Friendslop

Friendslop games have been a somewhat new niche in video games that I believe exploded in popularity post-pandemic after the success of Among Us. Seemingly the replacement for old school local play, friendslop is the new way to connect with your friends over distance in the digital realm. No more couch gaming with friends, it's all online! So, naturally, in a post university world my friends and I have played and sought after every friendslop game we could possibly find. This is a ranking that will only include games I’ve played that I feel I can adequately comment on, and will take into account long term playability as well as short term enjoyment.

Honorable Mention: Mage Arena

I convinced my friend to buy this after I’d seen a few clips of it online and thought it looked funny. We downloaded it and after just now checking my Steam history played it for only 28 minutes before immediately forgetting about it. I think this game is a fun idea in theory but the execution just wasn’t there for it to really take off. The controls were a bit janky and the enjoyment wore off relatively quickly. I enjoyed the fact that there seemed to be an accent bias towards Americans so I tended to be able to cast spells with significantly more ease than my Welsh friends. It was a great 28 minutes though!

Content Warning

Unfortunately Content Warning sits at the bottom of my list. While a really fun game in theory the execution just wasn’t there for us. The main draw of the game is the silly videos you make while delving into the depths, however you lose any and all access to said video once you inevitably die. The problem with that is that you tend to inevitably die in this game. The monsters are random and extraordinarily aggressive, which often led to a quick and early demise. If the video was saved no matter what (in-game cloud?) and you simply didn’t gain any views/points if the camera hadn’t been recovered I would have enjoyed the game significantly more. It was still a fun time and the design of the world is incredible, however the squandered potential lands this at the bottom for me.

Phasmophobia

Phasmophobia was definitely an earlier iteration of friendslop and was one of the first to cross my feed. It is chaotic, it is random, and it is rather hilarious. Phasmophobia forces you to play with headphones on, seemingly going for full immersion into its mildly terrifying world. It is robably the most frightening of the games in the friendslop genre. I can’t lie and say I didn’t cover my eyes when I died the first few rounds. This game is defined by its locations and the tasks that must be completed to uncover the type of ghost that is terrorizing you. While rather fun at first, it is annoyingly difficult to actually guess the ghosts correctly which leads the group into virtually never progressing. When someone swears they did see the ghost orbs and the game reveals they were never in play the session ends in a bit of an annoyed stalemate. The game sort of just turns into wandering around and being silly until you die. I place this game towards the bottom of the rank but just typing this out does make me want to convince my group to try it again, so that’s why it sits above Content Warning. Very fun in the short term, perhaps not a game you can log into every day.

Peak

A really fun week! Definitely the definition of short-term playability while lacking endurance. Made for an incredibly fun session with semi puzzle mechanics for traversing the terrain. Deeply fun to uncover the new worlds as you progressed and exhilarating to finally complete. The problem is that once you finally complete it there isn’t really any point to go through it all again. I wish you could climb individual maps at times without completing the entire campaign. Perhaps even release new worlds to individually explore? This could perhaps make Peak something to pick up again and again, but I’m not entirely sure. Still very fun and really enjoyed!

Among Us

The beginning of it all. The ultimate friendslop. The Lockdown Era obsession. An incredibly fun game despite the jokes made about it now. Back in 2020 I was all over this game, joining a Discord server specifically because I was so desperate to play. The main flaw with the game is the need for a large group of friends. It simply isn’t that fun without at least 8-10 players and online mode leaves a lot to be desired. Absolute peak gaming when it's a large group screaming at each other on a Discord server. Also was incredibly fun to watch YouTubers play at the time, it was truly the only thing ever on my feed. I have fond memories of Among Us and it certainly had an endurance to it, but it is simply too difficult to get 10 people together to play in a post-pandemic landscape. Either way, it's still a fairly solid game.

Repo

Loved Repo in all honesty. The monsters can be a bit too predictable given the map's restrained size, however it invites so much chaos when they run into the money cart. Incredibly funny character design that makes tense moments that much more enjoyable and incredible comedic uses of the text to speech option. An enjoyable game that also just sort of feels like you progress to nothing. Fairly strong endurance with Repo, I believe it lasted in the group for about a month before we inevitably got bored of it. Very creative and fun map design and the monsters are fairly creative as well. The addition of a visual map was fun in the sense that it makes the exploration easier but also negates a significant amount of the tension. Perhaps if the setting was larger it would feel less like a crutch and more like a need. Still a fun time that led to multiple silly ventures with my friends. Good friendslop!

Lethal Company

Easily the best friendslop game. The monsters and map get increasingly more difficult as you progress, the limited timeframe speeds up the encounters, and the profit margin only increases the tension. It feels like the actual game is what’s fun rather than us screwing around making it fun. The monsters wandering between you and the facility also increase the tension as you’re never really safe. The map is huge, the facility is borderline un-navigatable to someone like myself, and the monsters are rather frightening. My favorite has to be the dogs because you’ll be loudly chatting with a friend before hearing a distant roar and falling instantly silent. There was a time when I was gaming in the same room as a passionate Overwatch player who is prone to shouting and could not communicate the dire position I was in. The game even made my real life tense! Genuinely just a fun time and a worthy investment. The lore scattered around the game also makes it a bit more interesting than the other games on this list as it feels like the world is a bit bigger. As I type this out I am plotting how to convince my friends to get back on it. Definitely the best mix of short-term fun and endurance gaming on this list. Genuinely just a good game with fascinating mods out there to download

Friendslop games, while technically slop, are incredibly fun and a staple in my group. While we all lead busy lives we’re able to connect briefly on these games and all struggle to stay alive as we encounter monsters, ghosts, or ridiculously difficult mountains. Friendslop seems to be the more casual partner to PvP games which require more skill and finesse (and invoke more rage). I don’t think this genre is going to disappear and can only hope to see more be made with new creative spins.