The gaming world is nothing if not a drive to follow trends, whether that was the idle game mobile phone boom, the puzzle/arcade era, the open-world RPG epidemic, or the 2026 gaming trend known colloquially as Friendslop. One of the top games on Steam across the entire world as of this writing is a title known as How to Fish, beating out NBA 2K27 on the seller’s site; Big Walk is down at 19 despite releasing some time ago, and it, along with How to Fish would be deemed Friendslop titles. Their success isn’t the first, but it is proof that this is a gaming trend that isn’t going to go away.
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What is Friendslop & Why Is It ‘In’ For Gamers
Defining a Genre
A user on Reddit tried to sum up what puts a title in this bucket. In the post, the user described one of these games as “small casual multiplayer games” that often use “store assets” and some slightly different gaming mechanics. These kinds of games are slightly characterised by undetailed character models, slightly wonky physics, and a chaotic nature that makes the multiplayer setting stand out.
They are also usually available at a lower price point. How to Fish is roughly $8 dollars depending on regional pricing. This likely comes back to Among Us, a title that became a global phenomenon and asked what’s better, a thousand buys at three bucks or a hundred buys at twenty. These lower price points present a low-risk purchase for players, an easy way to entice a friend to spend a few dollars to have fun for the weekend, and if it’s bad, then so what? It only costs about as much as a coffee.
It Actually Works
Nothing just becomes a trend, there’s always a breaking point. Stardew Valley spawned a thousand farming/life sim games because it sold like hot cakes, Fortnite spawned a surge in online battle royale type games, and now we’re seeing the emergence of the Friendslop subgenre because it works. How to Fish and Big Walk are two examples but they aren’t the breaking point.
While Among Us certainly made people realise the potential for a low-cost co-op experience, it was 2025’s Peak that spawned the current wave of replicants. Peak sold 10 million copies and garnered critical success to go with the financial one. Since then we’ve seen a number of games try and go with what made that work, with some succeeding and some falling on their faces.
The Last Word – Why It Works
It’s probably not one big reason, but from our perspective, the Friendslop boom could be caused by a few factors. One is the natural push and pull of everything, for a few years major AAA gaming was defined by long, open-world RPGs that were a lonely solo experience. Now that the market is flooded with such lonely games, it makes sense that some are eager to embrace fun, chaos, a low-budget bit of fun with friends.
The other is that gaming has always been at its best as a co-op experience. From the early days to the 00s console war, it was how you could play with friends that defined some titles as well as entire consoles.
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Featured Image Credit
Image from Steam
