Games like It Takes Two, where the second player is the point
Playze Staff · Nov 12, 2026
One line is missing from the It Takes Two store listing that almost every other game has: there is no single-player category. Hazelight built a platform adventure with no solo mode and no AI partner, then gave the second seat away so the arrangement would actually happen. Games like It Takes Two are therefore not simply co-op games — they are games that fall apart without the other person, which makes the first question not what to play but who holds the other controller, and from where.
| Game | Second copy? | Low | Date | Store |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Split Fiction | No — Friend's Pass | $31.55 | 7 Oct | GAMIVO |
| A Way Out | No — Remote Play | $8.99 | 26 Sep | Steam |
| Unravel Two | No — Remote Play | $2.99 | 26 Sep | Epic Game Store |
| Haven | No — one screen | $3.35 | 15 Oct | Eneba |
| We Were Here Together | Yes, one each | $3.06 | 29 Oct | GAMIVO |
| Sackboy: A Big Adventure | Yes, for online | $15.99 | 28 Oct | Loaded |
| Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons | No — solo game | $1.54 | 11 Oct | Gameseal |
Electronic Arts' gameplay trailer: mostly a reel of mechanics that appear once and never return.
Cody and May again: Hazelight's own two
Hazelight has made this kind of game three times, and its own back catalogue is the closest thing to another It Takes Two.
Split Fiction
Mio writes science fiction and Zoe writes fantasy, and a machine built to harvest their ideas traps them inside their own stories. That premise does the same job the magic spell did in It Takes Two: it licenses a new ability pair every time the scenery changes, so one chapter has you taming dragons and the next has you fighting as cyber ninjas. Where It Takes Two parcelled its abilities out by level theme, Split Fiction splits them by genre, and the two writers' worlds alternate rather than blend — so the sci-fi stretches and the fantasy stretches read less like one escalating story and more like two anthologies running in parallel. Some people prefer that; others miss the single arc. Hazelight kept the important part either way, because the listing carries Friend's Pass, so one purchase still seats two players, online or in split screen. At 97% across 127,601 Steam reviews it is the best-reviewed game here. It is also the dearest row by a wide margin: the record puts Split Fiction in the low thirties while most of this table sits in single figures.
One writer's sci-fi, one writer's fantasy, and a chapter structure that alternates between them rather than mixing. (Official Steam screenshot)
A Way Out
Leo and Vincent break out of prison, and the screen is split for the entire game whether you are sitting together or not — one player watching a guard walk a corridor while the other is three rooms away picking at a wall. It is the bluntest version of the It Takes Two contract: Hazelight describes it as exclusively co-op, with no solo mode at all. What it does differently is drop the toy-box. There are no new abilities every chapter; instead there are long stretches of ordinary action with one rule, which is that neither of you can advance alone. GamesRadar put it first in its own round-up for It Takes Two players, and the reason is the ending, which does something to the two-player relationship that nothing else here attempts. Ownership works differently depending on where you buy: EA's terms let the second player install a free trial client, while on Steam the practical route is Remote Play Together, and we went through that in A Way Out price. Reviewers are largely with it, 88% of 103,257 of them, and A Way Out sits in single figures in the table above.
The screen stays split for the whole game, even when both players are in the same room. (Official Steam screenshot)
Games like It Takes Two that fit on one sofa
Both of these were built for two people and one television, and both will also let one person hold everything.
Unravel Two
Two Yarnys, tied together by the thread they are made of, which is the mechanical idea: the rope between you is the climbing gear, the swing and the lever. Coldwood's own description is specific that the co-op is local, and the Steam categories bear that out — shared screen and Remote Play Together, but no online mode. The tone is the opposite of Cody and May's bickering: nothing shouts at you, no narrator picks at a marriage, and the whole thing is shorter. The trade is depth, because 78% from 9,229 reviews is the softest score here and the second half leans on the same tether trick rather than inventing new ones. For a first co-op game with someone who does not play games, though, Unravel Two is the easiest sell on this page.
The thread between the two Yarnys is the only traversal tool either of them has. (Official Steam screenshot)
Haven
Yu and Kay have run away to an abandoned planet, and you play both of them at once — gliding across broken terrain, cooking, and fighting in a rhythm system that asks for the two attacks to land together. The Game Bakers wrote a couple rather than a quarrelling pair, so there is no relationship to repair here, only one to maintain. Haven holds 88% across 6,115 reviews.
A walkie-talkie instead of a split screen
When the other player is in another building or another country, the thing you want is a game that treats the distance as the puzzle.
We Were Here Together
You and your partner wake at an Antarctic base camp with a radio each, get separated inside Castle Rock, and from then on neither of you can see what the other is looking at. Everything has to be described out loud. That makes it the one genuinely asymmetric game here — It Takes Two hands you different abilities, this hands you different information — which is why the series has a following among people who play over voice chat. Total Mayhem's design has a cost attached: no local option and no pass, so you need a copy each, the only two-purchase entry in the table. Its puzzles are harder than anything in It Takes Two, and the usual failure is one of you misreading a symbol. Patient pairs account for most of its 82% from 17,768 reviewers. Two copies of We Were Here Together still come to less than one of several rows above it.
Castle Rock separates the two players, so every clue has to be described over the radio. (Official Steam screenshot)
Sackboy: A Big Adventure
Sumo Digital's platformer takes two to four players through Craftworld, and it is the only pick that scales past a pair. Online co-op and split screen are both supported, with no Remote Play Together, so playing it over the internet means a copy each. What it borrows from It Takes Two is the set-piece discipline — levels built around one idea, dropped before it wears out — and what it adds is a difficulty floor low enough for a child to clear a stage without help. The reviews are thinner than the rest at 4,498, though 84% of them are positive. Sackboy: A Big Adventure is the row the table prices highest after Split Fiction.
Craftworld scales to four, which nothing else here does. (Official Steam screenshot)
Nobody is holding the second controller
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Josef Fares made this before A Way Out and before It Takes Two, and it is single-player: one brother per thumbstick, both moving at once. The same two-body thinking is there, one strong and one small enough to fit through a gap, with nobody to co-ordinate with. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons reviews at 94% from 41,285, and the record has it at a dollar and change, which makes it the cheapest thing in the table by some distance.
One brother per thumbstick: Fares was working on this problem a decade before Cody and May. (Official Steam screenshot)
Split Fiction is the next one, and it is not close
Play Split Fiction. It is the same studio answering the same brief with a bigger budget, it keeps the Friend's Pass so only one of you pays, and it is the best-reviewed game on this page — nothing else here is trying to be It Takes Two, which is what makes it the obvious step rather than merely the newest. The alternative is A Way Out, for anyone whose favourite part was the two-hander story rather than the constant mechanical invention.
For more co-op and less narrative, our round-ups of co-op games on a budget and games to play with your partner cover ground this list does not, while Friend's Pass games is the full inventory of co-op where only one of you has to buy. It Takes Two has its own page too, if you have somehow not played it.
We wrote this from store pages, published reviews and our own price record, not from playing each game for this piece. Some store links on our game pages are affiliate links, so playze may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.