend Slop trend, where a player attempts to sabotage their friends in a secluded base while completing tasks on a timer. Dana Arena One of the cheapest Friend Slop games to come out this year at only $2.99. This is also one of the most unique – you compete in magical duels with your friends by verbally shouting out spells.
Friend Slop games follow a similar formula: you and your friends need to accomplish something together, but the consequences of failure aren’t particularly intense (and if you No succeed). braid A perfect example. I still have to survive to the end of the race, and yet I keep playing. Victory braid Great, but the most entertaining part is watching your friends miss jumps and fall off the mountain, eat poisoned food, or get chased by the Scoutmaster for running ahead.
The main objective in friend banter is humor. Winning is secondary. If you’re expecting a deep, nuanced plot, you’ll probably be disappointed. Even friend slop games lose their charm when you’re playing alone. repo It’s not the same as having no one there to laugh every time you clumsily break a vase.
This is one of the major criticisms of the genre and one of the reasons it was named “slop” to begin with. Whereas repo And braid have been extremely popular this year, with some saying they’re designed solely for viral, clippable moments and beyond that they lack substance, partly because they’re generally not that fun to play alone.
Depending on what you expect from these games, this may be a reasonable drawback. However, this misses the point of “friend slope” and ignores a possible explanation for their popularity this year.
alden ring nitrene This was one of the biggest co-op games of 2025, and I had a great time with it too. However, it offers something completely different repo Or braid And despite technically being under the same broad co-op umbrella, it feels quite different to play. night rule While concentration, skill and strategy are required repo Most of the time you need to keep an eye out for monsters while randomly picking up junk. It’s also a much more affordable game night rule and does not depend on any prior knowledge of other games.
This difference highlights one of the greatest strengths of Friend Slope. For all their controversial faults, friendly slop games are acceptable. They ask very little of you – both in terms of money and time. You don’t even need a particularly powerful PC. These games are a way for people to hang out with friends and laugh with each other for little money. For some people, including myself, this is just as valuable as a rich story or dramatic boss battles.
This year, we’ve seen the prices of games rise, and gaming PC hardware is becoming out of reach for many people. Almost everything related to hobbies has become expensive. Friend Slop games offer an oasis with low prices and low hardware requirements, remaining accessible to a large group of gamers, even more so because they are generally easy to learn how to play. The things that have led some people to call these games “slope” are also part of what has made them so popular, especially in 2025.
Paige Wilson, Community Manager braid Publisher Agro Crabs echoed that sentiment. “We really think friend slop is a fire word,” he said. The Verge“Certainly, it started with this intention [having] A negative connotation, but I think we’ve always seen the term as funny and actually quite accurate. It is used to describe a low-cost game that you and your friends can pick up anytime, have some fun, hang out and hope to have a little fun. I think some people might not see it that way, but we do!”
In other words, the game of friendship is not so much about the game itself as it is about the people you play it with. If he’s “slopy”, I’ll happily accept the “dude loose” label too.
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