Yes, we are a bit late this time around. December snuck up on us hard. We are having too much fun playing all those games released in November. And of course enjoying the Awards season. You know: Complaining about our favourite game not winning and such. So let's leave it at that and point you as usual to the lists below. May you and your co-op partners find the games you are looking for there!
During the cold winter months, sometimes you need a game to match the season. Wendigo Blue is a beat 'em that's currently in Steam Early Access, and it might just fit that bill. Indie developer EndlessFluff published the game early in 2025 and continues to develop new content for it. The game already features 4-player local co-op, so it's right up our alley.
Tribute Games and DotEmu struck gold with TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, one of the most popular beat 'em ups in recent memory. After years of updates, the team has finally released their big follow-up: MARVEL Cosmic Invasion. The new brawler promises all the style and charm of Shredder's Revenge but with a fantastic lineup of Marvel heroes and villains. It's out now on all current-gen platforms.
...and that's a wrap for October. As expected, the month was filled to the brim with new releases big and small. Some of them hit their mark (Escape Simulator 2, Absolum), others are still a bit rough around the edges but show potential (DAIMON BLADES, Fellowship). And then there is your usual lineup of titles that should've been a slam dunk - but someone managed to stumble (Painkiller, Little Nightmares III).
We counted 69 (nice!) releases last month in our calender across all platforms. We know: Its a theme across many of these updates that we focus on the huge amount of games hitting store shelves. But time and time again we are baffled at how much there is to play these days. So many really good games both with and without co-op functionality are vaiing for our attention. It is literally impossible to play them all which in turn makes us a bit sad. All those adventures we will never have. All that joy we will never experience with our friends. Just because we are limited by such mudane things like time and money...
As one of the last remaining big gaming conventions, Germany's gamescom was once again the place to be in August. Okay, that's a bit of a lie. There were already too many people there. So instead we chose to just watch from the sidelines the unveiling of long-awaited titles like Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV and Darksiders 4. Witness the surprise announcements of Daimon Blades (read our preview!), LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight and others. And read all of the new information for upcoming games (see for example our preview of Hela!) that came down the old press-release-chute.
July saw the release of a couple of highly anticipated Remasters/Enhanced Editions/whateveryouwanttocallit featuring a co-op mode: System Shock 2, Stronghold: Crusader and Neverwinter Nights 2. However, it seems like such things are not created equal. While Nightdive Studios did a banger job with System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster and FireFlys Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition was also well received, Aspyr Media didn’t hit the mark with Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition. The reviews show that They basically just released the same old game with no fixes or improvements to decade old problems. And it’s even worse now, since they added more than a couple new bugs. Hopefully they can turn the ship around in the coming weeks/month.
June was, as we call it in the industry, quite a month. We did expect it to hit hard with over a dozen Summer Games Fest showcases and Steam Next Fest afterwards. That's always a busy time. But the amount of titles with co-op that were announced this year? Very high.
Windblown is the game that answers the question, "What would a Hades-style game from the makers of Dead Cells be like?" Since debuting on Steam Early Access last fall, Motion Twin's latest roguelike has already received several updates. Today's "Gift Update" overhauls the game's Gift (passive upgrades) system, adds new gifts and weapons, and more. From the sound of it, the update doesn't blow!
Dungeons show up a lot in games. As players, we've all explored them, fought in them, and maybe even designed them. One thing that games don't commonly ask us to do, however, is clean up dungeons. That's what makes Goblin Cleanup from Crisalu Games and Team17 unique. It will allow online teams of four surprisingly attractive goblins to clean and tend dungeons together on PC on August 28.
Back in the innocent 1990s, Jaleco released a trilogy of Super NES beat 'em ups in the Rushing Beat series. Well, in Japan, they were part of that series. In international markets, Jaleco renamed each game and censored it to pieces. Nowadays, however, a fourth game called RUSHING BEAT X: Return of the Brawl Brothers is in the works for Steam and Switch 2 from City Connection and Clear River Games. Like its predecessors, Rushing Beat X will support 2-player local co-op, and it's extremely promising.
Cthulhu's Reach from The Fine Arc and First Break Labs is a Steam Early Access roguelike shooter based on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. It features a unique retro art style and isometric graphics, plus the all-important 4-player online co-op. While the game had some good foundations when it debuted, it was somewhat lacking in content. The latest update goes a long way to rectifying that by adding a map editor, not to mention some balance and bug fixes.
